Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions

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Business operations in high-risk areas of the world contend with complex threat environments and risk scenarios that often require a unique response. But traditional approaches to security strategy often miss these jurisdictional risks, leaving organizations vulnerable to threats that range from cybercrime and data breaches to fines and penalties.

Security leaders need to identify high-risk jurisdictions, inventory critical assets, identify vulnerabilities, assess risks, and identify security controls necessary to mitigate those risks.

Secure operations and protect critical assets in high-risk regions

Across risks that include insider threats and commercial surveillance, the two greatest vulnerabilities that organizations face in high-risk parts of the world are travel and compliance. Organizations can make small adjustments to their security program to address these risks:

  1. Support high-risk travel: Put measures and guidelines in place to protect personnel, data, and devices before, during, and after employee travel.
  2. Mitigate compliance risk: Consider data residency requirements, data breach notification, cross-border data transfer, and third-party risks to support business growth.

Using these two prevalent risk scenarios in high-risk jurisdictions as examples, this research walks you through the steps to analyze the threat landscape, assess security risks, and execute a response to mitigate them.

Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions Research & Tools

Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

1. Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions – A step-by-step approach to mitigating jurisdictional security and privacy risks.

Traditional approaches to security strategy often miss jurisdictional risks. Use this storyboard to make small adjustments to your security program to mitigate security risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

  • Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions – Phases 1-3

2. Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heat Map Tool – A tool to inventory, assess, and treat jurisdictional risks.

Use this tool to track jurisdictional risks, assess the exposure of critical assets, and identify mitigation controls. Use the geographic heatmap to communicate inherent jurisdictional risk with key stakeholders.

  • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heat Map Tool

3. Guidelines for Key Jurisdictional Risk Scenarios – Two structured templates to help you develop guidelines for two key jurisdictional risk scenarios: high-risk travel and compliance risk

Use these two templates to develop help you develop your own guidelines for key jurisdictional risk scenarios. The guidelines address high-risk travel and compliance risk.

  • Digital Safety Guidelines for International Travel
  • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

Infographic

Workshop: Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

1 Identify Context for Risk Assessment

The Purpose

Assess business requirements and evaluate security pressures to set the context for the security risk assessment.

Key Benefits Achieved

Understand the goals of the organization in high-risk jurisdictions.

Assess the threats to critical assets in these jurisdictions and capture stakeholder expectations for information security.

Activities

1.1 Determine assessment scope.

1.2 Determine business goals.

1.3 Determine compliance obligations.

1.4 Determine risk appetite.

1.5 Conduct pressure analysis.

Outputs

Business requirements

Security pressure analysis

2 Analyze Key Risk Scenarios for High-Risk Jurisdictions

The Purpose

Build key risk scenarios for high-risk jurisdictions.

Key Benefits Achieved

Identify critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions, their vulnerabilities to relevant threats, and the adverse impact should malicious agents exploit them.

Assess risk exposure of critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions.

Activities

2.1 Identify critical assets.

2.2 Identify threats.

2.3 Assess risk likelihood.

2.4 Assess risk impact.

Outputs

Key risk scenarios

Jurisdictional risk exposure

Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heat Map

3 Build Risk Treatment Roadmap

The Purpose

Prioritize and treat jurisdictional risks to critical assets.

Key Benefits Achieved

Build an initiative roadmap to reduce residual risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

Activities

3.1 Identify and assess risk response.

3.2 Assess residual risks.

3.3 Identify security controls.

3.4 Build initiative roadmap.

Outputs

Action plan to mitigate key risk scenarios

Further reading

Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions

Assessments often omit jurisdictional risks. Are your assets exposed?

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Operations in high-risk jurisdictions face unique security scenarios.

The image contains a picture of Michel Hebert.

Michel Hébert

Research Director

Security and Privacy

Info-Tech Research Group


The image contains a picture of Alan Tang.

Alan Tang

Principal Research Director

Security and Privacy

Info-Tech Research Group


Traditional approaches to security strategies may miss key risk scenarios that critical assets face in high-risk jurisdictions. These include high-risk travel, heightened insider threats, advanced persistent threats, and complex compliance environments. Most organizations have security strategies and risk management practices in place, but securing global operations requires its own effort. Assess the security risk that global operations pose to critical assets. Consider the unique assets, threats, and vulnerabilities that come with operations in high-risk jurisdictions. Focus on the business activities you support and integrate your insights with existing risk management practices to ensure the controls you propose get the visibility they need. Your goal is to build a plan that mitigates the unique security risks that global operations pose and secures critical assets in high-risk areas. Don’t leave security to chance.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • Security leaders who support operations in many countries struggle to mitigate security risks to critical assets. Operations in high-risk jurisdictions contend with complex threat environments and security risk scenarios that often require a unique response.
  • Security leaders need to identify critical assets, assess vulnerabilities, catalog threats, and identify the security controls necessary to mitigate related operational risks.

Common Obstacles

  • Securing operations in high-risk jurisdictions requires additional due diligence. Each jurisdiction involves a different risk context, which complicates efforts to identify, assess, and mitigate security risks to critical assets.
  • Security leaders need to engage the organization with the right questions and identify high-risk vulnerabilities and security risk scenarios to help stakeholders make an informed decision about how to assess and treat the security risks they face in high-risk jurisdictions.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Info-Tech has developed an effective approach to protecting critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions.

This approach includes tools for:

  • Evaluating the security context of your organization’s high-risk jurisdictions.
  • Identifying security risk scenarios unique to high-risk jurisdictions and assessing the exposure of critical assets.
  • Planning and executing a response.

Info-Tech Insight

Organizations with global operations must contend with a more diverse set of assets, threats, and vulnerabilities when they operate in high-risk jurisdictions. Security leaders need to take additional steps to secure operations and protect critical assets.

Business operations in high-risk jurisdictions face a more complex security landscape

Information security risks to business operations vary widely by region.

The 2022 Allianz Risk Barometer surveyed 2,650 business risk specialists in 89 countries to identify the most important risks to operations. The report identified cybercrime, IT failures, outages, data breaches, fines, and penalties as the most important global business risks in 2022, but their results varied widely by region. The standout finding of the 2022 Allianz Risk Barometer is the return of security risks as the most important threat to business operations. Security risks will continue to be acute beyond 2022, especially in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, where they will dwarf risks of supply chain interruptions, natural catastrophe, and climate change.

Global operations in high-risk jurisdictions contend with more diverse threats. These security risk scenarios are not captured in traditional security strategies.

The image contains a picture of the world map that has certain areas of the map highlighted in various shades of blue based on higher security-related business risks.

Figures represent the number of cybersecurity risks business risk specialists selected as a percentage of all business risks (Allianz, 2022). Higher scores indicate jurisdictions with higher security-related business risks. Jurisdictions without data are in grey.

Different jurisdictions’ commitment to cybersecurity also varies widely, which increases security risks further

The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) provides insight into the commitment of different countries to cybersecurity.

The index assesses a country’s legal framework to identify basic requirements that public and private stakeholders must uphold and the legal instruments prohibiting harmful actions.

The 2020 GCI results show overall improvement and strengthening of the cybersecurity agenda globally, but significant regional gaps persist. Of the 194 countries surveyed:

  • 33% had no data protection legislation.
  • 47% had no breach notification measures in place.
  • 50% had no legislation on the theft of personal information.
  • 19% still had no legislation on illegal access.

Not every jurisdiction has the same commitment to cybersecurity. Protecting critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions requires additional due diligence.

The image contains a picture of the world map that has certain areas of the map highlighted in various shades of blue based on scores in relation to the Global Security Index.

The diagram sets out the score and rank for each country that took part in the Global Cybersecurity Index (ITU, 2021)

Higher scores show jurisdictions with a lower rank on the CGI, which implies greater risk. Jurisdictions without data are in grey.

Securing critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions requires additional effort

Traditional approaches to security strategy may miss these key risk scenarios.

As a result, security leaders who support operations in many countries need to take additional steps to mitigate security risks to critical assets.

Guide stakeholders to make informed decisions about how to assess and treat the security risks and secure operations.

  • Engage the organization with the right questions.
  • Identify critical assets and assess vulnerabilities.
  • Catalogue threats and build risk scenarios.
  • Identify the security controls necessary to mitigate risks.

Work with your organization to analyze the threat landscape, assess security risks unique to high-risk jurisdictions, and execute a response to mitigate them.

This project blueprint works through this process using the two most prevalent risk scenarios in high-risk jurisdictions: high-risk travel and compliance risk.

Key Risk Scenarios

  • High-Risk Travel
  • Compliance Risk
  • Insider Threat
  • Advanced Persistent Threat
  • Commercial Surveillance
The image contains a screenshot of an Info-Tech thought model regarding secure global operations in high-risk jurisdictions.

Travel risk is the first scenario we use as an example throughout the blueprint

  • This project blueprint outlines a process to identify, assess, and mitigate key risk scenarios in high-risk jurisdictions. We use two common key risk scenarios as examples throughout the deck to illustrate how you create and assess your own scenarios.
  • Supporting high-risk travel is the first scenario we will study in-depth as an example. Business growth, service delivery, and mergers and acquisitions can lead end users to travel to high-risk jurisdictions where staff, devices, and data are at risk.
  • Compromised or stolen devices can provide threat actors with access to data that could compromise the organization’s strategic, economic, or competitive advantage or expose the organization to regulatory risk.

The project blueprint includes template guidance in Phase 3 to help you build and deploy your own travel guidelines to protect critical assets and support end users before they leave, during their trip, and when they return.

Before you leave

  • Identify high-risk countries.
  • Enable controls.
  • Limit what you pack.

During your trip

  • Assume you are monitored.
  • Limit access to systems.
  • Prevent theft.

When you return

  • Change your password.
  • Restore your devices.

Compliance risk is the second scenario we use as an example

  • Mitigating compliance risk is the second scenario we will study as an example in this blueprint. The legal and regulatory landscape is evolving rapidly to keep step with the pace of technological change. Security and privacy leaders are expected to mitigate the risk of noncompliance as the organization expands to new jurisdictions.
  • Later sections will show how to think through at least four compliance risks, including:
    • Cross-border data transfer
    • Third-party risk management
    • Data breach notification
    • Data residency

The project blueprint includes template guidance in Phase 3 to help you deploy your own compliance governance controls as a risk mitigation measure.

Secure Operations in High-Risk Jurisdictions: Info-Tech’s methodology

1. Identify Context

2. Assess Risks

3. Execute Response

Phase Steps

  1. Assess business requirements
  2. Evaluate security pressures
  1. Identify risks
  2. Assess risk exposure
  1. Treat security risks
  2. Build initiative roadmap

Phase Outcomes

  • Internal security pressures that capture the governance, policies, practices, and risk tolerance of the organization
  • External security pressures that capture the expectations of customers, regulators, legislators, and business partners
  • A heatmap that captures not only the global exposure of your critical assets but also the business processes they support
  • A security risk register to allow for the easy transfer of critical assets’ global security risk data to your organization’s enterprise risk management practice
  • A roadmap of prioritized initiatives to apply relevant controls and secure global assets
  • A set of key risk indicators to monitor and report your progress

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Business Security Requirements

Identify the context for the global security risk assessment, including risk appetite and risk tolerance.

Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap

Identify critical global assets and the threats they face in high-risk jurisdictions and assess exposure.

Mitigation Plan

Roadmap of initiatives and security controls to mitigate global risks to critical assets. Tools and templates to address key security risk scenarios.

Key deliverable:

Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap

Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool to capture information security risks to critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions. The tool generates a world chart that illustrates the risks global operations face to help you engage the business and execute a response.

Blueprint benefits

Protect critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions

IT Benefits

Assess and remediate information security risk to critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions.

Easily integrate your risk assessment with enterprise risk assessments to improve communication with the business.

Illustrate key information security risk scenarios to make the case for action in terms the business understands.

Business Benefits

Develop mitigation plans to protect staff, devices, and data in high-risk jurisdictions.

Support business growth in high-risk jurisdictions without compromising critical assets.

Mitigate compliance risk to protect your organization’s reputation, avoid fines, and ensure business continuity.

Quantify the impact of securing global operations

The tool included with this blueprint can help you measure the impact of implementing the research

  • Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool to describe the key risk scenarios you face, assess their likelihood and impact, and estimate the cost of mitigating measures. Working through the project in this way will help you quantify the impact of securing global operations.
The image contains a screenshot of Info-Tech's Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool. The image contains a screenshot of the High-Risk Travel Jurisdiction.

Establish Baseline Metrics

  • Review existing information security and risk management metrics and the output of the tools included with the blueprint.
  • Identify metrics to measure the impact of your risk management efforts. Focus specifically on high-risk jurisdictions.
  • Compare your results with those in your overall security and risk management program.

ID

Metric

Why is this metric valuable?

How do I calculate it?

1.

Overall Exposure – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Illustrates the overall exposure of critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions.

Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool. Calculate the impact times the probability rating for each risk. Take the average.

2.

# Risks Identified – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Informs risk tolerance assessments.

Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

3.

# Risks Treated – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Informs residual risk assessments.

Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

4.

Mitigation Cost – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Informs cost-benefit analysis to determine program effectiveness.

Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

5.

# Security Incidents – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Informs incident trend calculations to determine program effectiveness.

Draw the information from your service desk or IT service management tool.

6.

Incident Remediation Cost – High-Risk Jurisdictions

Informs cost-benefit analysis to determine program effectiveness.

Estimate based on cost and effort, including direct and indirect cost such as business disruptions, administrative finds, reputational damage, etc.

7.

TRENDS: Program Effectiveness – High-Risk Jurisdictions

# of security incidents over time. Remediation : Mitigation costs over time

Calculate based on metrics 5 to 7.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs.

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

Call #1: Scope project requirements, determine assessment scope, and discuss challenges.

Phase 2

Call #2: Conduct initial risk assessment and determine risk tolerance.

Call #3: Evaluate security pressures in high-risk jurisdictions.

Call #4: Identify risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

Call #5: Assess risk exposure.

Phase 3

Call #6: Treat security risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information. workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Days 1

Days 2-3

Day 4

Day 5

Identify Context

Key Risk Scenarios

Build Roadmap

Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

Activities

1.1.1 Determine assessment scope.

1.1.2 Determine business goals.

1.1.3 Identify compliance obligations.

1.2.1 Determine risk appetite.

1.2.2 Conduct pressure analysis.

2.1.1 Identify assets.

2.1.2 Identify threats.

2.2.1 Assess risk likelihood.

2.2.2 Assess risk impact.

3.1.1 Identify and assess risk response.

3.1.2 Assess residual risks.

3.2.1 Identify security controls.

3.2.2 Build initiative roadmap.

5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

Deliverables

  1. Business requirements for security risk assessment
  2. Identification of high-risk jurisdictions
  3. Security threat landscape for high-risk jurisdictions
  1. Inventory of relevant threats, critical assets, and their vulnerabilities
  2. Assessment of adverse effects should threat agents exploit vulnerabilities
  3. Risk register with key risk scenarios and heatmap of high-risk jurisdictions
  1. Action plan to mitigate key risk scenarios
  2. Investment and implementation roadmap
  1. Completed information security risk assessment for two key risk scenarios
  2. Risk mitigation roadmap

No safe jurisdictions

Stakeholders sometimes ask information security and privacy leaders to produce a list of safe jurisdictions from which to operate. We need to help them see that there are no safe jurisdictions, only relatively risky ones. As you build your security program, deepen the scope of your risk assessments to include risk scenarios critical assets face in different jurisdictions. These risks do not need to rule out operations, but they may require additional mitigation measures to keep staff, data, and devices safe and reduce potential reputational harms.

Traditional approaches to security strategy often omit jurisdictional risks.

Global operations must contend with a more complex security landscape. Secure critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions with a targeted risk assessment.

The two greatest risks are high-risk travel and compliance risk.

You can mitigate them with small adjustments to your security program.

Support High-Risk Travel

When securing travel to high-risk jurisdictions, you must consider personnel safety as well as data and device security. Put measures and guidelines in place to protect them before, during, and after travel.

Mitigate Compliance Risk

Think through data residency requirements, data breach notification, cross-border data transfer, and third-party risks to support business growth and mitigate compliance risks in high-risk jurisdictions to protect your organization’s reputation and avoid hefty fines or business disruptions.

Phase 1

Identify Context

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

  • Assess business requirements to understand the goals of the organization’s global operations, as well as its risk governance, policies, and practices.
  • Evaluate jurisdictional security pressures to understand threats to critical assets and capture the expectations of external stakeholders, including customers, regulators, legislators, and business partners, and assess risk tolerance.

This phase involves the following participants:

  • Business stakeholders
  • IT leadership
  • Security team
  • Risk and Compliance

Step 1.1

Assess Business Requirements

Activities

1.1.1 Determine assessment scope

1.1.2 Identify enterprise goals in high-risk jurisdictions

1.1.3 Identify compliance obligations

This step involves the following participants:

  • Business stakeholders
  • IT leadership
  • Security team
  • Risk and Compliance

Outcomes of this step

  • Assess business requirements to understand the goals of the organization’s global operations, as well as its risk governance, policies, and practices.

Focus the risk assessment on high-risk jurisdictions

Traditional approaches to information security strategy often miss threats to global operations

  • Successful security strategies are typically sensitive to risks to different IT systems and lines of business.
  • However, securing global operations requires additional focus on high-risk jurisdictions, considering what makes them unique.
  • This first phase of the project will help you evaluate the business context of operations in high-risk jurisdictions, including:
    • Enterprise and security goals.
    • Lines of business, physical locations, and IT systems that need additional oversight.
    • Unique compliance obligations.
    • Unique risks and security pressures.
    • Organizational risk tolerance in high-risk jurisdictions.

Focus your risk assessment on the business activities security supports in high-risk jurisdictions and the unique threats they face to bridge gaps in your security strategy.

Identify jurisdictions with higher inherent risks

Your security strategy may not describe jurisdictional risk adequately.

  • Security strategies list lines of business, physical locations, and IT systems the organization needs to secure and those whose security will depend on a third-party. You can find additional guidance on fixing the scope and boundaries of a security strategy in Phase 1 of Build an Information Security Strategy.
  • However, security risks vary widely from one jurisdiction to another according to:
    • Active cyber threats.
    • Legal and regulatory frameworks.
    • Regional security and preparedness capabilities.
  • Your first task is to identify high-risk jurisdictions to target for additional oversight.

Work closely with your enterprise risk management function.

Enterprise risk management functions are often tasked with developing risk assessments from composite sources. Work closely with them to complete your own assessment.

Countries at heightened risk of money laundering and terrorism financing are examples of high-risk jurisdictions. The Financial Action Task Force and the U.S. Treasury publish reports three times a year that identify Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories.

Develop a robust jurisdictional assessment

Design an intelligence collection strategy to inform your assessment

Strategic Intelligence

White papers, briefings, reports. Audience: C-Suite, board members

Tactical Intelligence

Internal reports, vendor reports. Audience: Security leaders

Operational intelligence

Indicators of compromise. Audience: IT Operations

Operational intelligence focuses on machine-readable data used to block attacks, triage and validate alerts, and eliminate threats from the network. It becomes outdated in a matter of hours and is less useful for this exercise.

Determine travel risks to bolster your assessments

Not all locations and journeys will require the same security measures.

  • Travel risks vary significantly according to destination, the nature of the trip, and traveler profile.
  • Access to an up-to-date country risk rating system enables your organization and individual staff to quickly determine the overall level of risk in a specific country or location.
  • Based on this risk rating, you can specify what security measures are required prior to travel and what level of travel authorization is appropriate, in line with the organization's security policy or travel security procedures.
  • While some larger organizations can maintain their own country risk ratings, this requires significant capacity, particularly to obtain the necessary information to keep these regularly updated.
  • It may be more effective for your organization to make use of the travel risk ratings provided by an external security information provider, such as a company linked to your travel insurance or travel booking service, if available.
  • Alternatively, various open-source travel risk ratings are available via embassy travel sites or other website providers.

Without a flexible system to account for the risk exposures of different jurisdictions, staff may perceive measures as a hindrance to operations.

Develop a tiered risk rating

The example below outlines potential risk indicators for high-risk travel.

Rating

Description

Low

Generally secure with adequate physical security. Low violent crime rates. Some civil unrest during significant events. Acts of terrorism rare. Risks associated with natural disasters limited and health threats mainly preventable.

Moderate

Periodic civil unrest. Antigovernment, insurgent, or extremist groups active with sporadic acts of terrorism. Staff at risk from common and violent crime. Transport and communications services are unreliable and safety records are poor. Jurisdiction prone to natural disasters or disease epidemics.

High

Regular periods of civil unrest, which may target foreigners. Antigovernment, insurgent, or extremist groups very active and threaten political or economic stability. Violent crime rates high, often targeting foreigners. Infrastructure and emergency services poor. May be regular disruption to transportation or communications services. Certain areas off-limits to foreigners. Jurisdictions experiencing natural disasters or epidemics are considered high risk.

Extreme

Undergoing active conflict or persistent civil unrest. Risk of being caught up in a violent incident or attack is very high. Authorities may have lost control of significant portions of the country. Lines between criminality and political and insurgent violence are blurred. Foreigners are likely to be denied access to parts of the country. Transportation and communication services are severely degraded or nonexistent. Violence presents a direct threat to staff security.

Ratings are formulated by assessing several types of risk, including conflict, political/civil unrest, terrorism, crime, and health and infrastructure risks.

1.1.1 Determine assessment scope

1 – 2 hours

  1. As a group, brainstorm a list of high-risk jurisdictions to target for additional assessment. Write down as many items as possible to include in:
  • Lines of business
  • Physical locations
  • IT systems

Pay close attention to elements of the assessment that are not in scope.

  • Discuss the response and the rationale for targeting each of them for additional risk assessments. Identify security-related concerns for different lines of business, locations, user groups, IT systems, and data.
  • Record your responses and your comments in the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool.
  • Input

    Output

    • Corporate strategy
    • IT strategy
    • Security strategy
    • Relevant threat intelligence
    • A list of high-risk jurisdictions to focus your risk assessment

    Materials

    Participants

    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business stakeholders
    • Enterprise Risk Management
    • Compliance
    • Legal

    Download the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool

    Position your efforts in a business context

    Securing critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions is a business imperative

    • Many companies relegate their information security strategies to their IT department. Aside from the strain the choice places on a department that already performs many different functions, it wrongly implies that mitigating information security risk is simply an IT problem.
    • Managing information security risks is a business problem. It requires that organizations identify their risk appetite, prioritize relevant threats, and define risk mitigation initiatives. Business leaders can only do these activities effectively in a context that recognizes the business and financial benefits of implementing protections.
    • This is notably true of businesses with operations in many different countries. Each jurisdiction has its own set of security risks the organization must account for, as well as unique local laws and regulations that affect business operations.
    • In high-risk jurisdictions, your efforts must consider the unique operational challenges your organization may not face in its home country. Your efforts to secure critical assets will be most successful if you describe key risk scenarios in terms of their impact on business goals.
    • You can find additional guidance on assessing the business context of a security strategy in Phase 1 of Build an Information Security Strategy.

    Do you understand the unique business context of operations in high-risk jurisdictions?

    1.1.2 Identify business goals

    Estimated Time: 1-2 hours

    1. As a group, brainstorm the primary and secondary business goals of the organization. Focus your assessment on operations in high-risk jurisdictions you identified in Exercise 1.1.1. Review:
    • Relevant corporate and IT strategies.
    • The business goal definitions and indicator metrics in tab 2, “Goals Definition,” of the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool.
  • Limit business goals to no more than two primary goals and three secondary goals. This limitation will help you prioritize security initiatives at the end of the project.
  • For each business goal, identify up to two security alignment goals that will support business goals in high-risk jurisdictions.
  • Input

    Output

    • Corporate strategy
    • IT strategy
    • Security strategy
    • Your goals for the security risk assessment for high-risk jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business stakeholders
    • Risk Management
    • Compliance
    • Legal

    Download the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool

    Record business goals

    Capture the results in the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool

    1. Record the primary and secondary business goals you identified in tab 3, “Goals Cascade,” of the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool.
    2. Next, record the two security alignment goals you selected for each business goal based on the tool’s recommendations.
    3. Finally, review the graphic diagram that illustrates your goals on tab 6, “Results,” of the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool.
    4. Revisit this exercise whenever operations expands to a new jurisdiction to capture how they contribute to the organization’s mission and vision and how the security program can support them.
    The image contains a screenshot of Tab 3, Goals Cascade.

    Tab 3, Goals Cascade

    The image contains a screenshot of Tab 6, Results.

    Tab 6, Results

    Analyze business goals

    Assess how operating in multiple jurisdictions adds nuance to your business goals

    • Security leaders need to understand the direction of the business to propose relevant security initiatives that support business goals in high-risk jurisdictions.
    • Operating in different jurisdictions carries its own degree of risk. The organization is subject not only to the information security risks and legal frameworks of its country of origin but also to those associated with international jurisdictions.
    • You need to understand where your organization operates and how these different jurisdictions contribute to your business goals to support their performance and protect the firm’s reputation.
    • This exercise will make an explicit link between security and privacy concerns in high-risk jurisdictions, what the business cares about, and what security is trying to accomplish.

    If the organization is considering a merger and acquisition project that will expand operations in jurisdictions with different travel risk profiles, the security organization needs to revise the security strategy to ensure the organization can support high-risk travel and mitigate risks to critical assets.

    Identify compliance obligations

    Data compliance obligations loom large in high-risk jurisdictions

    The image contains four hexagons, each with their own words. SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITECH.

    Security leaders are familiar with most conventional regulatory obligations that govern financial, personal, and healthcare data in North America and Europe.

    The image contains four hexagons, each with their own words. Residency, Cross-Border Transfer, Breach Notification, Third-Party Risk Mgmt.

    Data privacy concerns, nationalism, and the economic value of data are all driving jurisdictions to adopt data residency and data localization and to shut down the cross-border transfer of data.

    The next step requires you to consider the compliance obligations the organization needs to meet to support the business as it expands to other jurisdictions through natural growth, mergers, and acquisitions.

    1.1.3 Identify compliance obligations

    Estimated Time: 1-2 hours

    1. As a group, brainstorm compliance obligations in target jurisdictions. Focus your assessment on operations in high-risk jurisdictions.
    2. Include:

    • Laws
    • Governing regulations
    • Industry standards
    • Contractual agreements
  • Record your compliance obligations and comments on tab 4, “Compliance Obligations,” of the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool.
  • If you need to take full stock of the laws and regulations in place in the jurisdictions where you operate that you are not familiar with, consider seeking local legal counsel to help you navigate this exercise.
  • Input

    Output

    • Legal and compliance frameworks in target jurisdictions
    • Mandatory and voluntary compliance obligations for target jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business stakeholders
    • Risk Management
    • Compliance
    • Legal

    Download the Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool

    Step 1.2

    Evaluate Security Pressures

    Activities

    1.2.1 Conduct initial risk assessment

    1.2.2 Conduct pressure analysis

    1.2.3 Determine risk tolerance

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    Identify threats to global assets and capture the security expectations of external stakeholders, including customers, regulators, legislators, and business partners, and determine risk tolerance.

    Evaluate security pressures to set the risk context

    Perform an initial assessment of high-risk jurisdictions to set the context.

    Assess:

    • The threat landscape.
    • The security pressures from key stakeholders.
    • The risk tolerance of your organization.

    You should be able to find the information in your existing security strategy. If you don’t have the information, work through the next three steps of the project blueprint.

    The image contains a diagram to demonstrate evaluating security pressures, as described in the text above.

    Some jurisdictions carry inherent risks

    • Jurisdictional risks stem from legal, regulatory, or political factors that exist in different countries or regions. They can also stem from unexpected legal changes in regions where critical assets have exposure. Understanding jurisdictional risks is critical because they can require additional security controls.
    • Jurisdictional risk tends to be higher in jurisdictions:
      • Where the organization:
        • Conducts high-value or high-volume financial transactions.
        • Supports and manages critical infrastructure.
        • Has high-cost data or data whose compromise could undermine competitive advantage.
        • Has a high percentage of part-time employees and contractors.
        • Experiences a high rate of employee turnover.
      • Where state actors:
        • Have a low commitment to cybersecurity, financial, and privacy legislation and regulation.
        • Support cybercrime organizations within their borders.

    Jurisdictional risk is often reduced to countries where money laundering and terrorist activities are high. In this blueprint, the term refers to the broader set of information security risks that arise when operating in a foreign country or jurisdiction.

    Five key risk scenarios are most prevalent

    Key Risk Scenarios

    • High-Risk Travel
    • Compliance Risk
    • Insider Threat
    • Advanced Persistent Threat
    • Commercial Surveillance

    Security leaders who support operations in many countries need to take additional steps to mitigate security risks to critical assets. The goal of the next two exercises is to analyze the threat landscape and security pressures unique to high-risk jurisdictions, which will inform the construction of key scenarios in Phase 2. These five scenarios are most prevalent in high-risk jurisdictions. Keep them in mind as you go through the exercises in this section.

    1.2.1 Assess jurisdictional risk

    1-3 hours

    1. As a group, review the questions on tab 2, “Risk Assessment,” of the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool.
    2. Gather the required information from subject matter experts on the following risk elements with a focus on high-risk jurisdictions:
    3. Review each question in tab 2 of the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool and select the most appropriate response.

    Input

    Output

    • Existing security strategy
    • List of organizational assets
    • Historical data on information security incidents
    • Completed risk assessment

    Materials

    Participants

    • Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    For more information on how to complete the risk assessment questionnaire, see Step 1.2.1 of Build an Information Security Strategy.

    1.2.2 Conduct pressure analysis

    1-3 hours

    1. As a group, review the questions on tab 3, “Pressure Analysis,” of the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool.
    2. Gather the required information from subject matter experts on the following pressure elements with a focus on high-risk jurisdictions:
    • Compliance and oversight
    • Customer expectations
    • Business expectations
    • IT expectations
  • Review each question in the questionnaire and provide the most appropriate response using the drop-down list. It may be helpful to consult with the appropriate departments to obtain their perspectives.
  • For more information on how to complete the pressure analysis questionnaire, see Step 1.3 of Build an Information Security Strategy.

    Input

    Output

    • Information on various pressure elements within the organization
    • Existing security strategy
    • Completed pressure analysis

    Materials

    Participants

    • Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business leaders
    • Compliance

    A low security pressure means that your stakeholders do not assign high importance to information security. You may need to engage stakeholders with the right key risk scenarios to illustrate jurisdictional risk and generate support for new security controls.

    Download the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool

    Assess risk tolerance

    • Risk tolerance expresses the types and amount of risk the organization is willing to accept in pursuit of its goals.
    • These expectations can help you identify, manage, and report on key risk scenarios in high-risk jurisdictions.
    • For instance, an organization with a low risk tolerance will require a stronger information security program to minimize operational security risks.
    • It’s up to business leaders to determine the risks they are willing to accept. They may need guidance to understand how system-level risks affect the organization’s ability to pursue its goals.

    A formalized risk tolerance statement can help:

    • Support risk-based security decisions that align with business goals.
    • Provide a meaningful rationale for security initiatives.
    • Improve the transparency of investments in the organization’s security program.
    • Provide guidance for monitoring inherent risk and residual risk exposure.

    The role of security professionals is to identify and analyze key risk scenarios that may prevent the organization from reaching its goals.

    1.2.3 Determine risk tolerance

    1-3 hours

    1. As a group, review the questions on tab 4, “Risk Tolerance,” of the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool.
    2. Gather the required information from subject matter experts on the following risk tolerance elements:
    • Recent IT problems, especially downtime and data recovery issues
    • Historical security incidents
  • Review any relevant documentation, including:
    • Existing security strategy
    • Business impact assessments
    • Service-level agreements

    For more information on how to complete the risk tolerance questionnaire, see Step 1.4 of Build an Information Security Strategy.

    Input

    Output

    • Existing security strategy
    • Data on recent IT problems and incidents
    • Business impact assessments
    • Completed risk tolerance statement

    Materials

    Participants

    • Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Information Security Pressure Analysis Tool

    Review the output of the results tab

    • The organizational risk assessment provides a high-level assessment of inherent risks in high-risk jurisdictions. Use the results to build and assess key risk scenarios in Phase 2.
    • Use the security pressure analysis to inform stakeholder management efforts. A low security pressure indicates that stakeholders do not yet grasp the impact of information security on organizational goals. You may need to communicate its importance before you discuss additional security controls.
    • Jurisdictions in which organizations have a low risk tolerance will require stronger information security controls to minimize operational risks.
    The image contains a screenshot of the organizational risk assessment. The image contains a screenshot of the security pressure analysis. The image contains a screenshot of the risk tolerance curve.

    Phase 2

    Assess Security Risks to Critical Assets

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify critical assets, their vulnerabilities to relevant threats, and the adverse impact a successful threat event would have on the organization.
    • Assess risk exposure of critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions for each risk scenario through an analysis of its likelihood and impact.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Step 2.1

    Identify Risks

    Activities

    2.1.1 Identify assets

    2.1.2 Identify threats

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Define risk scenarios that identify critical assets, their vulnerabilities to relevant threats, and the adverse impact a successful threat event would have on the organization.

    This blueprint focuses on mitigating jurisdictional risks

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Risk Management Framework. The framework includes: Risk Identification, Risk Assessment, Risk Response, and Risk Governance.

    For a deeper dive into building a risk management program, see Info-Tech’s core project blueprints on risk management:

    Build an IT Risk Management Program

    Combine Security Risk Management Components Into One Program

    Draft key risk scenarios to illustrate adverse events

    Risk scenarios help decision-makers understand how adverse events affect business goals.

    • Risk-scenario building is the process of identifying the critical factors that contribute to an adverse event and crafting a narrative that describes the circumstances and consequences if it were to happen.
    • Risk scenarios set up the risk analysis stage of the risk assessment process. They are narratives that describe in detail:
      • The asset at risk.
      • The threat that can act against the asset.
      • Their intent or motivation.
      • The circumstances and threat actor model associated with the threat event.
      • The potential effect on the organization.
      • When or how often the event might occur.

    Risk scenarios are further distilled into a single sentence or risk statement that communicates the essential elements from the scenario.

    Well-crafted risk scenarios have four components

    The second phase of the project will help you craft meaningful risk scenarios

    Threat

    Exploits an

    Asset

    Using a

    Method

    Creating an

    Effect

    An actor capable of harming an asset

    Anything of value that can be affected and results in loss

    Technique an actor uses to affect an asset

    How loss materializes

    Examples: Malicious or untrained employees, cybercriminal groups, malicious state actors

    Examples: Systems, regulated data, intellectual property, people

    Examples: Credential compromise, privilege escalation, data exfiltration

    Examples: Loss of data confidentiality, integrity, or availability; impact on staff health & safety

    Risk scenarios are concise, four to six sentence narratives that describe the core elements of forecasted adverse events. Use them to engage stakeholders with the right questions and guide them to make informed decisions about how to address and treat security risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

    The next slides review five key risk scenarios prevalent in high-risk jurisdictions. Use them as examples to develop your own.

    Travel to high-risk jurisdictions requires special measures to protect staff, devices, and data

    Governmental, academic, and commercial advisors compile lists of jurisdictions that pose greater travel risks annually.

    For instance, in the US, these lists might include countries that are:

    • Subjects of travel warnings by the US Department of State.
    • Identified as high risk by other US government sources such as:
      • The Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
      • The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
      • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
    • Compiled from academic and commercial sources, such as Control Risks.

    When securing travel to high-risk jurisdictions, you must consider personnel safety as well as data and device security.

    The image contains a diagram to present high-risk jurisdictions.

    The diagram presents high-risk jurisdictions based on US governmental sources (2021) listed on this slide.

    High-risk travel

    Likelihood: Medium

    Impact: Medium

    Key Risk Scenario #1

    Malicious state actors, cybercriminals, and competitors can threaten staff, devices, and data during travel to high-risk jurisdictions. Device theft or compromise may occur while traveling through airports, accessing hotel computer and phone networks, or in internet cafés or other public areas. Threat actors can exploit data from compromised or stolen devices to undermine the organization’s strategic, economic, or competitive advantage. They can also infect compromised devices with malware that delivers malicious payloads once they reconnect with home networks.

    Threat Actor:

    • Malicious state actors
    • Cybercriminals
    • Competitors

    Assets:

    • Staff
    • IT systems
    • Sensitive data

    Effect:

    • Compromised staff health and safety
    • Loss of data
    • Lost of system integrity

    Methods:

    • Identify, steal, or target mobile devices.
    • Compromise network, wireless, or Bluetooth connections.
    • Leverage stolen devices as a means of infecting other networks.
    • Access devices to track user location.
    • Activate microphones on devices to collect information.
    • Intercept electronic communications users send from high-risk jurisdictions.

    The data compliance landscape is a jigsaw puzzle of data protection and data residency requirements

    Since the EU passed the GDPR in 2016, jurisdictions have turned to data regulations to protect citizen data

    Data privacy concerns, nationalism, and the economic value of data are all driving jurisdictions to adopt data residency, breach notification, and cross-border data transfer regulations. As 2021 wound down to a close, nearly all the world’s 30 largest economies had some form of data regulation in place. The regulatory landscape is shifting rapidly, which complicates operations as organizations grow into new markets or engage in merger and acquisition activities.

    Global operations require special attention to data-residency requirements, data breach notification requirements, and cross-border data transfer regulations to mitigate compliance risk.

    The image contains a diagram to demonstrate the data regulations placed in various places around the world.

    Compliance risk

    Likelihood: Medium

    Impact: High

    Key Risk Scenario #2

    Rapid changes in the privacy and security regulatory landscape threaten organizations’ ability to meet their compliance obligations from local legal and regulatory frameworks. Organizations risk reputational damage, administrative fines, criminal charges, and loss of market share. In extreme cases, organizations may lose their license to operate in high-risk jurisdictions. Shifts in the regulatory landscape can involve additional requirements for data residency, cross-border data transfer, data breach notification, and third-party risk management.

    Threat Actor:

    • Local, regional, and national state actors

    Asset:

    • Reputation, market share
    • License to operate

    Effect:

    • Administrative fines
    • Loss of reputation, brand trust, and consumer loyalty
    • Loss of market share
    • Suspension of business operations
    • Lawsuits due to collective actions and claims
    • Criminal charges

    Methods:

    • Shifts in the privacy and security regulatory landscape, including requirements for:
      • Data residency.
      • Cross-border data transfer.
      • Data breach notification.
      • Third-party security and privacy risk management.

    The incidence of insider threats varies widely by jurisdiction in unexpected ways

    On average, companies in North America, the Middle East, and Africa had the most insider incidents in 2021, while those in the Asia-Pacific region had the least.

    The Ponemon Institute set out to understand the financial consequences that result from insider threats and gain insight into how well organizations are mitigating these risks.

    In the context of this research, insider threat is defined as:

    • Employee or contractor negligence.
    • Criminal or malicious insider activities.
    • Credential theft (imposter risk).

    On average, the total cost to remediate insider threats in 2021 was US$15.4 million per incident.

    In all regions, employee or contractor negligence occurred most frequently. Organizations in North America and in the Middle East and Africa were most likely to experience insider threat incidents in 2021.

    the image contains a diagram of the world, with various places coloured in different shades of blue.

    The diagram represents the average number of insider incidents reported per organization in 2021. The results are analyzed in four regions (Ponemon Institute, 2022)

    Insider threat

    Likelihood: Low to Medium

    Impact: High

    Key Risk Scenario #3

    Malicious insiders, negligent employees, and credential thieves can exploit inside access to information systems to commit fraud, steal confidential or commercially valuable information, or sabotage computer systems. Insider threats are difficult to identify, especially when security is geared toward external threats. They are often familiar with the organization’s data and intellectual property as well as the methods in place to protect them. An insider may steal information for personal gain or install malicious software on information systems. They may also be legitimate users who make errors and disregard policies, which places the organization at risk.

    Threat Actor:

    • Malicious insiders
    • Negligent employees
    • Infiltrators

    Asset:

    • Sensitive data
    • Employee credentials
    • IT systems

    Effects:

    • Loss of system integrity
    • Loss of data confidentiality
    • Financial loss

    Methods:

    • Infiltrators may compromise credentials.
    • Malicious or negligent insiders may use corporate email to steal or share sensitive data, including:
      • Regulated data.
      • Intellectual property.
      • Critical business information.
    • Malicious agents may facilitate data exfiltration, as well as open-port and vulnerability scans.

    The risk of advanced persistent threats is more prevalent in Central and South America and the Asia-Pacific region

    Attacks from advanced persistent threat (APT) actors are more sophisticated than traditional ones.

    • More countries will use legal indictments as part of their cyber strategy. Exposing toolsets of APT groups carried out at the governmental level will drive more states to do the same.
    • Expect APTs to increasingly target network appliances like VPN gateways as organizations continue to sustain hybrid workforces.
    • The line between APTs and state-sanctioned ransomware groups is blurring. Expect cybercriminals to wield better tools, mount more targeted attacks, and use double-extortion tactics.
    • Expect more disruption and collateral damage from direct attacks on critical infrastructure.

    Top 10 Significant Threat Actors:

    • Lazarus
    • DeathStalker
    • CactusPete
    • IAmTheKing
    • TransparentTribe
    • StrongPity
    • Sofacy
    • CoughingDown
    • MuddyWater
    • SixLittleMonkeys

    Top 10 Targets:

    • Government
    • Banks
    • Financial Institutions
    • Diplomatic
    • Telecommunications
    • Educational
    • Defense
    • Energy
    • Military
    • IT Companies
    The image contains a world map coloured in various shades of blue.
    Top 12 countries targeted by APTs (Kaspersky, 2020)

    Track notable APTs to revise your list of high-risk jurisdictions and review the latest tactics and techniques

    Governmental advisors track notable APT actors that pose greater risks.

    The CISA Shields Up site, SANS Storm Center site, and MITRE ATT&CK group site provide helpful and timely information to understand APT risks in different jurisdictions.

    The following threat actors are currently associated with cyberattacks affiliated with the Russian government.

    Activity Group

    Risks

    APT28 (GRU)

    Known as Fancy Bear, this threat group has been tied to espionage since 2004. They compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, amid other major events.

    APT29 (SVT)

    Tied to espionage since 2008. Reportedly compromised the Democratic National Committee in 2015. Cited in the 2021 SolarWinds compromise.

    Buhtrap/RTM Group

    Group focused on financial targets since 2014. Currently known to target Russian and Ukrainian banks.

    Gamaredon

    Operating in Crimea. Aligned with Russian interests. Has previously targeted Ukrainian government officials and organizations.

    DEV-0586

    Carried out wiper malware attacks on Ukrainian targets in January 2022.

    UNC1151

    Active since 2016. Linked to information operation campaigns and the distribution of anti-NATO material.

    Conti

    Most successful ransomware gang of 2021, with US$188M revenue. Supported Russian invasion of Ukraine, threatening attacks on allied critical infrastructure.

    Sources: MITRE ATT&CK; Security Boulevard, 2022; Reuters, 2022; The Verge, 2022

    Advanced persistent threat

    Likelihood: Low to Medium

    Impact: High

    Key Risk Scenario #4

    Advanced persistent threats are state actors or state-sponsored affiliates with the means to avoid detection by anti-malware software and intrusion detection systems. These highly-skilled and persistent malicious agents have significant resources with which to bypass traditional security controls, establish a foothold in the information technology infrastructure, and exfiltrate data undetected. APTs have the resources to adapt to a defender’s efforts to resist them over time. The loss of system integrity and data confidentiality over time can lead to financial losses, business continuity disruptions, and the destruction of critical infrastructure.

    Threat Actor:

    • State actors
    • State-sponsored affiliates

    Asset:

    • Sensitive data
    • IT systems
    • Critical infrastructure

    Effects:

    • Loss of system integrity
    • Loss of data confidentiality
    • Financial loss
    • Business continuity disruptions
    • Infrastructure destruction

    Methods:

    • Persistent, consistent attacks using the most advanced threats and tactics to bypass security defenses.
    • The goal of APTs is to maintain access to networks for prolonged periods without being detected.
    • The median dwell time differs widely between regions. FireEye reported the mean dwell time for 2018:
      • Americas: 71 days
      • Europe, Middle East, and Africa: 177 days
      • Asia-Pacific: 204 days
    Sources: Symantec, 2011; FireEye, 2019

    Threat agents have deployed invasive technology for commercial surveillance in at least 76 countries since 2015

    State actors and their affiliates purchased and used invasive spyware from companies in Europe, Israel, and the US.

    • “Customers are predominantly repressive regimes looking for new ways to control the flow of information and stifle dissent. Less than 10% of suspected customers are considered full democracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit.” (Top10VPN, 2021)
    • Companies based in economically developed and largely democratic states are profiting off the technology.
    • The findings demonstrate the need to consider geopolitical realities when assessing high-risk jurisdictions and to take meaningful action to increase layered defenses against invasive malware.
    • Spyware is having an increasingly well-known impact on civil society. For instance, since 2016, over 50,000 individual phone numbers have been identified as potential targets by NSO Group, the Israeli manufacturers of the notorious Pegasus Spyware. The target list contained the phone numbers of politicians, journalists, activists, doctors, and academics across the world.
    • The true number of those affected by spyware is almost impossible to determine given that many fall victim to the technology and do not notice.
    The image contains a map of the world with various countries highlighted in shades of blue.

    Countries where commercial surveillance tools have been deployed (“Global Spyware Market Index,” Top10VPN, 2021)

    The risks and effects of spyware vary greatly

    Spyware can steal mundane information, track a user’s every move, and everything in between.

    Adware

    Software applications that display advertisements while the program is running.

    Keyboard Loggers

    Applications that monitor and record keystrokes. Malicious agents use them to steal credentials and sensitive enterprise data.

    Trojans

    Applications that appear harmless but inflict damage or data loss to a system.

    Mobile Spyware

    Surveillance applications that infect mobile devices via SMS or MMS channels, though the most advanced can infect devices without user input.

    State actors and their affiliates use system monitors to track browsing habits, application usage, and keystrokes and capture information from devices’ GPS location data, microphone, and camera. The most advanced system monitor spyware, such as NSO Group’s Pegasus, can infect devices without user input and record conversations from end-to-end encrypted messaging systems.

    Commercial surveillance

    Likelihood: Low to Medium

    Impact: Medium

    Key Risk Scenario #5

    Malicious agents can deploy malware on end-user devices with commercial tools available off the shelf to secretly monitor the digital activity of users. Attacks exploit widespread vulnerabilities in telecommunications protocols. They occur through email and text phishing campaigns, malware embedded in untested applications, and sophisticated zero-click attacks that deliver payloads without requiring user interactions. Attacks target sensitive as well as mundane information. They can be used to track employee activities, investigate criminal activity, or steal credentials, credit card numbers, or other personally identifiable information.

    Threat Actor:

    • State actors
    • State-sponsored affiliates

    Asset:

    • Sensitive data
    • Staff health and safety
    • IT systems

    Effects:

    • Data breaches
    • Loss of data confidentiality
    • Increased risk to staff health and safety
    • Misuse of private data
    • Financial loss

    Methods:

    • Email and text phishing attacks that delivery malware payloads
    • Sideloading untested applications from a third-party source rather than an official retailer
    • Sophisticated zero-click attacks that deliver payloads without requiring user interaction

    Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool

    The tool included with this blueprint can help you draft risk scenarios and risk statements in this section.

    The risk register will capture a list of critical assets and their vulnerabilities, the threats that endanger them, and the adverse effect your organization may face.

    The image includes two screenshots of the jurisdictional risk register and heatmap tool. The image contains a screenshot of the High-Risk Travel Jurisdiction.

    Download the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool

    2.1.1 Identify assets

    1 – 2 hours

    1. As a group, consider critical or mission-essential functions in high-risk jurisdictions and the systems on which they depend. Brainstorm a list of the organization’s mission-supporting assets in high-risk jurisdictions. Consider:
    • Staff
    • Critical IT systems
    • Sensitive data
    • Critical operational processes
  • On a whiteboard, brainstorm the potential adverse effect of malicious agents in high-risk jurisdictions compromising critical assets. Consider the impact on:
    • Information systems.
    • Sensitive or regulated data.
    • Staff health and safety.
    • Critical operations and objectives.
    • Organizational finances.
    • Reputation and brand loyalty

    Threat

    Exploits an

    Asset

    Using a

    Method

    Creating an

    Effect

    Inputs for risk scenario identification

    Input

    Output

    • Corporate strategy
    • IT strategy
    • Security strategy
    • Business impact analyses
    • A list of the organization’s mission-supporting assets

    Materials

    Participants

    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Whiteboard
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • System owner
    • Enterprise Risk Management

    Threat

    Exploits an

    Asset

    Using a

    Method

    Creating an

    Effect

    Inputs for risk scenario identification

    The image contains an example of the activity mentioned in the text above.

    Model threats to narrow the range of scenarios

    Motives and capabilities to perform attacks on critical assets vary across different threat actors.

    Category

    Actions

    Motivation

    Sophistication

    Nation-states

    Cyberespionage, cyberattacks

    Geopolitical

    High. Dedicated resources and personnel, extensive planning and coordination.

    Proxy organizations

    Espionage, destructive attacks

    Geopolitical, Ideological, Profit

    Moderate. Some planning and support functions and technical expertise.

    Cybercrime

    Theft, fraud, extortion

    Profit

    Moderate. Some planning and support functions and technical expertise.

    Hacktivists

    Disrupt operations, attack brands, release sensitive data

    Ideological

    Low. Rely on widely available tools that require little skill to deploy.

    Insiders

    Destruction or release of sensitive data, theft, exposure through negligence

    Incompetence, Discontent

    Internal access. Acting on their own or in concert with any of the above.

    • Criminals, hacktivists, and insiders vary in sophistication. Some criminal groups demonstrate a high degree of sophistication; however, a large cyber event that damages critical infrastructure does not align with their incentives to make money at minimal risk.
    • Proxy actors conduct offensive cyber operations on behalf of a beneficiary. They may be acting on behalf of a competitor, national government, or group of individuals.
    • Nation-states engage in long-term espionage and offensive cyber operations that support geopolitical and strategic policy objectives.

    2.1.2 Identify threats

    1 – 2 hours

    1. Review the outputs from activity 1.1.1 and activity 2.1.1.
    2. Identify threat agents that could undermine the security of critical assets in high-risk jurisdictions. Include internal and external actors.
    3. Assess their motives, means, and opportunities.
    • Which critical assets are most attractive? Why?
    • What paths and vulnerabilities can threat agents exploit to reach critical assets without going through a control?
    • How could they defeat existing controls? Draw on the MITRE framework to inform your analysis.
    • Once agents defeat a control, what further attack can they launch?

    Threat

    Exploits an

    Asset

    Using a

    Method

    Creating an

    Effect

    Inputs for risk scenario identification

    Input

    Output

    • Jurisdictional assessment from activity 1.1.1
    • Critical assets from activity 2.1.1
    • Potential vulnerabilities from:
      • Security control gap analysis
      • Security risk register
    • Threat intelligence
    • MITRE framework
    • A list of critical assets, threat agents, vulnerabilities, and potential attack vectors.

    Materials

    Participants

    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Whiteboard
    • Security team
    • Infrastructure & Operations team
    • Enterprise Risk Management

    2.1.2 Identify threats (continued)

    1 – 2 hours

    1. On a whiteboard, brainstorm how threat agents will exploit vulnerabilities in critical assets to reach their goal. Redefine attack vectors to capture what could result from a successful initial attack.

    For example:

    • State actors and cybercriminals may steal or compromise end-user devices during travel to high-risk jurisdictions using malware they embed in airport charging stations, internet café networks, or hotel business centers.
    • Compromised devices may infect corporate networks and threaten sensitive data once they reconnect to them.

    Threat

    Exploits an

    Asset

    Using a

    Method

    Creating an

    Effect

    The image contains a screenshot of activity 2.1.2 as described in the text above.

    Bring together the critical risk elements into a single risk scenario

    Summarize the scenario further into a single risk statement

    Risk Scenario: High-Risk Travel

    State actors and cybercriminals can threaten staff, devices, and data during travel to high-risk jurisdictions. Device theft or compromise may occur while traveling through airports, accessing hotel computer and phone networks, or in internet cafés or other public areas. Threat actors can exploit data from compromised or stolen devices to undermine the organization’s strategic, economic, or competitive advantage. They can also infect compromised devices with malware that delivers malicious payloads once they reconnect with home networks.

    Risk Statement

    Cybercriminals compromise end-user devices during travel to high-risk jurisdictions, jeopardizing staff safety and leading to loss of sensitive data.

    Risk Scenario: Compliance Risk

    Rapid changes in the privacy and security regulatory landscape threaten an organization’s ability to meet its compliance obligations from local legal and regulatory frameworks. Organizations that fail to do so risk reputational damage, administrative fines, criminal charges, and loss of market share. In extreme cases, organizations may lose their license to operate in high-risk jurisdictions. Shifts in the regulatory landscape can involve additional requirements for data residency, cross-border data transfer, data breach notification, and third-party risk management.

    Risk Statement

    Rapid changes in the privacy and security regulations landscape threaten our ability to remain compliant, leading to reputational and financial loss.

    Fill out the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool

    The tool is populated with data from two key risk scenarios: high-risk travel and compliance risk.

    The image includes two screenshots of the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

    1. Label the risk in Tab 3, Column B.
    2. Record your risk scenario in Tab 3, Column C.
    3. Record your risk statement in Tab 3, Column D.
    4. Identify the applicable jurisdictions in Tab 3, Column E.
    5. You can further categorize the scenario as:
      • an enterprise risk (Column G).
      • an IT risk (Column H).

    Download the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool

    Step 2.2

    Assess Risk Exposure

    Activities

    2.2.1 Identify existing controls

    2.2.2 Assess likelihood and impact

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Assess risk exposure for each risk scenario through an analysis of its likelihood and impact.

    Brush up on risk assessment essentials

    The next step will help you prioritize IT risks based on severity.

    Likelihood of Occurrence X Likelihood of Impact = Risk Severity

    Likelihood of occurrence: How likely the risk is to occur.

    Likelihood of impact: The likely impact of a risk event.

    Risk severity: The significance of the risk.

    Evaluate risk severity against the risk tolerance thresholds and the cost of risk response.

    Identify existing controls before you proceed

    Existing controls will reduce the inherent likelihood and impact of the risk scenario you face.

    Existing controls were put in place to avoid, mitigate, or transfer key risks your organization faced in the past. Without considering existing controls, you run the risk of overestimating the likelihood and impact of the risk scenarios your organization faces in high-risk jurisdictions.

    For instance, the ability to remote-wipe corporate-owned devices will reduce the potential impact of a device lost or compromised during travel to high-risk jurisdictions.

    As you complete the risk assessment for each scenario, document existing controls that reduce their inherent likelihood and impact.

    2.2.1 Document existing controls

    6-10 hours

    1. Document the Risk Category and Existing Controls in the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.
      • Tactical controls apply to individual risks only. For instance, the ability to remote-wipe devices mitigates the impact of a device lost in a high-risk jurisdiction.
      • Strategic controls apply to multiple risks. For instance, deploying MFA for critical applications mitigates the likelihood that malicious actors can compromise a lost device and impedes their access in devices they do compromise.

    Input

    Output

    • Risk scenarios
    • Existing controls for risk scenarios

    Materials

    Participants

    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business stakeholders
    • Enterprise Risk Management

    Download the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

    Assess the risk scenarios you identified in Phase 1

    The risk register is the central repository for risks in high-risk jurisdictions.

    • Use the second tab of the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool to create likelihood, impact, and risk tolerance assessment scales to evaluate every risk event effectively.
    • Severity-level assessment is a “first pass” of your risk scenarios that will reveal your organization’s most severe risks in high-risk jurisdictions.
    • You can incorporate expected cost calculations into your evaluation to assess scenarios in greater detail.
    • Expected cost represents how much you would expect to pay in an average year for each risk event. Expected cost calculations can help compare IT risks to non-IT risks that may not use the same scales and communicate system-level risk to the business in a language they will understand.

    Expected cost calculations may not be practical. Determining robust likelihood and impact values to produce cost estimates can be challenging and time consuming. Use severity-level assessments as a first pass to make the case for risk mitigation measures and take your lead from stakeholders.

    The image contains two screenshots of the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

    Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool to capture and analyze your data.

    2.2.2 Assess likelihood and impact

    6-10 hours

    1. Assign each risk scenario a likelihood of occurrence and a likely impact level that represents the impact of the scenario on the whole organization considering existing controls. Record your results in Tab 3, column R and S, respectively.
    2. You can further dissect likelihood and impact into component parameters but focus first on total likelihood and impact to keep the task manageable.
    3. As you input the first few likelihood and impact values, compare them to one another to ensure consistency and accuracy. For instance, is a device lost in a high-risk jurisdiction truly more impactful than a device compromised with commercial surveillance software?
    4. The tool will calculate the probability of risk exposure based on the likelihood and consequence associated with the scenario. The results are published in Tab 3, Column T.

    Input

    Output

    • Risk scenarios
    • Assessed the likelihood of occurrence and impact for all identified risk events

    Materials

    Participants

    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Laptop
    • Projector
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Business stakeholders
    • Enterprise Risk Management

    Download the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool.

    Refine your risk assessment to justify your estimates

    Document the rationale behind each value and the level of consensus in group discussions.

    Stakeholders will likely ask you to explain some of the numbers you assigned to likelihood and impact assessments. Pointing to an assessment methodology will give your estimates greater credibility.

    • Assign one individual to take notes during the assessment exercise.
    • Have them document the main rationale behind each value and the level of consensus.

    The goal is to develop robust intersubjective estimates of the likelihood and impact of a risk scenario.

    We assigned a 50% likelihood rating to a risk scenario. Were we correct?

    Assess the truth of the following statements to test likelihood assessments. In this case, do these two statements seem true?

    • The risk event will likely occur once in the next two years, all things being equal.
    • In two nearly identical organizations, one out of two will experience the risk event this year.
    The image includes a screenshot of the High-Risk Travel Jurisdictions.

    Phase 3

    Execute Response

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Prioritize and treat global risks to critical assets based on their value and exposure.
    • Build an initiative roadmap that identifies and applies relevant controls to protect critical assets. Identify key risk indicators to monitor progress.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Step 3.1

    Treat Security Risks

    Activities

    3.1.1 Identify and assess risk response

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Prioritize and treat global risks to critical assets based on their value and exposure.

    Analyze and select risk responses

    The next step will help you treat the risk scenarios you built in Phase 2.

    Identify

    Identify risk responses.

    Predict

    Predict the effectiveness of the risk response, if implemented, by estimating the residual likelihood and impact of the risk.

    Calculate

    The tool will calculate the residual severity of the risk after applying the risk response.

    The first part of the phase outlines project activities. The second part elaborates on high-risk travel and compliance risk, the two key risk scenarios we are following throughout the project. Use the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool to capture your work.

    Analyze likelihood and impact to identify response

    The image contains a diagram of he risk response analysis. Risk Transfer and Risk Avoidance has the most likelihood, and Risk Acceptance and Risk Mitigation have the most impact. Risk Avoidance has the most likelihood and most impact in regards to risk response.

    3.1.1 Identify and assess risk response

    Complete the following steps for each risk scenario.

    1. Identify a risk response action that will help reduce the likelihood of occurrence or the impact if the scenario were to occur. Indicate the type of risk response (avoidance, mitigation, transfer, acceptance, or no risk exists).
    2. Assign each risk response action a residual likelihood level and a residual impact level. This is the same step you performed in Activity 2.2.2, but you are now are estimating the likelihood and impact of the risk event after you implemented the risk response action successfully. The Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool will generate a residual risk severity level for each risk event.
    3. Identify the potential Risk Action Owner (Project Manager) if the response is selected and turned into an IT project, and document this in the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool .
    4. For each risk event, document risk response actions, residual likelihood and impact levels, and residual risk severity level.

    Input

    Output

    • Risk scenarios from Phase 2
    • Risk scenario mitigation plan

    Materials

    Participants

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Download the Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool

    Step 3.2

    Mitigate Travel Risk

    Activities

    3.2.1 Develop a travel policy

    3.2.2 Develop travel procedures

    3.2.3 Design high-risk travel guidelines

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Prioritize and treat global risks to critical assets based on their value and exposure.

    Identify controls to mitigate jurisdictional risk

    This section provides guidance on the most prevalent risk scenarios identified in Phase 2 and provides a more in-depth examination of the two most prevalent ones, high-risk travel and compliance risk. Determine the appropriate response to each risk scenario to keep global risks to critical assets aligned with the organization’s risk tolerance.

    Key Risk Scenarios

    • High-Risk Travel
    • Compliance Risk
    • Insider Threat
    • Advanced Persistent Threat
    • Commercial Surveillance

    Travel risk is a common concern in organizations with global operations

    • The security of staff, devices, and data is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations with a global footprint. Working and traveling in unpredictable environments will aways carry a degree of risk, but organizations can do much to develop a safer and more secure working environment.
    • Compromised or stolen devices can provide threat actors with access to data that could compromise the organization’s strategic, economic, or competitive advantage or expose the organization to regulatory risk.
    • For many organizations, security risk assessments, security plans, travel security procedures, security training, and incident reporting systems are a key part of their operating language.
    • The following section provides a simple structure to help organizations demystify travel in high-risk jurisdictions.

    The image contains a diagram to present high-risk jurisdictions.

    Before you leave

    • Identify high-risk countries.
    • Enable controls.
    • Limit what you pack.

    During your trip

    • Assume you are monitored.
    • Limit access to systems.
    • Prevent theft.

    When you return

    • Change your password.
    • Restore your devices.

    Case study

    Higher Education: Camosun College

    Interview: Evan Garland

    Frame additional security controls as a value-added service.

    Situation

    The director of the international department at Camosun College reached out to IT security for additional support. Department staff often traveled to hostile environments. They were concerned malicious agents would either steal end-user devices or compromise them and access sensitive data. The director asked IT security for options that would better protect traveling staff, their devices, and the information they contain.

    Challenges

    First, controls would need to admit both work and personal use of corporate devices. Staff relied exclusively on work devices for travel to mitigate the risk of personal device theft. Personal use of corporate devices during travel was common. Second, controls needed to strike the right balance between friction and effortless access. Traveling staff had only intermittent access to IT support. Restrictive controls could prevent them from accessing their devices and data altogether.

    Solution

    IT consulted staff to discuss light-touch solutions that would secure devices without introducing too much complexity or compromising functionality. They then planned security controls that involved user interaction and others that did not and identified training requirements.

    Results

    Controls with user interaction

    Controls without user interaction

    • Multifactor authentication for college systems and collaboration platforms
    • Password manager for both work and personal use for staff for stronger passwords and practices
    • Security awareness training to help traveling staff identify potential threats while traveling through airports or accessing public Wi-Fi.
    • Drive encryption and always-on VPN to protect data at rest and in transit
    • Increased setting for phishing and spam filtering for traveling staff email
    • Enhanced anti-malware/endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution for traveling laptops

    Build a program to mitigate travel risks

    There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

    The most effective solution will take advantage of existing risk management policies, processes, and procedures at your organization.

    • Develop a framework. Outline the organization’s approach to high-risk travel, including the policies, procedures, and mechanisms put in place to ensure safe travel to high-risk jurisdictions.
    • Draft a policy. Outline the organization’s risk attitude and key security principles and define roles and responsibilities. Include security responsibilities and obligations in job descriptions of staff members and senior managers.
    • Provide flexible options. Inherent travel risk will vary from one jurisdiction to another. You will likely not find an approach that works for every case. Establish locally relevant measures and plans in different security contexts and risk environments.
    • Look for quick wins. Identify measures or requirements that you can establish quickly but that can have a positive effect on the security of staff, data, and devices.
    • Monitor and review. Undertake periodic reviews of the organization’s security approach and management framework, as well as their implementation, to ensure the framework remains effective.

    3.2.1 Develop a travel policy

    1. Work with your business leaders to build a travel policy for high-risk jurisdictions. The policy should be a short and accessible document structured around four key sections:
      • A statement on the importance of staff security and safety, the scope of the policy, and who it applies to (staff, consultants, contractors, volunteers, visitors, accompanying dependants, etc.).
      • A principles section explaining the organization’s security culture, risk attitude, and the key principles that shape the organization’s approach to staff security and safety.
      • A responsibilities section setting out the organization’s security risk management structure and the roles and actions allocated to specific positions.
      • A minimal security requirements section establishing the specific security requirements that must be in place in all locations and specific locations.
    2. Common security principles include:
    • Shared responsibility – Managing risks to staff is a shared organizational responsibility.
    • Acknowledgment of risk – Managing security will not remove all risks. Staff need to appreciate, as part of their informed consent, that they are still exposed to risk.
    • Primacy of life – Staff safety is of the highest importance. Staff should never place themselves at excessive risk to meet program objectives or protect property.
    • Proportionate risk – Risks must be assessed to ensure they are proportionate to the benefits organizational activities provide and the ability to manage those risks.
    • Right to withdraw – Staff have the right to withdraw from or refuse to take up work in a particular area due to security concerns.
    • No right to remain – The organization has the right to suspend activities that it considers too dangerous.
  • Cross-reference the organization’s other governing policies that outline requirements related to security risk management, such as the health and safety policy, access control policy, and acceptable use of security assets.
  • Input

    Output

    • List of high-risk jurisdictions
    • Risk scenarios from Phase 2
    • Data inventory and data flows
    • Travel policy for high-risk jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Develop security plans for high-risk travel

    Security plans advise staff on how to manage the risk identified in assessments.

    Security plans are key country documents that outline the security measures and procedures in place and the responsibilities and resources required to implement them. Security plans should be established in high-risk jurisdictions where your organization has a regular, significant presence. Security plans must remain relevant and accessible documents that address the specific risks that exist in that location, and, if appropriate, are specific about where the measures apply and who they apply to. Plans should be updated regularly, especially following significant incidents or changes in the operating environment or activities.

    Key Components

    Critical information – One-page summary of pertinent information for easy access and quick reference (e.g. curfew times, no-go areas, important contacts).

    Overview – Purpose and scope of the document, responsibilities for security plan, organization’s risk attitude, date of completion and review date, and a summary of the security strategy and policy.

    Current Context – Summary of current operating context and overall security situation; main risks to staff, assets, and operations; and existing threats and risk rating.

    Procedures – Simple security procedures that staff should adhere to in order to prevent incidents and how to respond should problems arise. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) should address key risks identified in the assessment.

    Security levels – The organization's security levels/phases, with situational indicators that reflect increasing risks to staff in that context and location and specific actions/measures required in response to increasing insecurity.

    Incident reporting – The procedures and responsibilities for reporting security-related incidents; for example, the type of incidents to be reported, the reporting structure, and the format for incident reporting.

    Determine travel risk

    Tailor your risk response to the security risk assessment you conducted in earlier stages of this project.

    Ratings are formulated by assessing several types of risk, including conflict, political/civil unrest, terrorism, crime, and health and infrastructure risks.

    Rating

    Description (Examples)

    Recommended Action

    Low

    Generally secure with adequate physical security. Low violent crime rates. Some civil unrest during significant events. Acts of terrorism rare. Risks associated with natural disasters limited and health threats mainly preventable.

    Basic personal security, travel, and health precautions required.

    Moderate

    Periodic civil unrest. Antigovernment, insurgent, or extremist groups active with sporadic acts of terrorism. Staff at risk from common and violent crime. Transport and communications services are unreliable and safety records are poor. Jurisdiction prone to natural disasters or disease epidemics.

    Increased vigilance and routine security procedures required.

    High

    Regular periods of civil unrest, which may target foreigners. Antigovernment, insurgent, or extremist groups very active and threaten political or economic stability. Violent crime rates high and targeting of foreigners is common. Infrastructure and emergency services poor. May be regular disruption to transportation or communications services. Certain areas off-limits to foreigners. Jurisdictions experiencing a natural disaster or a disease epidemic are considered high risk.

    High level of vigilance and effective, context-specific security precautions required.

    Extreme

    Undergoing active conflict or persistent civil unrest. Risk of being caught up in a violent incident or attack is very high. Civil authorities may have lost control of significant portions of the country. Lines between criminality and political and insurgent violence are blurred. Foreigners are likely to be denied access to significant parts of the country. Transportation and communication services are severely degraded or non-existent. Violence presents a direct threat to staff security.

    Stringent security precautions essential and may not be sufficient to prevent serious incidents.

    Program activities may be suspended and staff withdrawn at very short notice.

    3.2.2 Develop travel procedures

    1. Work with your business leaders to build travel procedures for high-risk jurisdictions. The procedures should be tailored to the risk assessment and address the risk scenarios identified in Phase 2.
    2. Use the categories outlined in the next two slides to structure the procedure. Address all types of travel, detail security measures, and outline what the organization expects of travelers before, during, and after their trip.
    3. Consider the implementation of special measures to limit the impact of a potential security event, including:
      • Information end-user device loaner programs.
      • Temporary travel service email accounts.
    4. Specify what happens when staff add personal travel to their work trip to cover issues such as insurance, check-in, actual travel times, etc.
    5. Discuss the rationale for each procedure. Ensure the components align with the policy statements outlined in the high-risk travel policy developed in the previous step.

    Input

    Output

    • List of high-risk jurisdictions
    • Risk scenarios from Phase 2
    • High-risk travel policy
    • Travel procedures for high-risk jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Draft procedures to mitigate travel risks

    Address all types of travel, detail security measures, and outline what the organization expects of travelers before, during, and after their trip

    Introduction

    Clarifies who the procedures apply to. Highlights any differences in travel security requirements or support provided to staff, consultants, partners, and official visitors.

    Travel risk ratings

    Explains the travel or country risk rating system, how staff access the information, the different categories and indicators, and their implications.

    Roles and responsibilities

    Clarifies the responsibilities of travelers, their line managers or contact points, and senior management regarding travel security and how this changes for destinations with higher risk ratings.

    Travel authorization

    Stipulates who in the organization authorizes travel, the various compliance measures required, and how this changes for destinations with higher risk ratings.

    Travel risk assessment

    Explains when travel risk assessments are required, the template that should be used, and who approves the completed assessments.

    Travel security procedures should specify what happens when staff add personal travel to their work trip to cover issues such as insurance, check-in, actual travel times, etc.

    Pre-travel briefings

    Outlines the information that must be provided to travelers prior to departure, the type of briefing required and who provides it, and how these requirements change as risk ratings increase.

    Security training

    Explain security training required prior to travel. This may vary depending on the country’s risk rating. Includes information on training waiver system, including justifications and authorization.

    Traveler profile forms

    Travelers should complete a profile form, which includes personal details, emergency contacts, medical details, social media footprint, and proof-of-life questions (in contexts where there are abduction risks).

    Check-in protocol

    Specifies who travelers must maintain contact with while traveling and how often, as well as the escalation process in case of loss of contact. The frequency of check-ins should reflect the increase in the risk rating for the destination.

    Emergency procedures

    Outlines the organization's emergency procedures for security and medical emergencies.

    3.2.3 Design high-risk travel guidelines

    • Supplement the high-risk travel policies and procedures with guidelines to help international travelers stay safe.
    • The document is intended for an end-user audience and should reflect your organization’s policies and procedures for the use of information and information systems during international travel.
    • Use the Digital Safety Guidelines for International Travel template in concert with this blueprint to provide guidance on what end users can do to stay safe before they leave, during their trip, and when they return.
    • Consider integrating the guidelines into specialized security awareness training sessions that target end users who travel to high-risk jurisdictions.
    • The guidelines should supplement and align with existing technical controls.

    Input

    Output

    • List of high-risk jurisdictions
    • Risk scenarios from Phase 2
    • High-risk travel policy
    • High-risk travel procedure
    • Travel guidelines for high-risk jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Jurisdictional Risk Register and Heatmap Tool
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Digital Safety Guidelines for International Travel template

    Step 3.3

    Mitigate Compliance Risk

    Activities

    3.3.1 Identify data localization obligations

    3.3.2 Integrate obligations into IT system design

    3.3.3 Document data processing activities

    3.3.4 Choose the right mechanism

    3.3.5 Implement the appropriate controls

    3.3.6 Identify data breach notification obligations

    3.3.7 Integrate data breach notification into incident response

    3.3.8 Identify vendor security and data protection requirements

    3.3.9 Build due diligence questionnaire

    3.3.10 Build appropriate data processing agreement

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Security team
    • Risk and Compliance
    • IT leadership (optional)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Prioritize and treat global risks to critical assets based on their value and exposure.

    Compliance risk is a prevalent risk in organizations with a global footprint

    • The legal and regulatory landscape is evolving rapidly to keep step with the pace of technological change. Security and privacy leaders are expected to mitigate the risk of noncompliance as the organization expands to new jurisdictions.
    • Organizations with a global footprint must stay abreast of local regulations and provide risk management guidance to business leaders to support global operations.
    • This sections describes four compliance risks in this context:
      • Cross-border data transfer
      • Third-party risk management
      • Data breach notification
      • Data residency

    Compliance with local obligations

    Likelihood: Medium to High

    Impact: High

    Data Residency

    Gap Controls

    • Identify and document the data localization obligations for the jurisdictions that the organization is operating in.
    • Design and implement IT systems that satisfy the data localization requirements.
    • Comply with data localization obligations within each jurisdiction.

    Heatmap of Global Data Residency Regulations

    The image contains a screenshot of a picture of a world map with various shades of blue to demonstrate the heatmap of global data residency regulations.
    Source: InCountry, 2021

    Examples of Data Residency Requirements

    Country

    Data Type

    Local Storage Requirements

    Australia

    Personal data – heath record

    My Health Records Act 2012

    China

    Personal information — critical information infrastructure operators

    Cybersecurity law

    Government cloud data

    Opinions of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs on Strengthening Cybersecurity Administration of Cloud Computing Services for Communist Party and Government Agencies

    India

    Government email data

    The Public Records Act of 1993

    Indonesia

    Data held by electronic system operator for the public service

    Regulation 82 concerning “Electronic System and Transaction Operation”

    Germany

    Government cloud service data

    Criteria for the procurement and use of cloud services by the federal German administration

    Russia

    Personal data

    The amendments of Data Protection Act No. 152 FZ

    Vietnam

    Data held by internet service providers

    The Decree on Management, Provision, and Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online (Decree 72)

    US

    Government cloud service data

    Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Network Penetration Reporting and Contracting for Cloud Services (DFARS Case 2013-D018)

    3.3.1 Identify data localization obligations

    1-2 hours

    1. Work with your business leaders to identify and document the jurisdictions where your organization is operating in or providing services and products to consumers within.
    2. Work with your legal team to identify and document all relevant data localization obligations for the data your organization generates, collects, and processes in order to operate your business.
    3. Record your data localization obligations in the table below.

    Jurisdiction

    Relevant Regulations

    Local Storage Requirements

    Date Type

    Input

    Output

    • List of jurisdictions your organization is operating in
    • Relevant security and data protection regulations
    • Data inventory and data flows
    • Completed list of data localization obligations

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.2 Integrate obligations into your IT system design

    1-2 hours

    1. Work with your IT department to design the IT architecture and systems to satisfy the data localization requirements.
    2. The table below provides a checklist for integrating privacy considerations into your IT systems.

    Item

    Consideration

    Answer

    Supporting Document

    1

    Have you identified business services that process data that will be subject to localization requirements?

    2

    Have you identified IT systems associated with the business services mentioned above?

    3

    Have you established a data inventory (i.e. data types, business purposes) for the IT systems mentioned above?

    4

    Have you established a data flow diagram for the data identified above?

    5

    Have you identified the types of data that should be stored locally?

    6

    Have you confirmed whether a copy of the data locally stored will satisfy the obligations?

    7

    Have you confirmed whether an IT redesign is needed or whether modifications (e.g. adding a server) to the IT systems would satisfy the obligations?

    8

    Have you confirmed whether access from another jurisdiction is allowed?

    9

    Have you identified how long the data should be stored?

    Input

    Output

    • Data localization obligations
    • Business services that process data that will be subject to localization requirements
    • IT systems associated with business services
    • Data inventory and data flows
    • Completed checklist of localization obligations for IT system design

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    Compliance with local obligations

    Likelihood: Medium to High

    Impact: High

    Cross-Border Transfer

    Gap Controls

    • Know where you transfer your data.
    • Identify jurisdictions that your organization is operating in and that impose different requirements for the cross-border transfer of personal data.
    • Adopt and implement a proper cross-border data transfer mechanism in accordance with applicable privacy laws and regulations.
    • Re-evaluate at appropriate intervals.

    Which cross-border transfer mechanism should I choose?

    Transfer Mechanism

    Advantages

    Disadvantages

    Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC)

    • Easy to implement
    • No DPA (data processing agreement) approval
    • Not suitable for complex data transfers
    • Do not meet business agility
    • Needs legal solution

    Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs)

    • Meets business agility needs
    • Raises trust in the organization
    • Doubles as solution for art. 24/25 of the GDPR
    • Sets high compliance maturity level
    • Takes time to draft/implement
    • Requires DPA approval (scrutiny)
    • Requires culture of compliance
    • Approved by one "lead" authority and two other "co-lead“ authorities
    • Takes usually between six and nine months for the approval process only

    Code of Conduct

    • Raises trust in the sector
    • Self-regulation instead of law
    • No code of conduct approved yet
    • Takes time to draft/implement
    • Requires DPA approval and culture of compliance
    • Needs of organization may not be met

    Certification

    • Raises trust in the organization
    • No certification schemes available yet
    • Risk of compliance at minimum necessary
    • Requires audits

    Consent

    • Legal certainty
    • Transparent
    • Administrative burden
    • Some data subjects are incapable of consenting all or nothing

    3.3.3 Document data processing activities

    1-2 hours

    1. Identify and document the following information:
      • Name of business process
      • Purposes of processing
      • Lawful basis
      • Categories of data subjects and personal data
      • Data subject categories
      • Which system the data resides in
      • Recipient categories
      • Third country/international organization
      • Documents for appropriate safeguards for international transfer (adequacy, SCCs, BCRs, etc.)
      • Description of mitigating measures

    Input

    Output

    • Name of business process
    • Categories of personal data
    • Which system the data resides
    • Third country/international organization
    • Documents for appropriate safeguards for international transfer
    • Completed list of data processing activities

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.4 Choose the right mechanism

    1-2 hours

    1. Identify jurisdictions that your organization is operating in and that impose different requirements for the cross-border transfer of personal data. For example, the EU’s GDPR and China’s Personal Information Protection Law require proper cross-border transfer mechanisms before the data transfers. Your organization should decide which cross-border transfer mechanism is the best fit for your cross-border data transfer scenarios.
    2. Use the following table to identify and document the pros and cons of each data transfer mechanism and the final decision.

    Data Transfer Mechanism

    Pros

    Cons

    Final Decision

    SCC

    BCR

    Code of Conduct

    Certification

    Consent

    Input

    Output

    • List of relevant data transfer mechanisms
    • Assessment of the pros and cons of each mechanism
    • Final decision regarding which data transfer mechanism is the best fit for your organization

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.5 Implement the appropriate controls

    1-3 hours

    • One of the most common mechanisms is standard contractual clauses (SCCs).
    • Use Info-Tech’s Standard Contractual Clauses Template to facilitate your cross-border transfer activities.
    • Identify and check whether the following core components are covered in your SCC and record the results in the table below.
    # Core Components Status Note
    1 Purpose and scope
    2 Effect and invariability of the Clauses
    3 Description of the transfer(s)
    4 Data protection safeguards
    5 Purpose limitation
    6 Transparency
    7 Accuracy and data minimization
    8 Duration of processing and erasure or return of data
    9 Storage limitation
    10 Security of processing
    11 Sensitive data
    12 Onward transfers
    13 Processing under the authority of the data importer
    14 Documentation and compliance
    15 Use of subprocessors
    16 Data subject rights
    17 Redress
    18 Liability
    19 Local laws and practices affecting compliance with the Clauses
    20 Noncompliance with the Clauses and termination
    21 Description of data processing activities, such as list of parties, description of transfer, etc.
    22 Technical and organizational measures
    InputOutput
    • Description of the transfer(s)
    • Duration of processing and erasure or return of data
    • Onward transfers
    • Use of subprocessors
    • Etc.
    • Draft of the standard contractual clauses (SCC)
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Legal team
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    Compliance with local obligations

    Likelihood: High

    Impact: Medium to High

    Data Breach

    Gap Controls

    • Identify jurisdictions that your organization is operating in and that impose different obligations for data breach reporting.
    • Document the notification obligations for various business scenarios, such as controller to DPA, controller to data subject, and processor to controller.
    • Integrate breach notification obligations into security incident response process.

    Examples of Data Breach Notification Obligations

    Location

    Regulation/ Standard

    Reporting Obligation

    EU

    GDPR

    72 hours

    China

    PIPL

    Immediately

    US

    HIPAA

    No later than 60 days

    Canada

    PIPEDA

    As soon as feasible

    Global

    PCI DSS

    • Visa – immediately after breach discovered
    • Mastercard – within 24 hours of discovering breach
    • American Express – immediately after breach discovered

    Summary of US State Data Breach Notification Statutes

    The image contains a graph to show the summary of the US State Data Breach Notification Statutes.

    Source: Davis Wright Tremaine

    3.3.6 Identify data breach notification obligations

    1-2 hours

    1. Identify jurisdictions that your organization is operating in and that impose different obligations for data breach reporting.
    2. Document the notification obligations for various business scenarios, such as controller to DPA, controller to data subject, and processor to controller.
    3. Record your data breach obligations in the table below.
    Region Regulation/Standard Reporting Obligation

    Input

    Output

    • List of regions and jurisdictions your business is operating in
    • List of relevant regulations and standards
    • Documentation of data breach reporting obligations in applicable jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Legal team
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.7 Integrate data breach notification into incident response

    1-2 hours

    • Integrate breach notification obligations into the security incident response process. Understand the security incident management framework.
    • All incident runbooks follow the same process: detection, analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activity.
    • The table below provides a basic checklist for you to consider when implementing your data breach and incident handling process.
    # Phase Considerations Status Notes
    1 Prepare Ensure the appropriate resources are available to best handle an incident.
    2 Detect Leverage monitoring controls to actively detect threats.
    3 Analyze Distill real events from false positives.
    4 Contain Isolate the threat before it can cause additional damage.
    5 Eradicate Eliminate the threat from your operating environment.
    6 Recover Restore impacted systems to a normal state of operations.
    7 Report Report data breaches to relevant regulators and data subjects if required.
    8 Post-Incident Activities Conduct a lessons-learned post-mortem analysis.
    InputOutput
    • Security and data protection incident response steps
    • Key considerations for integrating data breach notifications into incident response
    • Data breach notifications integrated into the incident response process
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Security team
    • Privacy team
    • Legal team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    Compliance with local obligations

    Likelihood: High

    Impact: Medium to High

    Third-Party Risk

    Gap Controls

    • Build an end-to-end third-party security and privacy risk management process.
    • Perform internal due diligence prior to selecting a service provider.
    • Stipulate the security and privacy protection obligations of the third party in a legally binding document such as contract or data processing agreement, etc.

    End-to-End Third-Party Security and Privacy Risk Management

    1. Pre-Contract
    • Due diligence check
  • Signing of Contract
    • Data processing agreement
  • Post-Contract
    • Continuous monitoring
    • Regular check or audit
  • Termination of Contract
    • Data deletion
    • Access deprovisioning

    Examples of Vendor Security Management Requirements

    Region

    Law/Standard

    Section

    EU

    General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

    Article 28 (1)

    Article 46 (1)

    US

    Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

    §164.308(b)(1)

    US

    New York Department of Financial Services Cybersecurity Requirements

    500.11(a)

    Global

    ISO 27002:2013

    15.1.1

    15.1.2

    15.1.3

    15.2.1

    15.2.2

    US

    NIST 800-53

    SA-12

    SA-12 (2)

    US

    NIST Cybersecurity Framework

    ID-SC-1

    ID-SC-2

    ID-SC-3

    ID-SC-4

    Canada

    OSFI Cybersecurity Guidelines

    4.25

    4.26

    3.3.8 Identify vendor security and data protection requirements

    1-2 hours

    • Effective vendor security risk management is an end-to-end process that includes assessment, risk mitigation, and periodic reassessments.
    • An efficient and effective assessment process can only be achieved when all stakeholders are participating.
    • Identify and document your vendor security and data protection requirements in the table below.
    Region Law/Standard Section Requirements

    Input

    Output

    • List of regions and jurisdictions your business is operating in
    • List of relevant regulations and standards
    • Documentation of vendor security and data protection obligations in applicable jurisdictions

    Materials

    Participants

    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Legal team
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.9 Build due diligence questionnaire

    1-2 hours

    Perform internal due diligence prior to selecting a service provider.

    1. Build and right-size your vendor security questionnaire by leveraging Info-Tech’s Vendor Security Questionnaire template.
    2. Document your vendor security questionnaire in the table below.
    # Question Vendor Request Vendor Comments
    1 Document Requests
    2 Asset Management
    3 Governance
    4 Supply Chain Risk Management
    5 Identify Management, Authentication, and Access Control
    InputOutput
    • List of regions and jurisdictions your business is operating in
    • List of relevant regulations and standards
    • Business security and data protection requirements and expectations
    • Draft of due diligence questionnaire
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Legal team
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    3.3.10 Build appropriate data processing agreement

    1-2 hours

    1. Stipulate the security and privacy protection obligations of the third party in a legally binding document such as contract or data processing agreement, etc.
    2. Leverage Info-Tech’s Data Processing Agreement Template to put the language into your legally binding document.
    3. Use the table below to check whether core components of a typical DPA are covered in your document.
    # Core Components Status Note
    1 Processing of personal data
    2 Scope of application and responsibilities
    3 Processor's obligations
    4

    Controller's obligations

    5 Data subject requests
    6 Right to audit and inspection
    7 Subprocessing
    8 Data breach management
    9 Security controls
    10 Transfer of personal data
    11 Duty of confidentiality
    12 Compliance with applicable laws
    13 Service termination
    14 Liability and damages
    InputOutput
    • Processing of personal data
    • Processor’s obligations
    • Controller’s obligations
    • Subprocessing
    • Etc.
    • Draft of data processing agreement (DPA)
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template
    • Legal team
    • Privacy team
    • Security team
    • IT leadership
    • Risk Management

    Download the Guidelines for Compliance With Local Security and Privacy Laws Template

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Problem Solved

    By following Info-Tech’s methodology for securing global operations, you have:

    • Evaluated the security context of your organization’s global operations.
    • Identified security risks scenarios unique to high-risk jurisdictions and assessed the exposure of critical assets.
    • Planned and executed a response.

    You have gone through a deeper analysis of two key risk scenarios that affect global operations:

    • Travel to high-risk jurisdictions.
    • Compliance risk.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through an Info-Tech workshop or Guided Implementation.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshop@infotech.com

    1-888-670-8889

    Additional Support

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech Workshop.

    The image contains a picture of Michel Hebert.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team. Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    The image contains a screenshot of High-Risk Travel Jurisdictions.

    Identify High-Risk Jurisdictions

    Develop requirements to identify high-risk jurisdictions.

    The image contains a screenshot of Build Risk Scenarios.

    Build Risk Scenarios

    Build risk scenarios to capture assets, vulnerabilities, threats, and the potential effect of a compromise.

    External Research Contributors

    Ken Muir

    CISO

    LMC Security

    Premchand Kurup

    CEO

    Paramount Computer Systems

    Preeti Dhawan

    Manager, Security Governance

    Payments Canada

    Scott Wiggins

    Information Risk and Governance

    CDPHP

    Fritz Y. Jean Louis

    CISO

    Globe and Mail

    Eric Gervais

    CIO

    Ovivo Water

    David Morrish

    CEO

    MBS Techservices

    Evan Garland

    Manager, IT Security

    Camosun College

    Jacopo Fumagalli

    CISO

    Axpo

    Dennis Leon

    Governance and Security Manager

    CPA Canada

    Tero Lehtinen

    CIO

    Planmeca Oy

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Build an IT Risk Management Program

    • Build a program to identify, evaluate, assess, and treat IT risks.
    • Monitor and communicate risks effectively to support business decision making.

    Combine Security Risk Management Components Into One Program

    • Develop a program focused on assessing and managing information system risks.
    • Build a governance structure that integrates security risks within the organization’s broader approach to risk management.

    Build an Information Security Strategy

    • Build a holistic, risk-aware strategy that aligns to business goals.
    • Develop a roadmap of prioritized initiatives to implement the strategy over 18 to 36 months.

    Bibliography

    2022 Cost of Insider Threats Global Report.” Ponemon Institute, NOVIPRO, 9 Feb. 2022. Accessed 25 May 22.

    “Allianz Risk Barometer 2022.” Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Jan. 2022. Accessed 25 May 22.

    Bickley, Shaun. “Security Risk Management: a basic guide for smaller NGOs”. European Interagency Security Forum (EISF), 2017. Web.

    “Biden Administration Warns against spyware targeting dissidents.” New York Times, 7 Jan 22. Accessed 20 Jan 2022.

    Boehm, Jim, et al. “The risk-based approach to cybersecurity.” McKinsey & Company, October 2019. Web.

    “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021.” IBM Security, July 2021. Web.

    “Cyber Risk in Asia-Pacific: The Case for Greater Transparency.” Marsh & McLennan Companies, 2017. Web.

    “Cyber Risk Index.” NordVPN, 2020. Accessed 25 May 22

    Dawson, Maurice. “Applying a holistic cybersecurity framework for global IT organizations.” Business Information Review, vol. 35, no. 2, 2018, pp. 60-67.

    “Framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity.” National Institute of Standards and Technology, 16 Apr 2018. Web.

    “Global Cybersecurity Index 2020.” International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2021. Accessed 25 May 22.

    “Global Risk Survey 2022.” Control Risks, 2022. Accessed 25 May 22.

    “International Travel Guidance for Government Mobile Devices.” Federal Mobility Group (FMG), Aug. 2021. Accessed 18 Nov 2021.

    Kaffenberger, Lincoln, and Emanuel Kopp. “Cyber Risk Scenarios, the Financial System, and Systemic Risk Assessment.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2019. Accessed 11 Jan 2022.

    Koehler, Thomas R. Understanding Cyber Risk. Routledge, 2018.

    Owens, Brian. “Cybersecurity for the travelling scientist.” Nature, vol. 548, 3 Aug 2017. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

    Parsons, Fintan J., et al. “Cybersecurity risks and recommendations for international travellers.” Journal of Travel Medicine, vol. 1, no. 4, 2021. Accessed 19 Jan 2022.

    Quinn, Stephen, et al. “Identifying and estimating cybersecurity risk for enterprise risk management.” National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Interagency or Internal Report (IR) 8286A, Nov. 2021.

    Quinn, Stephen, et al. “Prioritizing cybersecurity risk for enterprise risk management.” NIST, IR 8286B, Sept. 2021.

    “Remaining cyber safe while travelling security recommendations.” Government of Canada, 27 April 2022. Accessed 31 Jan 2022.

    Stine, Kevin, et al. “Integrating cybersecurity and enterprise risk management.” NIST, IR 8286, Oct. 2020.

    Tammineedi, Rama. “Integrating KRIs and KPIs for effective technology risk management.” ISACA Journal, vol. 4, 1 July 2018.

    Tikk, Eneken, and Mika Kerttunen, editors. Routledge Handbook of International Cybersecurity. Routledge, 2020.

    Voo, Julia, et al. “National Cyber Power Index 2020.” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Sept. 2020. Web.

    Zhang, Fang. “Navigating cybersecurity risks in international trade.” Harvard Business Review, Dec 2021. Accessed 31 Jan 22.

    Appendix

    Insider Threat

    Key Risk Scenario

    Likelihood: Medium to High

    Impact: High

    Gap Controls

    The image contains a picture of the Gap Controls. The controls include: Policy and Awareness, Identification, Monitoring and Visibility, which leads to Cooperation.

    • Identification: Effective and efficient management of insider threats begins with a threat and risk assessment to establish which assets and which employees to consider, especially in jurisdictions associated with sensitive or critical data. You need to pay extra attention to employees who are working in satellite offices in jurisdictions with loose security and privacy laws.
    • Monitoring and Visibility: Organizations should monitor critical assets and groups with privileged access to defend against malicious behavior. Implement an insider threat management platform that provides your organization with the visibility and context into data movement, especially cross-border transfers that might cause security and privacy breaches.
    • Policy and Awareness Training: Insider threats will persist without appropriate action and culture change. Training and consistent communication of best practices will mitigate vulnerabilities to accidental or negligent attacks. Customized training materials using local languages and role-based case studies might be needed for employees in high-risk jurisdictions.
    • Cooperation: An effective insider threat management program should be built with cross-team functions such as Security, IT, Compliance and Legal, etc.

    For more holistic approach, you can leverage our Reduce and Manage Your Organization’s Insider Threat Risk blueprint.

    Info-Tech Insight

    You can’t just throw tools at a human problem. While organizations should monitor critical assets and groups with privileged access to defend against malicious behavior, good management and supervision can help detect attacks and prevent them from happening in the first place.

    Insider threats are not industry specific, but malicious insiders are

    Industry

    Actors

    Risks

    Tactics

    Motives

    State and Local Government

    • Full-time employees
    • Current employees
    • Privileged access to personally identifiable information, financial assets, and physical property
    • Abuse of privileged access
    • Received or transferred fraudulent funds
    • Financial gain
    • Recognition
    • Benefiting foreign entity

    Information Technology

    • Equal mix of former and current employees
    • Privileged access to networks or systems as well as data
    • Highly technical attacks
    • Received or transferred fraudulent funds
    • Revenge
    • Financial gain

    Healthcare

    • Majority were full-time and current employees
    • Privileged access to customer data with personally identifiable information, financial assets
    • Abuse of privileged access
    • Received or transferred fraudulent funds
    • Financial gain
    • Entitlement

    Finance and Insurance

    • Majority were full-time and current employees
    • Authorized users
    • Electronic financial assets
    • Privileged access to customer data
    • Created or used fraudulent accounts
    • Fraudulent purchases
    • Identity theft
    • Financial gain
    • Gambling addiction
    • Family pressures
    • Multiple motivations

    Source: Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, 2019

    Advanced Persistent Threat

    Key Risk Scenario #4

    Likelihood: Medium to High

    Impact: High

    Gap Controls

    The image contains a screenshot of the Gap Controls listed: Prevent, Detect, Analyze, Respond.

    Prevent: Defense in depth is the best approach to protect against unknown and unpredictable attacks. Effective anti-malware, diligent patching and vulnerability management, and strong human-centric security are essential.

    Detect: There are two types of companies – those who have been breached and know it, and those who have been breached and don’t know it. Ensure that monitoring, logging, and event detection tools are in place and appropriate to your organizational needs.

    Analyze: Raw data without interpretation cannot improve security and is a waste of time, money, and effort. Establish a tiered operational process that not only enriches data but also provides visibility into your threat landscape.

    Respond: Organizations can’t rely on ad hoc response anymore – don’t wait until a state of panic. Formalize your response processes in a detailed incident runbook to reduce incident remediation time and effort.

    Best practices moving forward

    Defense in Depth

    Lock down your organization. Among other tactics, control administrative privileges, leverage threat intelligence, use IP whitelisting, adopt endpoint protection and two-factor authentication, and formalize incident response measures.

    Block Indicators

    Information alone is not actionable. A successful threat intelligence program contextualizes threat data, aligns intelligence with business objectives, and then builds processes to satisfy those objectives. Actively block indicators and act upon gathered intelligence.

    Drive Adoption

    Create organizational situational awareness around security initiatives to drive adoption of foundational security measures: network hardening, threat intelligence, red-teaming exercises, and zero-day mitigation, policies, and procedures.

    Supply Chain Security

    Security extends beyond your organization. Ensure your organization has a comprehensive view of your organizational threat landscape and a clear understanding of the security posture of any managed service providers in your supply chain.

    Awareness and Training

    Conduct security awareness and training. Teach end users how to recognize current cyberattacks before they fall victim – this is a mandatory first line of defense.

    Additional Resources

    Follow only official sources of information to help you assess risk

    The image contains an image highlighting a few additional resources.

    As misinformation is a major attack vector for malicious actors, follow only reliable sources for cyberalerts and actionable intelligence. Aggregate information from these reliable sources.

    Federal Cyber Agency Alerts

    Informational Resources

    Info-Tech Insight

    The CISA Shields Up site provides the latest cyber risk updates on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and should provide the most value in staying informed.

    Advisory Call Outline: Software Selection Engagement

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}609|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): N/A
    • member rating average dollars saved: N/A
    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: Selection & Implementation
    • Parent Category Link: /selection-and-implementation
    • Selection takes forever. Traditional software selection drags on for years, sometimes in perpetuity.
    • IT is viewed as a bottleneck and the business has taken control of software selection.
    • “Gut feel” decisions rule the day. Intuition, not hard data, guides selection, leading to poor outcomes.
    • Negotiations are a losing battle. Money is left on the table by inexperienced negotiators.
    • Overall: Poor selection processes lead to wasted time, wasted effort, and applications that continually disappoint.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Adopt a formal methodology to accelerate and improve software selection results.
    • Improve business satisfaction by including the right stakeholders and delivering new applications on a truly timely basis.
    • Kill the “sacred cow” requirements that only exist because “it’s how we’ve always done it.”
    • Forget about “RFP” overload and hone in on the features that matter to your organization.
    • Skip the guesswork and validate decisions with real data.
    • Take control of vendor “dog and pony shows” with single-day, high-value, low-effort, rapid-fire investigative interviews.
    • Master vendor negotiations and never leave money on the table.

    Impact and Result

    • Improving software selection is a critical project that will deliver huge value.
    • Hit a home run with your business stakeholders: use a data-driven approach to select the right application vendor for their needs – fast.
    • Shatter stakeholder expectations with truly rapid application selections.
    • Boost collaboration and crush the broken telephone with concise and effective stakeholder meetings.
    • Lock in hard savings and do not pay list price by using data-driven tactics.

    Advisory Call Outline: Software Selection Engagement Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Advisory Call Outline

    Info-Tech's expert analyst guidance will help you save money, align stakeholders, and speed up the application selection process.

    • Advisory Call Outline: Software Selection Engagement Deck

    2. Workshop Overview

    Info-Tech's workshop will help you implement a repeatable, data-driven approach that accelerates software selection efforts.

    • Rapid Software Selection Workshop Overview
    [infographic]

    Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}137|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.4/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $72,298 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 10 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Vendor Management
    • Parent Category Link: /vendor-management
    • Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
    • SaaS solutions bring forth a unique form of “switching costs” that can make a decision to migrate solutions financially, technically, and politically painful.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Conservatively, it’s possible to save 5% of the overall IT budget through comprehensive software and SaaS contract review.
    • Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price.
    • Learning to negotiate is crucial.

    Impact and Result

    • Take control of your SaaS contract negotiations from the beginning.
    • Look at your contract holistically to find cost savings.
    • Guide communication between vendors and your organization for the duration of contract negotiations.
    • Redline the terms and conditions of your SaaS contract.
    • Prioritize crucial terms and conditions to negotiate.

    Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how to redline and negotiate a SaaS agreement, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the different ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Gather requirements

    Build and manage the stakeholder team, and then document the business use case.

    • Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last – Phase 1: Gather Requirements
    • RASCI Chart
    • Vendor Communication Management Plan
    • Software Business Use Case Template
    • SaaS TCO Calculator

    2. Redline contract

    Redline the proposed SaaS contract.

    • Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last – Phase 2: Redline Contract
    • SaaS Terms and Conditions Evaluation Tool

    3. Negotiate contract

    Create a thorough negotiation plan.

    • Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last – Phase 3: Negotiate Contract
    • SaaS Contract Negotiation Terms Prioritization Checklist
    • Controlled Vendor Communications Letter
    • Key Vendor Fiscal Year End Calendar
    • Contract Negotiation Tactics Playbook
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Collect and Review Data

    The Purpose

    Assemble documentation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understand current position before going forward.

    Activities

    1.1 Assemble existing contracts.

    1.2 Document their strategic and tactical objectives.

    1.3 Identify current status of the vendor relationship and any historical context.

    1.4 Clarify goals for ideal future state.

    Outputs

    Business Use Case.

    2 Define the Business Use Case and Build a Stakeholder Team

    The Purpose

    Define the business use case and build a stakeholder team.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Create a business use case to document functional and non-functional requirements.

    Build an internal cross-functional stakeholder team to negotiate the contract.

    Activities

    2.1 Establish a negotiation team and define roles.

    2.2 Write a communication plan.

    2.3 Complete a business use case.

    Outputs

    RASCI Matrix

    Communications Plan

    SaaS TCO Calculator

    Business Use Case

    3 Redline the Contract

    The Purpose

    Examine terms and conditions and prioritize for negotiation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Discover cost savings.

    Improve agreement terms.

    Prioritize terms for negotiation.

    Activities

    3.1 Review general terms and conditions.

    3.2 Review license and application specific terms and conditions.

    3.3 Match to business and technical requirements.

    3.4 Redline the agreement.

    Outputs

    SaaS Terms and Conditions Evaluation Tool

    SaaS Contract Negotiation Terms Prioritization Checklist

    4 Build a Negotiation Strategy

    The Purpose

    Create a negotiation strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Controlled communication established.

    Negotiation tactics chosen.

    Negotiation timeline plotted.

    Activities

    4.1 Review vendor and application specific negotiation tactics.

    4.2 Build negotiation strategy.

    Outputs

    Contract Negotiation Tactics Playbook

    Controlled Vendor Communications Letter

    Key Vendor Fiscal Year End Calendar

    Drive Innovation With an Exponential IT Mindset

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}107|cart{/j2store}
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    • Parent Category Name: Innovation
    • Parent Category Link: /innovation

    To drive a rapid shift towards the adoption of emerging technology, CIOs need:

    • Highly specialized knowledge of emerging technology and trends
    • The ability to engage the business in co-creating value via emerging technology
    • The skills to manage complex enterprise risk
    • Strong governance processes which support enterprise change management

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    IT must lead the innovation capabilities that will drive the adoption of emerging technology across the enterprise. In an exponential world, IT needs to adopt business value targets and become a value creator rather limit itself to IT service targets and remain a cost center in the organization.

    Impact and Result

    Assess your innovation capability in five key areas supporting Exponential IT:

    • Organizational Excellence
    • Insights & Intelligence
    • Agile Ideation
    • Team Capabilities
    • Innovation Operations

    Drive Innovation With an Exponential IT Mindset Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Drive Innovation With an Exponential IT Mindset – Learn about the new era of exponential innovation and the capabilities needed to succeed.

    This research walks you through how to assess your capabilities to lead enterprise innovation and drive Exponential IT.

    • Drive Innovation With an Exponential IT Mindset Storyboard

    2. Innovation Readiness Assessment – Assess your readiness to drive innovation and the adoption of emerging technology.

    This tool will facilitate your readiness assessment.

    • Innovation Readiness Assessment
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Drive Innovation With an Exponential IT Mindset

    Are you ready to drive the adoption of autonomous business capabilities?

    A diagram that shows exponential IT

    Analyst Perspective

    IT must develop new capabilities to drive emerging tech adoption

    Traditionally, CIOs have struggled to gain the trust of the executive leadership team and be recognized as business leaders rather than just technical leaders. In fact, based on a 2023 study by Info-Tech Research Group, only 36% of CIOs report directly to the CEO with most of the remainder reporting through either the CFO or COO.

    Exponential IT requires that CIOs gain a seat at the table and build the capabilities necessary to not only lead the transformation of their business but also drive the innovation that will lead to enterprise adoption of emerging technologies. CIOs will be required to gain a detailed understanding of their business and in-depth knowledge of emerging technologies so that they can match business opportunities with technology capabilities, while managing risk and change.

    This research will help CIOs identify the capabilities they need to transform the business, and better understand where they must mature their capabilities to drive Exponential IT.

    Photo of Kim Osborne Rodriguez
    Kim Osborne Rodriguez
    Research Director, CIO Advisory
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    To drive a rapid shift toward adopting emerging technology, CIOs need:

    • Highly specialized knowledge of emerging technology and trends
    • The ability to engage the business in co-creating value via emerging technology
    • The skills to manage complex enterprise risk
    • Strong governance processes which support enterprise change management

    Common Obstacles

    Exponential IT is dramatically shifting how IT engages the business. Many CIOs are unprepared.

    • Innovation is increasingly important for competitive advantage and business growth, narrowing the gap between large and small players.
    • Over 80% of CXOs believe their CIOs are currently unable to drive change within the business.[1]
    • 40% of CXOs anticipate that IT must be able to transform the business to maintain relevance.[1]

    Info-Tech's Approach

    Is your IT team ready to drive the adoption of emerging technology? Assess your innovation capability in five key areas supporting Exponential IT:

    • Organizational Excellence
    • Insights & Intelligence
    • Agile Ideation
    • Team Capabilities
    • Innovation Operations

    [1] Info-Tech CXO-CIO diagnostic benchmark data, 2022, n=76

    Info-Tech Insight

    IT must lead the innovation capabilities that will drive the adoption of emerging technology across the enterprise. In an exponential world, IT needs to adopt business value targets and become a value creator rather than limit itself to IT service targets and remain a cost center in the organization.

    Drive innovation with an Exponential IT mindset

    Your ability to capture enterprise value from autonomization relies on your innovation capabilities and potential. Is your IT team ready to drive the adoption of AI-driven business processes? Assess your innovation readiness in five key areas supporting Exponential IT.

    A diagram that shows 5 key areas of exponential IT

    IT must rapidly mature

    If IT leaders cannot lead the transformation, then the business will move forward without them.

    Only 3% of CXOs report that their IT department can transform the business. Most IT organizations (81%) still struggle to adequately support the business.

    A diagram that shows IT maturity and exponential IT

    A diagram that shows IT capabilities Based on a Survey of CXOs (n=76)

    Common obstacles

    Leverage Exponential IT to drive value from the adoption of emerging tech

    The most common obstacles to innovation are cultural, including politics, lack of alignment on goals, misaligned culture, and an inability to act on indicators of change.[1]

    CIOs struggle to get a seat at the table and influence change. Info-Tech research shows that only 36% of CIOs report directly to the CEO, with over a third reporting to another C-suite leader such as a COO or CFO.[2]

    [1] Harvard Business Review, 2018
    [2] Info-Tech Research Group CIO Time Study, 2023

    Info-Tech Insight

    To drive change, CIOs need to gain the trust of their senior leadership team. Getting a seat at the table should be the first step for any CIO looking to transform their business.

    Many CIOs struggle to be seen as business leaders

    36%

    Only 36% of CIOs report directly to the CEO.

    Source: Info-Tech Research Group, 2023.

    48%

    48% of Boards report that they lack frequent or direct lines of communication with their CIOs.

    Source: CIO Dive, 2022

    Executive Brief: Case Study

    Logo of RBC Royal Bank

    • INDUSTRY: Financial Services
    • SOURCE: Borealis AI

    Borealis AI drives AI-powered transformation at Royal Bank of Canada

    Borealis AI is a research center backed by RBC Royal Bank, tasked with researching, designing, and building AI products and tools which transform the financial services industry. It gathers researchers with backgrounds in artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), computer science, computational finance, mathematics, and machine learning (ML) to create solutions in areas including asynchronous temporal models, non-cooperative learning in competing markets, and causal machine learning from observational data.

    Results

    Borealis AI has created many innovative products for RBC, including:

    • NOMI Forecast: an award-winning personal financial management tool
    • Turing by Borealis AI: a text-to-SQL database interface using NLP
    • Aiden: an AI-powered electronic trading tool using reinforcement learning

    In 2023, Borealis AI won the Best Use of AI for Customer Experience award from The Digital Banker, for the NOMI Forecast app, which has been downloaded by nearly a million RBC clients since launching in 2021.


    "NOMI Forecast is a cutting-edge AI solution that uses deep learning to offer timely and accurate predictions of our clients' cashflow. Powered by our unique datasets, these AI models have been trained to deliver personalized experiences for RBC clients,"
    — Foteini Agrafioti, Chief Science Officer at RBC and Head of Borealis AI

    IT needs to connect emerging technology with business opportunities

    A diagram that shows exponential innovation, emerging technology, business opportunities.

    Emerging tech is driving business change

    A diagram that shows exponential innovation and its 5 elements.

    Innovation is critical for business success, but succeeding is more difficult than ever

    Emerging tech brings new challenges for organizations looking to create a competitive advantage. Access to sophisticated tools with minimal upfront costs have lowered the barriers to entry and democratized innovation, particularly among smaller players. The explosion of data processing & collaboration tools has allowed more focused and data-driven innovation efforts through analysis and insights, increasing the competitive advantage for those who get it right.

    This has led to an accelerated pace of change as autonomous business processes start driving their own market shifts. The rise of autonomous business processes creates exponential reward, but also exponential risk for early adopters.

    Innovation is increasingly critical for competitive growth

    IT innovation leadership explains 75% of the variation in satisfaction with IT (Source: Info-Tech Research Group survey, n=305) and is the fourth-highest priority for IT end users.

    A 7-year review by McKinsey (2020) showed that the most innovative companies[1] outperformed the market by upwards of 30%.

    A 25-year study by Business Development Canada & Statistics Canada showed that innovation was more important to business success than management, human resources, marketing, or finance.

    [1]Top innovators are defined as companies which were listed on Fast Company World's 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2+ years.

    Adapt your approach to innovation

    Both traditional and exponential (AI-driven) innovation is important for business success

    IT as a fast execution engine

    Ideal for developing new methods, products, or services which provide value to the organization

    Can be led by IT or the business, depending on the scope of innovation (IT generally leads IT/internal innovation while the business leads customer-focused innovation)

    Often follows the pace of the business

    IT is a fast executor on requests generated by the business

    Leverages Agile to develop new ideas and products, and uses DevOps to put into production


    Use Info-Tech's research to Build your Enterprise Innovation Program

    IT as an exponential innovation leader

    Ideal for driving the enterprise adoption of emerging tech and autonomous business capabilities

    Led by IT, which brings the understanding of emerging technology and can link opportunities to business problems

    Driven by a faster pace of change, which requires more frequent assessment of emerging technology

    IT is a fast executor on ideas and uses partnerships to drive execution

    Leverages Agile, machine learning operations (MLOps), DataOps and product design to test and implement ideas

    Use this research to successfully drive innovation with an Exponential IT mindset

    Measure the value of this blueprint

    Transformation efforts fail over 75% of the time[1] resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue[2]

    Our research indicates that most organizations would take months to prepare this type of assessment without our resources. That's nearly 70 work hours spent researching and gathering data to support due diligence, for a total cost of thousands of dollars. Improve your success rate by understanding what's needed to successfully drive innovation.

    [1] Lombard, 2022
    [2] FutureCIO, 2022

    A photo of Establish a baseline

    A diagram that shows Estimated time commitment without Info-Tech's research (person-hours)

    Establish a baseline

    Gauge the effectiveness of this research by completing the following table before and after using this blueprint:

    A diagram that shows Establish a baseline

    How to use this research

    Five tips to get the most out of your readiness assessment

    1. Each category consists of five competencies, with a maximum of five points each. The maximum score on this assessment is 100 points.
    2. Effectiveness levels range from basic (Level 1) to advanced (Level 5). Level 1 is generally considered the baseline for most effectively operating organizations. If your organization is struggling with Level 1 competencies, focus on those before pursuing higher maturity areas.
    3. This assessment is qualitative. Complete the assessment to the best of your ability, based on the scoring rubric provided. If you fall between levels, use the lower one in your assessment.
    4. The scoring rubric may not perfectly fit the processes and practices within every organization. Consider the spirit of the description and score accordingly.
    5. Other industry- and region-specific competencies may be required to succeed at exponential innovation. The competencies in this assessment are a starting point, and internal validation and assessments should be conducted to uncover additional competencies and skills.

    Assess your innovation readiness:

    1. Organizational Excellence

    • Innovation mandate
    • Transformational leadership
    • Culture of innovation
    • Vision & strategy

    Organizational excellence sets the stage for innovation.

    "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." – Steve Jobs, Apple Founder

    Without strong leadership, innovation efforts are almost certain to fail. Innovation requires buy-in and support, a leader who walks the talk, culture which supports risk taking and allows failure, and a clear and compelling vision. Without these elements in place, transformation efforts are a fifteen times more likely to fail [1] – and waste time and money along the way.

    [1] Lombard, 2022.

    Focus on innovation to deliver business value

    Satisfaction drives IT value, and innovation leadership drives satisfaction with IT

    Strong leadership is critical to the success of innovation. A global survey of 600 business leaders pointed to leadership as the best predictor of innovation success[1] and showed a strong correlation between leadership ability and innovation capabilities.

    Innovation leadership starts with a mandate from the senior leadership team and requires a clearly articulated vision and strategy to deliver the intended benefits to the organization. A survey of 270 business leaders showed that over a third of them struggled with articulating the right strategy or vision, hindering their efforts to innovate.[2]

    45% of business leaders report that cultural issues stifle their innovation efforts, and 55% report unhealthy politics which cause infighting that negatively affects their organization.[2]

    [1] McKinsey, 2008
    [2] Harvard Business Review, 2018

    The importance of leadership

    75% of high IT satisfaction scores are associated with a strong ability to lead innovation.
    Source: Info-Tech Research Group survey, n=305

    Struggling to get a seat at the table?

    It can be challenging to drive innovation efforts without trust and buy-in from senior leadership. Start with small initiatives and build your reputation by consistently delivering on your commitments.

    Leadership starts with a mandate

    Build your innovation leadership with the following capabilities:

    Innovation mandate: There is strong support and trust from the senior leadership team, which gives IT leaders the opportunity to lead innovation despite any temporary failure. IT leaders are well-informed about and have input into business decisions.

    Transformational leadership: IT leaders are influential change agents, not only within their organization but across their industry or community. They inspire others and actively collaborate with external partners, driving change beyond their organization.

    Culture of innovation: Innovative cultures generally demonstrate ten behaviors that are most closely correlated with innovation success: growth mindset, learning-focused, psychological safety, curiosity, trust, willingness to fail, collaboration, diverse perspectives, autonomy, and appropriate risk-taking. These behaviors are embedded in the organization and strongly demonstrated in daily work.

    Vision & strategy: The innovation vision and strategy are continuously refined and adapted to changing market and emerging technology trends. Emerging technology innovation is second nature in the organization, and it becomes a leader in driving change across the industry.

    Additional resources for Organizational Excellence

    Photo of Build your Enterprise Innovation Program

    Build your Enterprise Innovation Program

    Define your innovation mandate
    Articulate your vision and guiding principles
    Build a culture of innovation

    Photo of Manage Your CXO Relations

    Manage Your CXO Relations

    Successfully manage CXO relationships to get a seat at the table and build your mandate to drive innovation

    Photo of CIO

    Become a Transformational CIO

    Build the capabilities to drive transformation as an IT leader in your organization

    Assess your innovation readiness:

    2. Insights & Intelligence

    • Business context
    • Strategic foresight
    • Emerging tech expertise
    • Strategic alignment

    The foundation of innovation is data.

    "Without data you're just another person with an opinion." – Edwards Deming, Statistician

    Having comprehensive and accurate data about the problems you hope to solve is critical to realizing the benefits of innovation. Build your understanding of the business and ability to predict how trends will impact your industry, then stay on top of emerging tech and align solutions with strategic business capabilities.

    Act on strategic indicators

    Build the ability to go from data to intelligence to insights

    Info-Tech data shows that businesses are 93% more likely to be satisfied with IT when their IT teams have a better understanding of the business. Teams need to understand who your organization serves, how it delivers value, and what its goals are.

    When seeking to capitalize on emerging technology opportunities, businesses face an execution challenge. 82% of business leaders report being able to identify leading indicators of change, but less than two thirds of them are confident in their ability to act on those indicators.[1]

    A report by Leadership IQ noted that only 29% of the 21,008 employees surveyed considered their leader's vision consistently well aligned with the organizational vision.[2] Strategic alignment is not just important from a results perspective. It impacts employee motivation: employees with strong leadership alignment are 24% more likely to give their best at work.[2]

    [1] Harvard Business Review, 2018
    [2] Leadership IQ, 2020

    Strategic Foresight Challenges

    82% of business leaders say they can correctly identify leading indicators of change…

    …however, only 58% feel confident in their abilities to act on these indicators.

    Source: Harvard Business Review, 2018

    You must understand the business

    Develop key insights and intelligence with the following capabilities:

    Business context: IT actively participates in the business as a value creator and innovator, proactively disrupting the business and driving the adoption of emerging tech that drives exponential value.

    Strategic foresight: IT not only embraces emerging technologies, but actively drives innovation and disruption through their adoption. IT is adept at using trends to drive exploration and can quickly execute on initiatives.

    Emerging tech expertise: There is an expert-level understanding of emerging technologies including their capabilities, limitations, risks, trends, and potential use cases. IT proactively drives the adoption of emerging technology.

    Strategic alignment: IT proactively uses the business strategy to drive adoption of emerging technology and identify new opportunities. Each initiative has clear metrics and targets which directly impact business targets.

    Additional resources for Intelligence & Insights

    Photo of Tech Trends 2023

    Tech Trends 2023

    Like a chess grandmaster, CIOs must play both sides of the board. Emerging technologies present opportunities to attack, but it's necessary to protect from a volatile board.

    Photo of innovation

    Establish a Foresight Capability

    To be recognized and validated as a forward-thinking CIO, you must establish a structured approach to innovation that considers external trends alongside internal processes.

    Photo of Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

    Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

    Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization while building a plan to execute on it.

    Assess your innovation readiness:

    3. Agile Ideation

    • Data-driven decision making
    • Ability to identify opportunities
    • Business engagement
    • Risk management

    IT must use data to drive the ideation process, engaging the business to identify opportunities – all while managing risk.

    "Innovation is key. Only those who have the agility to change with the market and innovate quickly will survive."- Robert Kiyosaki, Entrepreneur & Author

    Many Agile concepts are used in the process of innovation, regardless of whether the formal Agile methodology is used. Fast iterations ("fail fast"), lessons learned, and risk management are equally important for ideation as they are for execution. This category evaluates IT's ability to drive the ideation process at the enterprise level.

    Use data to drive agility

    Effectively using data has a threefold impact in the quality of decisions

    A diagram that shows data-driven journey

    Agility is critical for innovation, particularly when adopting emerging technology. AI and other emerging technologies are accelerating the pace of change and driving a necessary increase in how quickly organizations must adapt.

    Data is also critical when building a case for change. A survey of over 1,000 senior business leaders showed that organizations that effectively use data to drive decision making are three times more likely to report significant improvements in the quality of their decisions.[1]

    [1] Harvard Business School Online, 2019

    Start with the business

    The business must be involved in ideation. Develop the skills needed to engage the business and identify challenges and opportunities.

    Engage the business to deliver value

    Build your proficiency in the following ideation capabilities:

    Data-driven decision making: Data is proactively collected from multiple internal and external sources to inform innovation strategies. Continuous monitoring of innovation provides a strong rationale for outcomes and benefits. Data governance, quality, and privacy measures are in place to ensure data quality.

    Ability to identify opportunities: IT actively shapes the future of the organization and the industry by proactively identifying business opportunities for emerging technology and leading the way in their adoption. Experiments and pilots are often industry firsts.

    Business engagement: IT enables the business by engaging at all levels to identify and refine emerging technology opportunities. They effectively communicate benefits and risks in business terms, while understanding business needs and challenges. IT collaborates with the business to establish innovation centers or communities of practice.

    Risk management: There is a proactive and holistic approach to risk management, considering both opportunities and threats associated with emerging technology adoption. IT and the business continually anticipate and monitor emerging risks, evaluate the effectiveness of risk management practices, and adapt them to evolving technology landscapes.

    Additional resources for Agile Ideation

    Photo of Develop Your Agile Approach for a Successful Transformation

    Develop Your Agile Approach for a Successful Transformation

    Understand Agile fundamentals, principles, and practices so you can apply them effectively in your organization.

    Photo of Build an IT Risk Management Program

    Build an IT Risk Management Program

    Risk is inevitable. Without a formal management program, you may be unaware of your greatest IT risks.

    Reacting to risks after they occur can be costly and devastating, yet this is one of the most common tactics used by IT departments.

    Photo of business innovation

    Kick-Start IT-Led Business Innovation

    Business demand for new technology is intensifying pressure to innovate and executive stakeholders expect more from IT. If IT is not considered a source of innovation, its perceived value decreases, and the threat of shadow IT grows. Don't wait to start finding and capitalizing on opportunities for IT-led innovation.

    Assess your innovation readiness:

    4. Team Capabilities

    • Resourcing & investment
    • Talent & skills
    • Change management
    • Partnerships & ecosystem

    Ensure you have the right resources and skills needed to drive innovation.

    "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." – Alan Kay, Computer Scientist

    Resourcing and skills are critical building blocks for driving innovation, and without a strong understanding of emerging technology and the processes needed to adopt it, organizations will falter at driving change.

    Develop the right resourcing, skills, change management, and partnerships to drive Exponential IT.

    Develop key skills

    Scaled Agile (SAFe): Scaled Agile is a framework for implementing Agile and lean methodologies at the enterprise level or outside of a single team.

    Development operations (DevOps): A methodology for software development which includes practices and tools that support the development lifecycle.

    Data operations (DataOps): A set of tools and processes that support data management within an organization. Typically used when training AI on a specialized data set.

    Analytics: The systematic analysis of information used to discover, interpret, and communicate insights gleaned from patterns in data. Analytics typically generate insights that support data-driven decision making.

    Machine learning operations (MLOps): Tools and processes that support the development of machine learning (ML) models, including AI and large language models (LLM). Can include expertise in computer science, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, computational algorithms, mathematics, and ML expertise.

    Artificial intelligence operations (AIOps): Leveraging AI to develop autonomous business processes at the enterprise level.

    Mature your emerging technology capabilities

    Agile: Build the methodologies to drive execution
    DevOps: Drive the software development lifecycle
    DataOps: Effectively manage data
    Analytics: Develop insights from data
    MLOps: Develop machine learning tools
    AIOps: Build autonomous business processes

    Manage the building blocks of innovation

    Resourcing & investment: IT manages a well-defined and substantial budget dedicated to innovation, which is integrated into the overall strategic planning and decision-making processes. Investments are made in a holistic and forward-looking manner, considering the long-term implications and potential disruption caused by emerging technologies.

    Talent & skills: Teams exhibit thought leadership and innovate within emerging technologies, including advanced machine learning engineering, MLOps, DataOps, and analytics. Employees actively contribute to the advancement of these technologies, engage in research and development, and explore new applications and use cases.

    Change management: This is a core competency led by change champions and change management professionals. There is a strategic approach to driving and sustaining change, focusing on long-term adoption and continuous improvement. Change management is embedded in the organizational culture, and there is a proactive effort to foster change agility and build change capability at all levels.

    Partnerships & ecosystems: IT builds an orchestrated innovation ecosystem for the adoption of emerging technology. They take a proactive role in orchestrating collaboration among ecosystem partners. The organization acts as a catalyst for innovation, bringing together diverse partners to address complex challenges and drive transformative solutions.

    Additional resources for Team Capabilities

    Photo of Drive Technology Adoption

    Drive Technology Adoption

    The project isn't over if the new product or system isn't being used. How do you ensure that what you've put in place will not be ignored or only partially adopted? People are more complicated than any new system and managing them through change requires careful planning.

    Photo of team discussion

    Extend Agile Practices Beyond IT

    Further the benefits of Agile by extending a scaled Agile framework to the business.

    Not all lessons from scaling Agile to IT are transferable. IT Agile scaling processes are tailored to IT's scope, team, and tools, which may not account for diverse attributes within your organization.

    Photo of Managing Exponential Value Relationships

    Managing Exponential Value Relationships

    Successfully managing outcome-based relationships requires a higher degree of trust than traditional vendor relationships. Building trust comes from sharing risks and rewards between organizations and vendors.

    Assess your innovation readiness:

    5. Innovation Execution

    • Governance
    • Embedded security
    • Infrastructure
    • Ability to execute

    Can you deliver results? Develop the capability to execute on innovative ideas.

    "What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Fail. Try again. Change the world." – Simon Sinek, Author, Motivational Speaker

    The foundational elements of innovation significantly overlap with the activities you must do to excel at core IT operations. Build your ability to execute quickly on innovative ideas and build the trust of the enterprise.

    Rapidly execute on innovative ideas

    IT must be able to successfully manage the foundational capabilities of innovation

    The foundational capabilities of innovation are central to many core IT processes: governance, security, supporting infrastructure, and the ability to execute on ideas are all critical to running an effective IT shop.

    IT governance is a critical and embedded practice ensuring information and technology investments, risks, and resources are aligned in the organization's best interests while producing business value. Effective governance ensures that the right technology investments are made at the right time to support and enable your organization's mission, vision, and goals.

    A diagram that shows Info-Tech's IT Governance Framework and Security Framework

    Build foundational capabilities

    The ability to rapidly execute on ideas is fundamental not only to innovation but also running an effective IT organization.

    Develop foundational IT capabilities

    The ability to execute is based on key foundational capabilities, including:

    Governance: Adaptable and automated governance guides effective innovation and supports the adoption of emerging technology. Decision making is flexible and can move quickly to enable the implementation of new technologies. Responsibility and authority are aligned across all levels of the organization.

    Embedded security: Security and privacy controls are embedded in the applications and technologies deployed across the enterprise. Security is built into the organizational culture, with a strong focus on promoting security awareness and fostering a security-first mindset.

    Infrastructure: IT infrastructure is modern, adaptive, and future-proof. Infrastructure should support a range of emerging technology applications, including the flexibility to adapt to future use cases. There is a focus on agility, scalability, flexibility, and interoperability.

    Ability to execute: The IT team drives rapid innovation across the organization and can reliably execute and collaborate with internal and external partners. They are pivotal in driving innovation initiatives that align with the organization's strategic objectives. Agile methodologies and practices are embedded in the culture of the team.

    Additional resources for Innovation Execution

    Photo of Make Your IT Governance Adaptable

    Make Your IT Governance Adaptable

    Produce more value from IT by developing a governance framework optimized for your current needs and context, with the ability to adapt as your needs shift.

    Create the foundation and ability to delegate and empower governance to enable agile delivery.

    Photo of Build an Information Security Strategy

    Build an Information Security Strategy

    Many security leaders struggle to decide how best to prioritize their scarce information security resources.

    The need to move from a reactive security approach toward a strategic planning approach is clear. The path to getting there is less so.

    Photo of Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology

    Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology

    Accurate predicting isn't easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, it's difficult to predict which specific technologies will become disruptive.

    Activity 1: Assess your readiness for exponential innovation

    Input: Core competencies; Knowledge of internal processes and capabilities
    Output: Readiness assessment
    Materials: Exponential Innovation Assessment Tool; Whiteboard/Flip charts
    Participants: Executive leadership team, including CIO; Other internal stakeholders of vendor partnerships

    1-3 hours

    1. Gather key stakeholders from across your organization to participate in the readiness assessment exercise.
    2. As a group, review the core competencies from the following five sections and determine where your organization's effectiveness lies for each competency. Record your responses in the Exponential Innovation Assessment Tool.

    Download the Exponential Innovation Assessment Tool

    Interpret your results

    Understand your readiness and determine the next steps to operationalize exponential innovation.

    Once you have completed the readiness assessment, use Info-Tech's maturity ladder to identify next steps and recommendations.

    It is usually very challenging to lead innovation with a total score less than 50. Lower maturity organizations should focus on maturing the foundational aspects of innovation, such as those in the Innovation Execution and Team Capabilities categories, and core IT processes.

    For higher maturity organizations (those with total scores 50 or higher), first focus on getting all capabilities to a minimum of Level 3, then work on progressing maturity starting with foundational categories and working upwards:

    A diagram that shows innovation readiness

    Determine your readiness

    A diagram that shows Innovation Maturity ladder

    Activity 2: Create an action plan

    Input: Readiness assessment
    Output: Action plan to improve maturity of capabilities
    Materials: Exponential Innovation Assessment Tool; Whiteboard/Flip charts
    Participants: Executive leadership team, including CIO; Other internal stakeholders of vendor partnerships

    1 hour

    1. Gather the stakeholders who participated in the readiness assessment exercise.
    2. As a group, review the results of the readiness assessment. Were there any surprises? Do the results reflect your understanding of the organization's maturity?
    3. Determine which areas are likely to limit the organization's innovation capability, based on lowest scoring areas and relative importance to the organization.
    4. Break out into groups and have each group identify three actions the organization could take to mature the lowest scoring areas.
    5. Bring the group back together and prioritize the actions. Note who will be accountable for each next step.
    6. Identify additional Info-Tech research that can assist with improving your maturity (see additional resources in this blueprint).

    Author

    Photo of Kim Osborne Rodriguez
    Kim Osborne Rodriguez
    Research Director, CIO Advisory
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Kim is a professional engineer and Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD) with over a decade of experience in management and engineering consulting spanning healthcare, higher education, and commercial sectors. She has worked on some of the largest hospital construction projects in Canada, from early visioning and IT strategy through to design, specifications, and construction administration. She brings a practical and evidence-based approach, with a track record of supporting successful projects.

    Kim holds a Bachelor's degree in Honours Mechatronics Engineering and an option in Management Sciences from University of Waterloo.

    Research Contributors and Experts

    Photo of Jack Hakimian
    Jack Hakimian
    Senior Vice President
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Jack has more than 25 years of Technology and Management Consulting experience. He has served multi-billion-dollar organizations in multiple industries including Financial Services and Telecommunications. Jack also served many large public sector institutions.

    He is a frequent speaker and panelist at technology and innovation conferences and events and holds a Master's degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA from the ESCP-EAP European School of Management.


    Photo of Mark Tauschek
    Mark Tauschek
    Vice President, Infrastructure & Operations Research
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Mark has hands-on network design and deployment experience across verticals including healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, and entertainment. He has extensive knowledge in the areas of technology research, process development, vendor selection, and project management. He holds specific expertise in wireless networking and mobile technologies.

    Mark holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and many professional wireless technology certifications.


    Photo of Michael Tweedie
    Michael Tweedie
    Practice Lead, CIO Strategy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Mike Tweedie brings over 25 years as a technology executive. He's led several large transformation projects across core infrastructure, application and IT services as the head of Technology at ADP Canada. He was also the Head of Engineering and Service Offerings for a large French IT services firm, focused on cloud adoption and complex ERP deployment and management.

    Mike holds a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Ryerson University.


    Photo of Donna Bales
    Donna Bales
    Principal Research Director
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Donna Bales is a Principal Research Director in the CIO Practice at Info-Tech Research Group specializing in research and advisory services in IT risk, governance, and compliance. She brings over 25 years of experience in strategic consulting and product development and has a history of success in leading complex, multi-stakeholder industry initiatives.

    Donna has a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Western Ontario.


    Photo of Isabelle Hertanto
    Isabelle Hertanto
    Principal Research Director, Security & Privacy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Isabelle Hertanto has over 15 years of experience delivering specialized IT services to the security and intelligence community. As a former federal officer for Public Safety Canada, Isabelle trained and led teams on data exploitation and digital surveillance operations in support of Canadian national security investigations. Since transitioning into the private sector, Isabelle has held senior management and consulting roles across a variety of industry sectors, including retail, construction, energy, healthcare, and the broader Canadian public sector.


    Photo of Aaron Shum
    Aaron Shum
    Vice President, Security, Privacy, Risk & Compliance
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Aaron Shum is a Vice President in the Security & Privacy Research and Advisory Practice at Info-Tech Research Group. With 25+ years of experience across IT, InfoSec, and Data Privacy, he currently specializes in helping organizations implement comprehensive information security and cybersecurity programs and comply with data privacy regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Privacy Rights Act.


    Photo of Reiaz Somji
    Reiaz Somji
    Managing Director, Consulting
    Info-Tech Research Group

    As a client-focused strategist with strong organizational acumen, Reiaz leverages his 20+ years of management consulting experience to help C-suite executives and managers navigate the integration of changing technology with business goals. He is currently a managing director in Info-Tech's consulting division and leads its Infrastructure practice.


    Photo of Hans Eckman
    Hans Eckman
    Principal Research Director, Applications
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Hans Eckman is a business transformation leader helping organizations connect business strategy and innovation to operational excellence. He supports Info-Tech members in SDLC optimization, Agile and DevOps implementation, CoE/CoP creation, innovation program development, application delivery, and leadership development. Hans is based out of Atlanta, Georgia.


    Photo of Irina Sedenko
    Irina Sedenko
    Research Director, Data & Analytics
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Irina brings more than 20 years of information management experience and demonstrated expertise in big data, advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI. Her experience includes designing and implementing enterprise content management systems, defining data and analytics strategy to support business goals and objectives, creating data governance to enable data initiatives, and providing guidance to the client teams. She led teams through data lake implementation to enable advanced analytics capabilities and has hands-on data science and machine learning experience.

    Research Contributors

    Photo of Bill Macgowan
    Bill Macgowan
    Director, Smart Building Digitization
    Cisco


    Photo of Barry Wiech
    Barry Wiech
    Chief Digital and Information Officer
    Sime Darby Industrial


    Photo of Tim Dunn
    Tim Dunn
    Chief Information Officer
    Department of Energy & Public Works (Queensland)


    Photo of Sudip Ghosh
    Sudip Ghosh
    Group Manager, Office of the CIO
    Star Entertainment Group



    Samantha Rose
    Contract Manager
    Department of Energy & Public Works (Queensland)

    Bibliography

    Altringer, Beth. "A New Model for Innovation in Big Companies." Harvard Business Review. 19 Nov. 2013. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://hbr.org/2013/11/a-new-model-for-innovation-in-big-companies

    Bar Am, Jordan et al. "Innovation in a Crisis: Why it is More Critical Than Ever." McKinsey & Company, 17 June 2020. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-in-a-crisis-why-it-is-more-critical-than-ever

    Barsh, Joanna et al. "Leadership and Innovation." McKinsey Quarterly, 1 Jan 2008. Accessed 7 July 2023. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/leadership-and-innovation

    Borealis AI. "RBC Wins Best Use of AI for Customer Experience for NOMI Forecast." Borealis AI Blog, 28 Apr 2023. Accessed 13 June 2023. https://www.borealisai.com/news/rbc-wins-best-use-of-ai-for-customer-experience-for-nomi-forecast/

    Boston Consulting Group, "Most Innovative Companies 2022." BGC, 15 Sept. 2022. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://www.bcg.com/en-ca/publications/2022/innovation-in-climate-and-sustainability-will-lead-to-green-growth

    BrainyQuote. "Innovation Quotes." Accessed 19 June 2023. https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/innovation-quotes

    Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Review Press, 2016.

    Cleroux, Pierre. The "I" Word. BDC. Accessed 1 Aug 2023. https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/blog/innovation-no-1-factor-business-success

    FutureCIO Editors. "Failed transformation can result in US$6 million in lost revenue." FutureCIO, 29 Apr 2022. Accessed 10 Jul 2023. https://futurecio.tech/failed-transformation-can-result-in-us6-million-in-lost-revenue/

    Goodreads. "W. Edwards Deming Quotes." Accessed 19 June 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7327935-without-data-you-re-just-another-person-with-an-opinion

    Haefner, Naomi et al. "Artificial intelligence and innovation management: A review, framework, and research agenda." Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 162, 2021. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016252031218X

    IBM. "The new AI innovation equation." IBM Website. 13 Oct 2016. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ai-innovation-equation.html

    Isomaki, Atte. "60+ Innovation Quotes and What They Can Teach You." Viima, 19 Mar 2019. Accessed 6 July 2023. https://www.viima.com/blog/innovation-quotes

    Kay, Alan. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Quote Park, 3 June 2021. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://quotepark.com/quotes/1893243-alan-kay-the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-invent-it/

    Kirsner, Scott. "The Biggest Obstacles to Innovation in Large Companies." Harvard Business Review, 30 July 2018. Accessed 15 June 2023. https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-biggest-obstacles-to-innovation-in-large-companies

    Kiyosaki, Robert. "Innovation is key. Only those who have the agility to change with the market and innovate quickly will survive." AZ Quotes, 11 Dec. 2013. Accessed 15 June 2023.

    Leadership IQ. "The State Of Leadership Development." Leadership IQ, 2020. Accessed 6 July 2023. https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/leadership-development-state

    Lombard, Charl. "Defining Digital: A New Approach to Digital Transformation." Info-Tech LIVE Conference, 2022. https://tymansgrpup.com/videos/defining-digital-a-new-approach-to-digital-transformation

    Murphy, Mark. "A Shocking Number Of Leaders Are Not Aligned With Their Companies' Visions." Forbes, 28 Aug 2020. Accessed 6 Jul 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2020/08/28/a-shocking-number-of-leaders-are-not-aligned-with-their-companies-visions

    Seymour, Harriet et al. "How to unlock a scientific approach to change management with powerful data insights." IBM, 11 Jan 2023. Accessed 6 July 2023. https://www.ibm.com/blog/how-to-unlock-a-scientific-approach-to-change-management-with-powerful-data-insights/

    Sinek, Simon. "What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Fail. Try again. Change the world." Praxie, n.d. https://praxie.com/top-innovation-quotes/

    Stobierski, Tim. "The Advantages of Data-Driven Decision-Making." Harvard Business School Online, 26 Aug 2019. Accessed 6 July 2023. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/data-driven-decision-making

    Torres, Roberto. "How tech leaders can earn C-suite trust." CIO Dive, 1 Jul 2022. Accessed 7 Jul 2023. https://www.ciodive.com/news/C-suite-trust-CIO-executives/626476/

    Tushman, Michael et al. "Change Management Is Becoming Increasingly Data-Driven. Companies Aren't Ready." Harvard Business Review, 23 Oct 2017. Accessed 6 Jul 2023. https://hbr.org/2017/10/change-management-is-becoming-increasingly-data-driven-companies-arent-ready

    Weick, Karl and Kathleen Sutcliffe. Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World, Third Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

    Leadership, Culture and Values

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    • Parent Category Name: People and Resources
    • Parent Category Link: /people-and-resources

    The challenge

    • Your talent pool determines IT performance and stakeholder satisfaction. You need to retain talent and continually motivate them to go the extra mile.
    • The market for IT talent is growing, in the sense that talent has many more options these days. Turnover is a serious threat to IT's ability to deliver top-notch service to your company.
    • Engagement is more than HR's responsibility. IT leadership is accountable for the retention of top talent and the overall productivity of IT employees.

    Our advice

    Insight

    • Engagement goes both ways. Your initiatives must address a real need, and employees must actively seek the outcomes. Engagement is not a management edict.
    • Engagement is not about access to the latest perks and gadgets. You must address the right and challenging issues. Use a systematic approach to find what lives among the employees and address these.
    • Your impact on your employees is many times bigger than HR's. Leverage your power to lead your team to success and peak performance.

    Impact and results 

    • Our engagement diagnostic and other tools will help get to the root of disengagement in your team.
    • Our guidance helps you to avoid common errors and engagement program pitfalls. They allow you to take control of your own team's engagement.

    The roadmap

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    Get started

    Our concise executive brief shows you why engagement is critical to IT performance in your company. We'll show you our methodology and the ways we can help you in handling this.

    Measure your employee engagement

    You can use our full engagement surveys.

    • Improve Employee Engagement to Drive IT Performance – Phase 1: Measure Employee Engagement (ppt)
    • Engagement Strategy Record (doc)
    • Engagement Communication Template (doc)

    Analyze the results and brainstorm solutions

    Understand your employees' engagement drivers. Involve your team in brainstorming engagement initiatives.

    • Improve Employee Engagement to Drive IT Performance – Phase 2: Analyze Results and Ideate Solutions (ppt)
    • Engagement Survey Results Interpretation Guide (ppt)
    • Full Engagement Survey Focus Group Facilitation Guide (ppt)
    • Pulse Engagement Survey Focus Group Facilitation Guide (ppt)
    • Focus Group Facilitation Guide Driver Definitions (doc)
    • One-on-One Manager Meeting Worksheet (doc)

    Select and implement engagement initiatives

    Choose those initiatives that show the most promise with the most significant impact. Create your action plan and establish transparent and open, and ongoing communication with your team.

    • IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template (xls)
    • IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template (doc)

    Build your knowledge transfer roadmap

    Knowledge transfer is an ongoing effort. Prioritize and define your initiatives.

    • Improve Employee Engagement to Drive IT Performance – Phase 3: Select and Implement Engagement Initiatives (ppt)
    • Summary of Interdepartmental Engagement Initiatives (doc)
    • Engagement Progress One-Pager (ppt)

     

    Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide

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    • Parent Category Name: Marketing Solutions
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    • Selecting and implementing the right MMS platform – one that aligns with your requirements is a significant undertaking.
    • Despite the importance of selecting and implementing the right MMS platform, many organizations struggle to define an approach to picking the most appropriate vendor and rolling out the solution in an effective and cost-efficient manner.
    • IT often finds itself in the unenviable position of taking the fall for an MMS platform that doesn’t deliver on the promise of the MMS strategy.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • MMS platform selection must be driven by your overall customer experience management strategy. Link your MMS selection to your organization’s CXM framework.
    • Determine what exactly you require from your MMS platform; leverage use cases to help guide selection.
    • Ensure strong points of integration between your MMS and other software such as CRM and POS. Your MMS solution should not live in isolation; it must be part of a wider ecosystem.

    Impact and Result

    • An MMS platform that effectively meets business needs and delivers value.
    • Reduced costs during MMS vendor platform selection and faster time to results after implementation.

    Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide – A deck that walks you through the process of building your business case and selecting the proper MMS platform.

    This blueprint will help you build a business case for selecting the right MMS platform, define key requirements, and conduct a thorough analysis and scan of the current state of the ever-evolving MMS market space.

    • Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide Storyboard
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide

    Streamline your organizational approach to selecting a right-sized marketing management platform.

    Analyst perspective

    A robustly configured and comprehensive MMS platform is a crucial ingredient to help kick-start your organization's cross-channel and multichannel marketing management initiatives.

    Modern marketing management suites (MMS) are imperative given today's complex, multitiered, and often non-standardized marketing processes. Relying on isolated methods such as lead generation or email marketing techniques for executing key cross-channel and multichannel marketing initiatives is not enough to handle the complexity of contemporary marketing management activities.

    Organizations need to invest in highly customizable and functionally extensive MMS platforms to provide value alongside the marketing value chain and a 360-degree view of the consumer's marketing journey. IT needs to be rigorously involved with the sourcing and implementation of the new MMS tool, and the necessary business units also need to own the requirements and be involved from the initial stages of software selection.

    To succeed with MMS implementation, consider drafting a detailed roadmap that outlines milestone activities for configuration, security, points of integration, and data migration capabilities and provides for ongoing application maintenance and support.

    This is a picture of Yaz Palanichamy

    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Customer Experience Strategy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive summary

    Your Challenge

    • Many organizations struggle with taking a systematic and structured approach to selecting a right-sized marketing management suite (MMS) – an indispensable part of managing an organization's specific and nuanced marketing management needs.
    • Organizations must define a clear-cut strategic approach to investing in a new MMS platform. Exercising the appropriate selection and implementation rigor for a right-sized MMS tool is a critical step in delivering concrete business value to sustain various marketing value chains across the organization.

    Common Obstacles

    • An MMS vendor that is not well aligned to marketing requirements wastes resources and causes an endless cascade of end-user frustration.
    • The MMS market is rapidly evolving, making it difficult for vendors to retain a competitive foothold in the space.
    • IT managers and/or marketing professionals often find themselves in the unenviable position of taking the fall for MMS platforms that fail to deliver on the promise of the overarching marketing management strategy.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    • MMS platform selection must be driven by your overall marketing management strategy. Email marketing techniques, social marketing, and/or lead management strategies are often not enough to satisfy the more sophisticated use cases demanded by increasingly complex customer segmentation levels.
    • For organizations with a large audience or varied product offerings, a well-integrated MMS platform enables the management of various complex campaigns across many channels, product lines, customer segments, and marketing groups throughout the enterprise.

    Info-Tech Insight

    IT must collaborate with marketing professionals and other key stakeholder groups to define a unified vision and holistic outlook for a right-sized MMS platform.

    Info-Tech's methodology for selecting a right-sized marketing management suite platform

    1. Understand Core MMS Features

    2. Build the Business Case & Streamline Requirements

    3. Discover the MMS Market Space & Prepare for Implementation

    Phase Steps

    1. Define MMS Platforms
    2. Classify Table Stakes & Differentiating Capabilities
    3. Explore Trends
    1. Build the Business Case
    2. Streamline the Requirements Elicitation Process for a New MMS Platform
    3. Develop an Inclusive RFP Approach
    1. Discover Key Players in the Vendor Landscape
    2. Engage the Shortlist & Select Finalist
    3. Prepare for Implementation

    Phase Outcomes

    1. Consensus on scope of MMS and key MMS platform capabilities
    1. MMS platform selection business case
    2. Top-level use cases and requirements
    3. Procurement vehicle best practices
    1. Market analysis of MMS platforms
    2. Overview of shortlisted vendors
    3. Implementation considerations

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

    Call #1: Understand what a marketing management suite is. Discuss core capabilities and key trends.

    Call #2: Build the business case
    to select a right-sized MMS.

    Call #3: Define your core
    MMS requirements.

    Call #4: Build and sustain procurement vehicle best practices.

    Call #5: Evaluate the MMS vendor landscape and short-list viable options.


    Call #6: Review implementation considerations.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    The MMS procurement process should be broken into segments:

    1. Create a vendor shortlist using this buyer's guide.
    2. Define a structured approach to selection.
    3. Review the contract.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    What are marketing management suite platforms?

    Our Definition: Marketing management suite (MMS) platforms are core enterprise applications that provide a unified set of marketing processes for a given organization and, typically, the capability to coordinate key cross-channel marketing initiatives.

    Key product capabilities for sophisticated MMS platforms include but are not limited to:

    • Email marketing
    • Lead nurturing
    • Social media management
    • Content curation and distribution
    • Marketing reporting and analytics
    • Consistent brand messaging

    Using a robust and comprehensive MMS platform equips marketers with the appropriate tools needed to make more informed decisions around campaign execution, resulting in better targeting, acquisition, and customer retention initiatives. Moreover, such tools can help bolster effective revenue generation and ensure more viable growth initiatives for future marketing growth enablement strategies.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Feature sets are rapidly evolving over time as MMS offerings continue to proliferate in this market space. Ensure that you focus on core components such as customer conversion rates and new lead captures through maintaining well- integrated multichannel campaigns.

    Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Buyer's Guide

    Info-Tech Insight

    A right-sized MMS software selection and procurement decision should involve comprehensive requirements and needs analysis by not just Marketing but also other organizational units such as IT, in conjunction with input suppled from the internal vendor procurement team.

    MMS Software Selection & Vendor Procurement Journey. The three main steps are: Envision the Art of the Possible; Elicit Granular Requirements; Contextualize the MMS Vendor Market Space

    Phase 1

    Understand Core MMS Features

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Define MMS Platforms

    1.2 Classify Table Stakes & Differentiating Capabilities

    1.3 Explore Trends

    2.1 Build the Business Case

    2.2 Streamline Requirements Elicitation

    2.3 Develop an Inclusive RFP Approach

    3.1 Discover Key Players in the Vendor Landscape

    3.2 Engage the Shortlist & Select Finalist

    3.3 Prepare for Implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Level-set an understanding of MMS technology.
    • Define which MMS features are table stakes (standard) and which are key differentiating functionalities.
    • Identify the art of the possible in a modern MMS platform from sales, marketing, and service lenses.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CMO
    • Digital Marketing Project Manager
    • Marketing Data Analytics Analyst
    • Marketing Management Executive

    What are marketing management suite platforms?

    Our Definition: Marketing management suite (MMS) platforms are core enterprise applications that provide a unified set of marketing processes for a given organization and, typically, the capability to coordinate key cross-channel marketing initiatives.

    Key product capabilities for sophisticated MMS platforms include but are not limited to:

    • Email marketing
    • Lead nurturing
    • Social media management
    • Content curation and distribution
    • Marketing reporting and analytics
    • Consistent brand messaging

    Using a robust and comprehensive MMS platform equips marketers with the appropriate tools needed to make more informed decisions around campaign execution, resulting in better targeting, acquisition, and customer retention initiatives. Moreover, such tools can help bolster effective revenue generation and ensure more viable growth initiatives for future marketing growth enablement strategies.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Feature sets are rapidly evolving over time as MMS offerings continue to proliferate in this market space. Ensure that you focus on core components such as customer conversion rates and new lead captures through maintaining well- integrated multichannel campaigns.

    Marketing through the ages

    Tracing the foundational origins of marketing management practices

    Initial traction for marketing management strategies began with the need to holistically understand the effects of advertising efforts and how the media mix could be best optimized.

    1902

    1920s-1930s

    1942

    1952-1964

    1970s-1990s

    Recognizing the increasing need for focused and professional marketing efforts, the University of Pennsylvania offers the first marketing course, dubbed "The Marketing of Products."

    As broadcast media began to peak, marketers needed to manage a greater number of complex and interspersed marketing channels.

    The introduction of television ads in 1942 offered new opportunities for brands to reach consumers across a growing media landscape. To generate the highest ROI, marketers sought to understand the consumer and focus on more tailored messaging and product personalization. Thus, modern marketing practices were born.

    Following the introduction of broadcast media, marketers had to develop strategies beyond traditional spray-and-pray methods. The first modern marketing measurement concept, "marketing mix," was conceptualized in 1952 and popularized in 1964 by Neil Borden.

    This period marked the digital revolution and the new era of marketing. With the advent of new communications technology and the modern internet, marketing management strategies reached new heights of sophistication. During the early 1990s, search engines emerged to help users navigate the web, leading to early forms of search engine optimization and advertising.

    Where it's going: the future state of marketing management

    1. Increasing Complexity Driving Consumer Purchasing Decisions
      • "The main complexity is dealing with the increasing product variety and changing consumer demands, which is forcing marketers to abandon undifferentiated marketing strategies and even niche marketing strategies and to adopt a mass customization process interacting one-to-one with their customers." – Complexity, 2019
    2. Consumers Seeking More Tailored Brand Personalization
      • Financial Services marketers lead all other industries in AI application adoption, with 37% currently using them (Salesforce, 2019).
    3. The Inclusion of More AI-Enabled Marketing Strategies
      • According to a 2022 Nostro report, 70% of consumers say it is important that brands continue to offer personalized consumer experiences.
    4. Green Marketing
      • Recent studies have shown that up to 80% of all consumers are interested in green marketing strategies (Marketing Schools, 2020).

    Marketing management by the numbers

    Key trends

    6%

    As a continuously growing discipline, marketing management roles are predicted to grow faster than average, at a rate of 6% over the next decade.

    Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021

    17%

    While many marketing management vendors offer A/B testing, only 17% of marketers are actively using A/B testing on landing pages to increase conversion rates.

    Source: Oracle, 2022

    70%

    It is imperative that technology and SaaS companies begin to use marketing automation as a core component of their martech strategy to remain competitive. About 70% of technology and SaaS companies are employing integrated martech tools.

    Source: American Marketing Association, 2021

    Understand MMS table stakes features

    Organizations can expect nearly all MMS vendors to provide the following functionality

    Email Marketing

    Lead Nurturing

    Reporting, Analytics, and Marketing KPIs

    Marketing Campaign Management

    Integrational Catalog

    The use of email alongside marketing efforts to promote a business' products and services. Email marketing can be a powerful tool to maintain connections with your audience and ensure sustained brand promotion.

    The process of developing and nurturing relationships with key customer contacts at every major touchpoint in their customer journey. MMS platforms can use automated lead-nurturing functions that are triggered by customer behavior.

    The use of well-defined metrics to help curate, gather, and analyze marketing data to help track performance and improve the marketing department's future marketing decisions and strategies.

    Tools needed for the planning, execution, tracking, and analysis of direct marketing campaigns. Such tools are needed to help gauge your buyers' sentiments toward your company's product offerings and services.

    MMS platforms should generally have a comprehensive open API/integration catalog. Most MMS platforms should have dedicated integration points to interface with various tools across the marketing landscape (e.g. social media, email, SEO, CRM, CMS tools, etc.).

    Identify differentiating MMS features

    While not always deemed must-have functionality, these features may be the deciding factor when choosing between two MMS-focused vendors.

    Digital Asset Management (DAM)

    A DAM can help manage digital media asset files (e.g. photos, audio files, video).

    Customer Data Management

    Customer data management modules help your organization track essential customer information to maximize your marketing results.

    Text-Based Marketing

    Text-based marketing strategy is ideal for any organization primarily focused on coordinating structured and efficient marketing campaigns.

    Customer
    Journey Orchestration

    Customer journey orchestration enables users to orchestrate customer conversations and journeys across the entire marketing value chain.

    AI-Driven Workflows

    AI-powered workflows can help eliminate complexities and allow marketers to automate and optimize tasks across the marketing spectrum.

    Dynamic Segmentation

    Dynamic segmentation to target audience cohorts based on recent actions and stated preferences.

    Advanced Email Marketing

    These include capabilities such as A/B testing, spam filter testing, and detailed performance reporting.

    Ensure you understand the art of the possible across the MMS landscape

    Understanding the trending feature sets that encompass the broader MMS vendor landscape will best equip your organization with the knowledge needed to effectively match today's MMS platforms with your organization's marketing requirements.

    Holistically examine the potential of any MMS solution through three main lenses:

    Data-Driven
    Digital Advertising

    Adapt innovative techniques such as conversational marketing to help collect, analyze, and synthesize crucial audience information to improve the customer marketing experience and pre-screen prospects in a more conscientious manner.

    Next Best Action Marketing

    Next best action marketing (NBAM) is a customer-centric paradigm/marketing technique designed to capture specific information about customers and their individual preferences. Predicting customers' future actions by understanding their intent during their purchasing decisions stage will help improve conversion rates.

    AI-Driven Customer
    Segmentation

    The use of inclusive and innovative AI-based forecast modeling techniques can help more accurately analyze customer data to create more targeted segments. As such, marketing messages will be more accurately tailored to the customer that is reading them.

    Art of the possible: data-driven digital advertising

    CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

    Are you curious about the measures needed to boost engagement among your client base and other primary target audience groups? Conversational marketing intelligence metrics can help collect and disseminate key descriptive data points across a broader range of audience information.

    AI-DRIVEN CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING DEVICES

    Certain social media channels (e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook) like to take advantage of click-to-Messenger-style applications to help drive meaningful conversations with customers and learn more about their buying preferences. In addition, AI-driven chatbot applications can help the organization glean important information about the customer's persona by asking probing questions about their marketing purchase behaviors and preferences.

    METAVERSE- DRIVEN BRANDING AND ADVERTISING

    One of the newest phenomena in data-driven marketing technology and digital advertising techniques is the metaverse, where users can represent themselves and their brand via virtual avatars to further gamify their marketing strategies. Moreover, brands can create immersive experiences and engage with influencers and established communities and collect a wealth of information about their audience that can help drive customer retention and loyalty.

    Case study

    This is the logos for Gucci and Roblox.

    Metaverse marketing extends the potential for commercial brand development and representation: a deep dive into Gucci's metaverse practice

    INDUSTRY: Luxury Goods Apparel
    SOURCE: Vogue Business

    Challenge

    Beginning with a small, family-owned leather shop known as House of Gucci in Florence, Italy, businessman and fashion designer Guccio Gucci sold saddles, leather bags, and other accessories to horsemen during the 1920s. Over the years, Gucci's offerings have grown to include various other personal luxury goods.

    As consumer preferences have evolved over time, particularly with the younger generation, Gucci's professional marketing teams looked to invest in virtual technology environments to help build and sustain better brand awareness among younger consumer audiences.

    Solution

    In response to the increasing presence of metaverse-savvy gamers on the internet, Gucci began investing in developing its online metaverse presence to bolster its commercial marketing brand there.

    A recent collaboration with Roblox, an online gaming platform that offers virtual experiences, provided Gucci the means to showcase its fashion items using the Gucci Garden – a virtual art installation project for Generation Z consumers, powered by Roblox's VR technology. The Gucci Garden virtual system featured a French-styled garden environment where players could try on and buy Gucci virtual fashion items to dress up their blank avatars.

    Results

    Gucci's disruptive, innovative metaverse marketing campaign project with Roblox is proof of its commitment to tapping new marketing growth channels to showcase the brand to engage new and prospective consumers (e.g. Roblox's player base) across more unique sandboxed/simulation environments.

    The freedom and flexibility in the metaverse environments allows brands such as Gucci to execute a more flexible digital marketing approach and enables them to take advantage of innovative metaverse-driven technologies in the market to further drive their data-driven digital marketing campaigns.

    Art of the possible: next best action marketing (NBAM)

    NEXT BEST ACTION PREDICTIVE MODELING

    To improve conversion propensity, next best action techniques can use predictive modeling methods to help build a dynamic overview of the customer journey. With information sourced from actionable marketing intelligence data, MMS platforms can use NBAM techniques to identify customer needs based on their buying behavior, social media interactions, and other insights to determine what unique set of actions should be taken for each customer.

    MACHINE LEARNING–BASED RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS

    Rules-based recommender systems can help assign probabilities of purchasing behaviors based on the patterns in touchpoints of a customer's journey and interaction with your brand. For instance, a large grocery chain company such as Walmart or Whole Foods will use ML-based recommender systems to decide what coupons they should offer to their customers based on their purchasing history.

    Art of the possible: AI-driven customer segmentation

    MACHINE/DEEP LEARNING (ML/DL) ALGORITHMS

    The inclusion of AI in data analytics helps make customer targeting more accurate
    and meaningful. Organizations can analyze customer data more thoroughly and generate in-depth contextual and descriptive information about the targeted segments. In addition, they can use this information to automate the personalization of marketing campaigns for a specific target audience group.

    UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER SENTIMENTS

    To greatly benefit from AI-powered customer segmentation, organizations must deploy specialized custom AI solutions to help organize qualitative comments into quantitative data. This approach requires companies to use custom AI models and tools that will analyze customer sentiments and experiences based on data extracted from various touchpoints (e.g. CRM systems, emails, chatbot logs).

    Phase 2

    Build the Business Case and Streamline Requirements

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Define MMS Platforms

    1.2 Classify Table Stakes & Differentiating Capabilities

    1.3 Explore Trends

    2.1 Build the Business Case

    2.2 Streamline Requirements Elicitation

    2.3 Develop an Inclusive RFP Approach

    3.1 Discover Key Players in the Vendor Landscape

    3.2 Engage the Shortlist & Select Finalist

    3.3 Prepare for Implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Define and build the business case for the selection of a right-sized MMS platform.
    • Elicit and prioritize granular requirements for your MMS platform.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CMO
    • Technical Marketing Analyst
    • Digital Marketing Project Manager
    • Marketing Data Analytics Analyst
    • Marketing Management Executive

    Software Selection Engagement

    5 Advisory Calls over a 5-Week Period to Accelerate Your Selection Process

    Expert analyst guidance over 5 weeks on average to select software and negotiate with the vendor.

    Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process and make better decisions.

    Use a repeatable, formal methodology to improve your application selection process.

    Better, faster results, guaranteed, included in your membership.

    This is an image of the plan for five advisory calls over a five-week period.

    CLICK HERE to book your Selection Engagement

    Elicit and prioritize granular requirements for your marketing management suite (MMS) platform

    Understanding business needs through requirements gathering is the key to defining everything you need from your software. However, it is an area where people often make critical mistakes.

    Poorly scoped requirements

    Best practices

    • Fail to be comprehensive and miss certain areas of scope.
    • Focus on how the solution should work instead of what it must accomplish.
    • Have multiple levels of detail within the requirements, causing inconsistency and confusion.
    • Drill all the way down to system-level detail.
    • Add unnecessary constraints based on what is done today rather than focusing on what is needed for tomorrow.
    • Omit constraints or preferences that buyers think are obvious.
    • Get a clear understanding of what the system needs to do and what it is expected to produce.
    • Test against the principle of MECE – requirements should be "mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive."
    • Explicitly state the obvious and assume nothing.
    • Investigate what is sold on the market and how it is sold. Use language that is consistent with that of the market and focus on key differentiators – not table stakes.
    • Contain the appropriate level of detail – the level should be suitable for procurement and sufficient for differentiating vendors.

    Info-Tech Insight
    Poor requirements are the number one reason projects fail. Review Info-Tech's Improve Requirements Gathering blueprint to learn how to improve your requirements analysis and get results that truly satisfy stakeholder needs.

    Info-Tech's approach

    Develop an inclusive and thorough approach to the RFP process

    Identity Need; Define Business requirements; Gain Business Authorization; Perform RFI/RFP; Negotiate Agreement; Purchase Goods and Services; Assess and Measure Performance.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Review Info-Tech's process and understand how you can prevent your organization from leaking negotiation leverage while preventing vendors from taking control of your RFP.

    The Info-Tech difference:

    1. The secret to managing an RFP is to make it as manageable and as thorough as possible. The RFP process should be like any other aspect of business – by developing a standard process. With a process in place, you are better able to handle whatever comes your way, because you know the steps you need to follow to produce a top-notch RFP.
    2. The business then identifies the need for more information about a product/service or determines that a purchase is required.
    3. A team of stakeholders from each area impacted gather all business, technical, legal, and risk requirements. What are the expectations of the vendor relationship post-RFP? How will the vendors be evaluated?
    4. Based on the predetermined requirements, either an RFI or an RFP is issued to vendors with a due date.

    Leverage Info-Tech's Contract Review Service to level the playing field with your shortlisted vendors

    You may be faced with multiple products, services, master service agreements, licensing models, service agreements, and more.
    Use Info-Tech's Contract Review Service to gain insights on your agreements:

    1. Are all key terms included?
    2. Are they applicable to your business?
    3. Can you trust that results will be delivered?
    4. What questions should you be asking from an IT perspective?

    Validate that a contract meets IT's and the business' needs by looking beyond the legal terminology. Use a practical set of questions, rules, and guidance to improve your value for dollar spent.

    This is an image of three screenshots from Info-Tech's Contract Review Service.

    CLICK to BOOK The Contract Review Service

    CLICK to DOWNLOAD Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements

    Phase 3

    Discover the MMS Market Space and Prepare for Implementation

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Define MMS Platforms

    1.2 Classify Table Stakes & Differentiating Capabilities

    1.3 Explore Trends

    2.1 Build the Business Case

    2.2 Streamline Requirements Elicitation

    2.3 Develop an Inclusive RFP Approach

    3.1 Discover Key Players in the Vendor Landscape

    3.2 Engage the Shortlist & Select Finalist

    3.3 Prepare for Implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Dive into the key players of the MMS vendor landscape.
    • Understand best practices for building a vendor shortlist.
    • Understand key implementation considerations for MMS.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CMO
    • Marketing Management Executive
    • Applications Manager
    • Digital Marketing Project Manager
    • Sales Executive
    • Vendor Outreach and Partnerships Manager

    Review your use cases to start your shortlist

    Your Info-Tech analysts can help you narrow down the list of vendors that will meet your requirements.

    Next steps will include:

    1. Reviewing your requirements.
    2. Checking out SoftwareReviews.
    3. Shortlisting your vendors.
    4. Conducting demos and detailed proposal reviews.
    5. Selecting and contracting with a finalist!

    Get to know the key players in the MMS landscape

    The following slides provide a top-level overview of the popular players you will encounter in your MMS shortlisting process.

    This is a series of images of the logos for the companies which will be discussed later in this blueprint.

    Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

    SoftwareReviews

    This is an image of two screenshots from the Data Quadrant Report.

    The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions.

    Vendors are ranked by their Composite Score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.

    This is an image of two screenshots from the Emotional Footprint Report.

    The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.

    Vendors are ranked by their Customer Experience (CX) Score, which combines the overall Emotional Footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

    Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

    SoftwareReviews

    • Fact-based reviews of business software from IT professionals.
    • Product and category reports with state-of-the-art data visualization.
    • Top-tier data quality backed by a rigorous quality assurance process.
    • User-experience insight that reveals the intangibles of working with a vendor.

    CLICK HERE to ACCESS

    Comprehensive software reviews
    to make better IT decisions

    We collect and analyze the most detailed reviews on enterprise software from real users to give you an unprecedented view into the product and vendor before you buy.

    SoftwareReviews is powered by Info-Tech

    Technology coverage is a priority for Info-Tech, and SoftwareReviews provides the most comprehensive unbiased data on today's technology. Combined with the insight of our expert analysts, our members receive unparalleled support in their buying journey.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Advanced Campaign Management
    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Multichannel Integration

    Areas to Improve:

    • Mobile Marketing Management
    • Advanced Data Segmentation
    • Pricing Sensitivity and Implementation Support Model

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Adobe Experience Cloud.

    history

    This is the Logo for Adobe Experience Cloud

    "Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC), formerly Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), provides a host of innovative multichannel analytics, social, advertising, media optimization, and content management products (just to name a few). The Adobe Marketing Cloud package allows users with valid subscriptions to download the entire collection and use it directly on their computer with open access to online updates. Organizations that have a deeply ingrained Adobe footprint and have already reaped the benefits of Adobe's existing portfolio of cloud services products (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud) will find the AEC suite a functionally robust and scalable fit for their marketing management and marketing automation needs.

    However, it is important to note that AEC's pricing model is expensive when compared to other competitors in the space (e.g. Sugar Market) and, therefore, is not as affordable for smaller or mid-sized organizations. Moreover, there is the expectation of a learning curve with the AEC platform. Newly onboarded users will need to spend some time learning how to navigate and work comfortably with AEC's marketing automaton modules. "
    - Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    Adobe Experience Cloud Platform pricing is opaque.
    Request a demo.*

    *Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

    2021

    Adobe Experience Platform Launch is integrated into the Adobe Experience Platform as a suite of data collection technologies (Experience League, Adobe).

    November 2020

    Adobe announces that it will spend $1.5 billion to acquire Workfront, a provider of marketing collaboration software (TechTarget, 2020).

    September 2018

    Adobe acquires marketing automation software company Marketo (CNBC, 2018).

    June 2018

    Adobe buys e-commerce services provider Magento Commerce from private equity firm Permira for $1.68 billion (TechCrunch, 2018).

    2011

    Adobe acquires DemDex, Inc. with the intention of adding DemDex's audience-optimization software to the Adobe Online Marketing Suite (Adobe News, 2011).

    2009

    Adobe acquires online marketing and web analytics company Omniture for $1.8 billion and integrates its products into the Adobe Marketing Cloud (Zippia, 2022).

    Adobe platform launches in December 1982.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Marketing Workflow Management
    • Advanced Data Segmentation
    • Marketing Operations Management

    Areas to Improve:

    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Marketing Asset Management
    • Process of Creating and/or Managing Marketing Lists

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Dynamics 365

    history

    This is the logo for Dynamics 365

    2021

    Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite adds customer journey orchestration as a viable key feature (Tech Target, 2021)

    2019

    Microsoft begins adding to its Dynamics 365 suite in April 2019 with new functionalities such as virtual agents, fraud detection, new mixed reality (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog, 2019).

    2017

    Adobe and Microsoft expand key partnership between Adobe Experience Manager and Dynamics 365 integration (TechCrunch, 2017).

    2016

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM paid seats begin growing steadily at more than 2.5x year-over-year (TechCrunch, 2016).

    2016

    On-premises application, called Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, contains the Dynamics 365 Marketing Management platform (Learn Microsoft, 2023).

    Microsoft Dynamics 365 product suite is released on November 1, 2016.

    "Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing remains a viable option for organizations that require a range of innovative MMS tools that can provide a wealth of functional capabilities (e.g. AI-powered analytics to create targeted segments, A/B testing, personalizing engagement for each customer). Moreover, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing offers trial options to sandbox their platform for free for 30 days to help users familiarize themselves with the software before buying into the product suite.

    However, ensure that you have the time to effectively train users on implementing the MS Dynamics 365 platform. The platform does not score high on customizability in SoftwareReviews reports. Developers have only a limited ability to modify the core UI, so organizations need to be fully equipped with the knowledge needed to successfully navigate MS-based applications to take full advantage of the platform. For organizations deep in the Microsoft stack, D365 Marketing is a compelling option."
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    Dynamics 365
    Marketing

    Dynamics 365
    Marketing (Attachment)

    • Starts from $1,500 per tenant/month*
    • Includes 10,000 contacts, 100,000 interactions, and 1,000 SMS messages
    • For organizations without any other Dynamics 365 application
    • Starts from $750 per tenant/month*
    • Includes 10,000 contacts, 100,000 interactions, and 1,000 SMS messages
    • For organizations with a qualifying Dynamics 365 application

    * Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts. See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Marketing Analytics
    • Marketing Workflow Management
    • Lead Nurturing

    Areas to Improve:

    • Advanced Campaign Management
    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Marketing Segmentation

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for HubSpot

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for HubSpot

    2022

    HubSpot Marketing Hub releases Campaigns 2.0 module for its Marketing Hub platform (HubSpot, 2022).

    2018


    HubSpot announces the launch of its Marketing Hub Starter platform, a new offering that aims to give growing teams the tools they need to start marketing right (HubSpot Company News, 2018).

    2014

    HubSpot celebrates its first initial public offering on the NYSE market (HubSpot Company News, 2014).

    2013

    HubSpot opens its first international office location in Dublin, Ireland
    (HubSpot News, 2013).

    2010

    Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah write "Inbound Marketing," a seminal book that focuses on inbound marketing principles (HubSpot, n.d.).

    HubSpot opens for business in Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2005.

    "HubSpot's Marketing Hub software ranks consistently high in scores across SoftwareReviews reports and remains a strong choice for organizations that want to run successful inbound marketing campaigns that make customers interested and engaged with their business. HubSpot Marketing Hub employs comprehensive feature sets, including the option to streamline ad tracking and management, perform various audience segmentation techniques, and build personalized and automated marketing campaigns.

    However, SoftwareReviews reports indicate end users are concerned that HubSpot Marketing Hub's platform may be slightly overpriced in recent years and not cost effective for smaller and mid-sized companies that are working with a limited budget. Moreover, when it comes to mobile user accessibility reports, HubSpot's Marketing Hub does not directly offer data usage reports in relation to how mobile users navigate various web pages on the customer's website."
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    HubSpot Marketing Hub (Starter Package)

    HubSpot Marketing Hub (Professional Package)

    HubSpot Marketing Hub (Enterprise Package)

    • Starts from $50/month*
    • Includes 1,000 marketing contacts
    • All non-marketing contacts are free, up to a limit of 15 million overall contacts (marketing contacts + non-marketing contracts)
    • Starts from $890/month*
    • Includes 2,000 marketing contacts
    • Onboarding is required for a one-time fee of $3,000
    • Starts from $3600/month*
    • Includes 10,000 marketing contacts
    • Onboarding is required for a one-time fee of $6,000

    *Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Customer Journey Mapping
    • Contacts Management

    Areas to Improve:

    • Pricing Model Flexibility
    • Integrational API Support
    • Antiquated UI/CX Design Elements

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Maropost

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for MAROPOST Marketing Cloud

    2022

    Maropost acquires Retail Express, leading retail POS software in Australia for $55M (PRWire, 2022).

    2018


    Maropost develops innovative product feature updates to its marketing cloud platform (e.g. automated social campaign management, event segmentation for mobile apps) (Maropost, 2019).

    2015

    US-based communications organization Success selects Maropost Marketing Cloud for marketing automation use cases (Apps Run The World, 2015).

    2017

    Maropost is on track to become one of Toronto's fastest-growing companies, generating $30M in annual revenue (MarTech Series, 2017).

    2015

    Maropost is ranked as a "High Performer" in the Email Marketing category in a G2 Crowd Grid Report (VentureBeat, 2015).

    Maropost is founded in 2011 as a customer-centric ESP platform.

    Maropost Marketing Cloud – Essential

    Maropost
    Marketing Cloud –Professional

    Maropost
    Marketing Cloud –Enterprise

    • Starts from $279/month*
    • Includes baseline features such as email campaigns, A/B campaigns, transactional emails, etc.
    • Starts from $849/month*
    • Includes additional system functionalities of interest (e.g. mobile keywords, more journeys for marketing automation use cases)
    • Starts from $1,699/month*
    • Includes unlimited number of journeys
    • Upper limit for custom contact fields is increased by 100-150

    *Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Advanced Data Segmentation
    • Marketing Analytics
    • Multichannel Integration

    Areas to Improve:

    • Marketing Operations
      Management
    • Marketing Asset Management
    • Community Marketing Management

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Oracle Marketing Cloud.

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for Oracle Marketing Cloud

    2021

    New advanced intelligence capabilities within Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation help deliver more targeted and personalized messages (Oracle, Marketing Automation documentation).

    2015


    Oracle revamps its marketing cloud with new feature sets, including Oracle ID Graph for cross-platform identification of customers, AppCloud Connect, etc. (Forbes, 2015).

    2014

    Oracle announces the launch of the Oracle Marketing Cloud (TechCrunch, 2014).

    2005

    Oracle acquires PeopleSoft, a company that produces human resource management systems, in 2005 for $10.3B (The Economic Times, 2016).

    1982

    Oracle becomes the first company to sell relational database management software (RDBMS). In 1982 it has revenue of $2.5M (Encyclopedia.com).

    Relational Software, Inc (RSI) – later renamed Oracle Corporation – is founded in 1977.

    "Oracle Marketing Cloud offers a comprehensive interwoven and integrated marketing management solution that can help end users launch cross-channel marketing programs and unify all prospect and customer marketing signals within one singular view. Oracle Marketing Cloud ranks consistently high across our SoftwareReviews reports and sustains top scores in overall customer experience rankings at a factor of 9.0. The emotional sentiment of users interacting with Oracle Marketing Cloud is also highly favorable, with Oracle's Emotional Footprint score at +93.

    Users should be aware that some of the reporting mechanisms and report-generation capabilities may not be as mature as those of some of its competitors in the MMS space (e.g. Salesforce, Adobe). Data exportability also presents a challenge in Oracle Marketing Cloud and requires a lot of internal tweaking between end users of the system to function properly. Finally, pricing sensitivity may be a concern for small and mid-sized organizations who may find Oracle's higher-tiered pricing plans to be out of reach. "
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    Oracle Marketing Cloud pricing is opaque.
    Request a demo.*

    *Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Marketing Analytics
    • Advanced Campaign Management
    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Social Media Marketing Management

    Areas to Improve:

    • Community Marketing Management
    • Marketing Operations Management
    • Pricing Sensitivity and Vendor Support Model

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Salesforce

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for Salesforce Marketing Cloud

    2022

    Salesforce announces sustainability as a core company value (Forbes, 2022).

    2012



    Salesforce unveils Salesforce Marketing Cloud during Dreamforce 2012, with 90,000 registered attendees (Dice, 2012).

    2009

    Salesforce launches Service Cloud, bringing customer service and support automation features to the market (TechCrunch, 2009).

    2003


    The first Dreamforce event is held at the Westin St. Francis hotel in downtown San Francisco
    (Salesforce, 2020).

    2001


    Salesforce delivers $22.4M in revenue for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2002 (Salesforce, 2020).

    Salesforce is founded in 1999.

    "Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a long-term juggernaut of the marketing management software space and is the subject of many Info-Tech member inquiries. It retains strong composite and customer experience (CX) scores in our SoftwareReviews reports. Some standout features of the platform include marketing analytics, advanced campaign management functionalities, email marketing automation, and customer journey management capabilities. In recent years Salesforce has made great strides in improving the overall user experience by investing in new product functionalities such as the Einstein What-If Analyzer, which helps test how your next email campaign will impact overall customer engagement, triggers personalized campaign messages based on an individual user's behavior, and uses powerful real-time segmentation and sophisticated AI to deliver contextually relevant experiences that inspire customers to act.

    On the downside, we commonly see Salesforce's solutions as costlier than competitors' offerings, and its commercial/sales teams tend to be overly aggressive in marketing its solutions without a distinct link to overarching business requirements. "
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    Marketing Cloud Basics

    Marketing Cloud Pro

    Marketing Cloud Corporate

    Marketing Cloud Enterprise

    • Starts at $400*
    • Per org/month
    • Personalized promotional email marketing
    • Starts at $1,250*
    • Per org/month
    • Personalized marketing automation with email solutions
    • Starts at $3,750*
    • Per org/month
    • Personalized cross-channel strategic marketing solutions

    "Request a Quote"

    *Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts. See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Marketing Workflow Management
    • Marketing Analytics

    Areas to Improve:

    • Mobile Marketing Management
    • Marketing Operations Management
    • Advanced Data Segmentation

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for SAP

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for SAP

    2022

    SAP announces the second cycle of the 2022 SAP Customer Engagement Initiative. (SAP Community Blog, 2022).

    2020

    SAP acquires Austrian cloud marketing company Emarsys (TechCrunch, 2020).

    2015

    SAP Digital for Customer Engagement launches in May 2015 (SAP News, 2015).

    2009

    SAP begins branching out into three markets of the future (mobile technology, database technology, and cloud). SAP acquires some of its competitors (e.g. Ariba, SuccessFactors, Business Objects) to quickly establish itself as a key player in those areas (SAP, n.d.).

    1999

    SAP responds to the internet and new economy by launching its mysap.com strategy (SAP, n.d.).

    SAP is founded In 1972.

    "Over the years, SAP has positioned itself as one of the usual suspects across the enterprise applications market. While SAP has a broad range of capabilities within the CRM and customer experience space, it consistently underperforms in many of our user-driven SoftwareReviews reports for MMS and adjacent areas, ranking lower in MMS product feature capabilities such as email marketing automation and advanced campaign management than other mainstream MMS vendors, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud. The SAP Customer Engagement Marketing platform seems decidedly a secondary focus for SAP, behind its more compelling presence across the enterprise resource planning space.

    If you are approaching an MMS selection from a greenfield lens and with no legacy vendor baggage for SAP elsewhere, experience suggests that your needs will be better served by a vendor that places greater primacy on the MMS aspect of their portfolio."
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    SAP Customer Engagement Marketing pricing is opaque:
    Request a demo.*

    *Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Social Media Automation
    • Email Marketing Automation
    • Marketing Analytics

    Areas to Improve:

    • Ease of Data Integration
    • Breadth of Features
    • Marketing Workflow Management

    b

    SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Campaign Management
    • Segmentation
    • Email Delivery

    Areas to Improve:

    • Mobile Optimization
    • A/B Testing
    • Content Authoring

    This is an image of SoftwareReviews analysis for ZOHO Campaigns.

    history

    This is an image of the Logo for ZOHO Campaigns

    2021

    Zoho announces CRM-Campaigns sync (Zoho Campaigns Community Learning, 2021).

    2020

    Zoho reaches more than 50M customers in January ( Zippia, n.d.).

    2017

    Zoho launches Zoho One, a comprehensive suite of 40+ applications (Zoho Blog, 2017).

    2012

    Zoho releases Zoho Campaigns (Business Wire, 2012).

    2007

    Zoho expands into the collaboration space with the release of Zoho Docs and Zoho Meetings (Zoho, n.d.).

    2005

    Zoho CRM is released (Zoho, n.d.).

    Zoho platform is founded in 1996.

    "Zoho maintains a long-running repertoire of end-to-end software solutions for business development purposes. In addition to its flagship CRM product, the company also offers Zoho Campaigns, which is an email marketing software platform that enables contextually driven marketing techniques via dynamic personalization, email interactivity, A/B testing, etc. For organizations that already maintain a deep imprint of Zoho solutions, Zoho Campaigns will be a natural extension to their immediate software environment.

    Zoho Campaigns is a great ecosystem play in environments that have a material Zoho footprint. In the absence of an existing Zoho environment, it's prudent to consider other affordable products as well."
    Yaz Palanichamy
    Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

    Free Version

    Standard

    Professional

    • Starts at $0*
    • Per user/month billed annually
    • Up to 2,000 contacts
    • 6,000 emails/month
    • Starts at $3.75*
    • Per user/month billed annually
    • Up to 100,000 contacts
    • Advanced email templates
    • SMS marketing
    • Starts at $6*
    • Per user/month billed annually
    • Advanced segmentation
    • Dynamic content

    *Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.

    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Leverage Info-Tech's research to plan and execute your MMS implementation

    Use Info-Tech's three-phase implementation process to guide your planning:

    1. Assess

    2. Prepare

    3. Govern & Course Correct

    Download Info-Tech's Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation
    Establish and execute an end-to-end, agile framework to succeed with the implementation of a major enterprise application.

    Ensure your implementation team has a high degree of trust and communication

    If external partners are needed, dedicate an internal resource to managing the vendor and partner relationships.

    Communication

    Teams must have some type of communication strategy. This can be broken into:

    • Regularity: Having a set time each day to communicate progress and a set day to conduct retrospectives.
    • Ceremonies: Injecting awards and continually emphasizing delivery of value to encourage relationship building and constructive motivation.
    • Escalation: Voicing any concerns and having someone responsible for addressing them.

    Proximity

    Distributed teams create complexity as communication can break down. This can be mitigated by:

    • Location: Placing teams in proximity to eliminate the barrier of geographical distance and time zone differences.
    • Inclusion: Making a deliberate attempt to pull remote team members into discussions and ceremonies.
    • Communication Tools: Having the right technology (e.g. video conference) to help bring teams closer together virtually.

    Trust

    Members should trust other members are contributing to the project and completing their required tasks on time. Trust can be developed and maintained by:

    • Accountability: Having frequent quality reviews and feedback sessions. As work becomes more transparent, people become more accountable.
    • Role Clarity: Having a clear definition of what everyone's role is.

    Selecting a right-sized MMS platform

    This selection guide allows organizations to execute a structured methodology for picking an MMS platform that aligns with their needs. This includes:

    • Alignment and prioritization of key business and technology drivers for an MMS selection business case.
    • Identification of key use cases and requirements for a right-sized MMS platform.
    • A comprehensive market scan of key players in the MMS market space.

    This formal MMS selection initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify pivotal sales and marketing automation priorities, and thereby allow for the rollout of a streamlined MMS platform that is highly likely to satisfy all stakeholder needs.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    contact your account representative for more information

    workshops@infotech.com

    1-888-670-8889

    Summary of accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • What marketing management is
    • Historical origins of marketing management
    • The future of marketing management
    • Key trends in marketing management suites

    Processes Optimized

    • Requirements gathering
    • RFPs and contract reviews
    • Marketing management suite vendor selection
    • Marketing management platform implementation

    Marketing Management

    • Adobe Experience Cloud
    • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing
    • HubSpot Marketing Hub
    • Maropost Marketing Cloud
    • Oracle Marketing Cloud

    Vendors Analyzed

    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud
    • SAP
    • Sugar Market
    • Zoho Campaigns

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Select a Marketing Management Suite

    Many organizations struggle with taking a systematic approach to selection that pairs functional requirements with specific marketing workflows, and as a result they choose a marketing management suite (MMS) that is not well aligned to their needs, wasting resources and causing end-user frustration.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    Customer relationship management (CRM) application portfolios are often messy,
    with multiple integration points, distributed data, and limited ongoing end-user training. A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

    Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide

    Speed up the process to build your business case and select your CRM solution. Despite the importance of CRM selection and implementation, many organizations struggle to define an approach to picking the right vendor and rolling out the solution in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

    Bibliography

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    "Enhanced Release of SAP Digital for Customer Engagement Helps Anyone Go Beyond CRM." SAP News, 8 Dec. 2015. Press release.
    Fang, Mingyu. "A Deep Dive into Gucci's Metaverse Practice." Medium.com, 27 Feb 2022. Accessed Oct 2022.
    Flanagan, Ellie. "HubSpot Launches Marketing Hub Starter to Give Growing Businesses the Tools They Need to Start Marketing Right." HubSpot Company News, 17 July 2018. Web.
    Fleishman, Hannah. "HubStop Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering." HubSpot Company News, 8 Oct. 204. Web.
    Fluckinger, Don. "Adobe to acquire Workfront for $1.5 billion." TechTarget, 10 Nov 2020. Accessed Nov 2022.
    Fluckinger, Don. "Microsoft Dynamics 365 adds customer journey orchestration." TechTarget, 2 March 2021. Accessed Nov 2022.
    Green Marketing: Explore the Strategy of Green Marketing." Marketing Schools, 19 Nov 2020. Accessed Oct 2022.
    Ha, Anthony. "Oracle Announces Its Cross-Platform Marketing Cloud." TechCrunch, 30 April 2014. Web.
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    HubSpot. "Our Story." HubSpot, n.d. Web.
    Jackson, Felicia. "Salesforce Tackles Net Zero Credibility As It Adds Sustainability As A Fifth Core Value." Forbes, 16 Feb. 2022. Web.
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    Need hands-on assistance?

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    Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need

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    • A mature EA function is increasingly becoming an organizational priority to drive innovation, provide insight, and define digital capabilities.
    • Proliferation of digital technology has increased complexity, straining the EA function to deliver insights.
    • An EA tool increases the efficiency with which the EA function can deliver insights, but a large number of organizations have not a selected an EA tool that suits their needs.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • EA tool value largely comes from tying organizational context and requirements to the selection process.
    • Organizations that have selected an EA tool often fail to have it adopted and show its true value. To ensure successful adoption and value delivery, the EA tool selection process must account for the needs of business stakeholders and tool users.

    Impact and Result

    • Link the need for the EA tool to your organization’s EA value proposition. The connection enables the EA tool to address the future needs of stakeholders and the design style of the EA team.
    • Use Info-Tech’s EA Solution Recommendation Tool to create a shortlist of EA tools that is suited to the preferences of the organization.
    • Gather additional information on the shortlist of EA tool vendors to narrow down the selection using the EA Tool Request for Information Template.

    Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should procure an EA tool in the digital age, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need – Executive Brief
    • Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need – Phases 1-3

    1. Make the case

    Decide if an EA tool is needed in your organization and define the requirements of EA tool users.

    • Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need – Phase 1: Make the Case
    • EA Value Proposition Template
    • EA Tool User Requirements Template

    2. Shortlist EA tools

    Determine your organization’s preferences in terms of product capabilities and vendor characteristics.

    • Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need – Phase 2: Shortlist EA Tools
    • EA Solution Recommendation Tool

    3. Select and communicate the process

    Gather information on shortlisted vendors and make your final decision.

    • Select an EA Tool Based on Business and User Need – Phase 3: Select and Communicate the Process
    • EA Tool Request for Information Template
    • EA Tool Demo Script Template
    • Request for Proposal (RFP) Template
    • EA Tool Selection Process Template
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    Agile Enterprise Architecture Operating Model

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    Establish an enterprise architecture practice that:

    • Leverages an operating model that promotes/supports agility within the organization.
    • Embraces business, data, application, and technology architectures in an optimal mix.
    • Is Agile in itself and will be sustainable and reactive to business needs, staying relevant and “profitable” – continuously delivering business value.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Use your business and EA strategy and design principles to right-size standardized operating models to fit your EA organization’s needs.
    • You need to define a sound set of design principles before commencing with the design of your EA organization.
    • The EA operating model structure should be rigid but pliable enough to fit the needs of the stakeholders it provides services to.
    • A phased approach and a good communication strategy is key to the success of the new EA organization.
    • Start with one group and work out the hurdles before rolling it out organization-wide.
    • Make sure that you communicate regularly on wins but also on hurdles and how to overcome them.

    Impact and Result

    • The organization design approach proposed will aim to provide twofold agility: the ability to stretch and shrink depending on business requirements and the promotion of agility in architecture delivery.
    • By recognizing that agility comes in different flavors, organizations using more traditional design patterns will also benefit from the approach advocated by this blueprint.

    Agile Enterprise Architecture Operating Model Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out create an Agile EA operating model to execute the EA function, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Design your EA operating model

    You need to define a sound set of design principles before commencing with the design of your EA organization.

    • Agile EA Operating Model Communication Deck
    • Agile EA Operating Model Workbook
    • Business Architect
    • Application Architect
    • Data Architect
    • Enterprise Architect

    2. Define your EA organizational structure

    The EA operating model structure should be rigid but pliable enough to fit the needs of the stakeholders it provide services to.

    • EA Views Taxonomy
    • EA Operating Model Template
    • Architecture Board Charter Template
    • EA Policy Template
    • EA Compliance Waiver Form Template

    3. Implement the EA operating model

    A phased approach and a good communications strategy are key to the success of the new EA organization.

    • EA Roadmap
    • EA Communication Plan Template
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    Workshop: Agile Enterprise Architecture Operating Model

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 EA Function Design

    The Purpose

    Identify how EA looks within the organization and ensure all the necessary skills are accounted for within the function.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    EA is designed to be the most appropriately placed and structured for the organization.

    Activities

    1.1 Place the EA department.

    1.2 Define roles for each team member.

    1.3 Find internal and external talent.

    1.4 Create job descriptions with required proficiencies.

    Outputs

    EA organization design

    Role-based skills and competencies

    Talent acquisition strategy

    Job descriptions

    2 EA Engagement Model

    The Purpose

    Create a thorough engagement model to interact with stakeholders.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An understanding of each process within the engagement model.

    Create stakeholder interaction cards to plan your conversations.

    Activities

    2.1 Define each engagement process for your organization.

    2.2 Document stakeholder interactions.

    Outputs

    EA Operating Model Template

    EA Stakeholder Engagement Model Template

    3 EA Governance

    The Purpose

    Develop EA boards, alongside a charter and policies to effectively govern the function.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Governance that aids the EA function instead of being a bureaucratic obstacle.

    Adherence to governace.

    Activities

    3.1 Outline the architecture review process.

    3.2 Position the architecture review board.

    3.3 Create a committee charter.

    3.4 Make effective governance policy.

    Outputs

    Architecture Board Charter Template

    EA Policy Template

    4 Architecture Development Framework

    The Purpose

    Create an operating model that is influenced by universal standards including TOGAF, Zachmans, and DoDAF.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A thoroughly articulated development framework.

    Understanding of the views that influence each domain.

    Activities

    4.1 Tailor an architecture development framework to your organizational context.

    Outputs

    EA Operating Model Template

    Enterprise Architecture Views Taxonomy

    5 Operational Plan

    The Purpose

    Create a change management and communication plan or roadmap to execute the operating model.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Build a plan that takes change management and communication into consideration to achieve the wanted benefits of an EA program.

    Effectively execute the roadmap.

    Activities

    5.1 Create a sponsorship action plan.

    5.2 Outline a communication plan.

    5.3 Execute a communication roadmap.

    Outputs

    Sponsorship Action Plan

    EA Communication Plan Template

    EA Roadmap

    Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively

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    • Parent Category Name: Vendor Management
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    • Forty-eight percent of CIOs believe their budgets are inadequate.
    • CIOs and IT departments are getting more involved with negotiations to reduce costs and risk.
    • Not all negotiators are created equal, and the gap between a skilled negotiator and an average negotiator is not always easy to identify objectively.
    • Skilled negotiators are in short supply.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Preparation is critical for the success of your negotiation, but you cannot prepare for every eventuality.
    • Communication is the heart and soul of negotiations, but what is being “said” is only part of the picture.
    • Skilled negotiators separate themselves based on skillsets, and outcomes alone may not provide an accurate assessment of a negotiator.

    Impact and Result

    Addressing and managing critical negotiation elements helps:

    • Improve negotiation skills.
    • Implement your negotiation strategy more effectively.
    • Improve negotiation results.

    Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should create and follow a scalable process for preparing to negotiate with vendors, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. During

    Throughout this phase, ten essential negotiation elements are identified and reviewed.

    • Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively – Phase 1: During
    • During Negotiations Tool
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 12 Steps to Better Negotiation Preparation

    The Purpose

    Improve negotiation skills and outcomes.

    Understand how to use the Info-Tech During Negotiations Tool.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A better understanding of the subtleties of the negotiation process and an identification of where the negotiation strategy can go awry.

    The During Negotiation Tool will be reviewed and configured for the customer’s environment (as applicable).

    Activities

    1.1 Manage six key items during the negotiation process.

    1.2 Set the right tone and environment for the negotiation.

    1.3 Focus on improving three categories of intangibles.

    1.4 Improve communication skills to improve negotiation skills.

    1.5 Customize your negotiation approach to interact with different personality traits and styles.

    1.6 Maximize the value of your discussions by focusing on seven components.

    1.7 Understand the value of impasses and deadlocks and how to work through them.

    1.8 Use concessions as part of your negotiation strategy.

    1.9 Identify and defeat common vendor negotiation ploys.

    1.10 Review progress and determine next steps.

    Outputs

    Sample negotiation ground rules

    Sample vendor negotiation ploys

    Sample discussion questions and evaluation matrix

    Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI

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    • Understanding the impact of the machine learning/AI component that is built into most of the enterprise products and tools and its role in the implementation of the solution.
    • Understanding the most important aspects that the organization needs to consider while planning the implementation of the AI-powered product.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Organizations are faced with multiple challenges trying to adopt AI solutions. Challenges include data issues, ethics and compliance considerations, business process challenges, and misaligned leadership goals.
    • When choosing the right product to meet business needs, organizations need to know what questions to ask vendors to ensure they fully understand the implications of buying an AI/ML product.
    • To guarantee the success of your off-the-shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

    Impact and Result

    To guarantee success of the off-the-shelf AI implementation and deliver value, in addition to formulating a clear definition of the business case and understanding of data, organizations should also:

    • Know what questions to ask vendors while evaluating AI-powered products.
    • Measure the impact of the project on business and IT processes.

    Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI Deck – A step-by-step approach that will help guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers business value

    Use this practical and actionable framework that will guide you through the planning of your Off-the-Shelf AI product implementation.

    • Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI Storyboard

    2. Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis – A tool that will guide the analysis and planning of the implementation

    Use this analysis tool to ensure the success of the implementation.

    • Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI

    A practical guide to ensure return on your Off-the-Shelf AI investment

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge
    • Understanding the impact of the machine learning/AI component that is built into most of the enterprise products and tools and its role in the implementation of the solution.
    • What are the most important aspects that organizations needs to consider while planning the implementation of the AI-powered product?
    Common Obstacles
    • Organizations are faced with multiple challenges trying to adopt an AI solution. Challenges include data issues, ethics and compliance considerations, business process challenges, and misaligned leadership goals.
    • When choosing the right product to meet business needs, organizations need to know what questions to ask vendors to ensure they fully understand the implications of buying an AI/ML product.
    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Info-Tech’s approach includes a framework that will guide organizations through the process of the Off-the-Shelf AI product selection.

    To guarantee success of the Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and deliver value, organization should start with clear definition of the business case and an understanding of data.

    Other steps include:

    • Knowing what questions to ask vendors to evaluate AI-powered products.
    • Measuring the impact of the project on your business and IT processes.
    • Assessing impact on the organization and ensure team readiness.

    Info-Tech Insight

    To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Getting value out of AI and machine learning investments

    92.1%

    of companies say they are achieving returns on their data and AI investments

    91.7%

    said they were increasing investments in data and AI

    26.0%

    of companies have AI systems in widespread production
    However, CIO Magazine identified nine main hurdles to AI adoption based on the survey results:
    • Data issues
    • Business process challenges
    • Implementation challenges and skill shortages
    • Costs of tools and development
    • Misaligned leadership goals
    • Measuring and proving business value
    • Legal and regulatory risks
    • Cybersecurity
    • Ethics
    • (Source: CIO, 2019)
    “Data and AI initiatives are becoming well established, investments are paying off, and companies are getting more economic value from AI.” (Source: NewVantage, 2022.)

    67% of companies are currently using machine learning, and 97% are using or planning to use it in the next year.” (Source: Deloitte, 2020)

    AI vs. ML

    Machine learning systems learn from experience and without explicit instructions. They learn patterns from data then analyze and make predictions based on past behavior and the patterns learned.

    Artificial intelligence is a combination of technologies and can include machine learning. AI systems perform tasks mimicking human intelligence such as learning from experience and problem solving. Most importantly, AI is making its own decisions without human intervention.

    The AI system can make assumptions, test these assumptions, and learn from the results.

    (Level of decision making required increases from left to right)
    Statistical Reasoning
    Infer relationships between variables

    Statistical models are designed to find relationships between variables and the significance of those relationships.

    Machine Learning:
    Making accurate predictions

    Machine learning is a subset of AI that discovers patterns from data without being explicitly programmed to do so.

    Artificial Intelligence
    Dynamic adaptation to novelty

    AI systems choose the optimal combination of methods to solve a problem. They make assumptions, reassess the model, and reevaluate the data.

    “Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience.” (Tom Mitchell, 1997)

    “At its simplest form, artificial intelligence is a field, which combines computer science and robust datasets, to enable problem-solving.” (IBM, “What is artificial intelligence?”)

    Types of Off-the-Shelf AI products and solutions

    ML/AI-Powered Products Off-the-Shelf Pre-built and Pre-trained AI/ML Models
    • AI/ML capabilities built into the product and might require training as part of the implementation.
    • Off-the-Shelf ML/AI Models, pre-built, pre-trained, and pre-optimized for a particular task. For example, language models or image recognition models that can be used to speed up and simplify ML/AI systems development.
    Examples of OTS tools/products: Examples of OTS models:

    The data inputs for these models are defined, the developer has to conform to the provided schema, and the data outputs are usually fixed due to the particular task the OTS model is built to solve.

    Insight summary

    Overarching insight:

    To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

    Business Goals

    Question the value that AI adds to the tool you are evaluating. Don’t go after the tool simply because it has an AI label attached to it. AI/ML capabilities might add little value but increase implementation complexity. Define the problem you are solving and document business requirements for the tool or a model.

    Data

    Know your data. Determine data requirements to:

    • Train the model during the implementation and development.
    • Run the model in production.

    People/Skills

    Define the skills required for the implementation and assemble the team that will support the project from requirements to deployment and support, through its entire lifecycle. Don’t forget about production support and maintenance.

    Choosing an AI-Powered Tool

    No need to reinvent the wheel and build a product you can buy, but be prepared to work around tool limitations, and make sure you understand the data and the model the tool is built on.

    Choosing an AI/ML Model

    Using Off-the-Shelf-AI models enables an agile approach to system development. Faster POC and validation of ideas and approaches, but the model might not be customizable for your requirements.

    Guaranteeing Off-the-Shelf AI Implementation Success

    Info-Tech Insight

    To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

    Why do you need AI in your toolset?
    Business Goals

    Clearly defined problem statement and business requirements for the tool or a model will help you select the right solution that will deliver business value even if it does not have all the latest bells and whistles.

    Small chevron pointing right.
    Do you know the data required for implementation?
    Data

    Expected business outcome defines data requirements for implementation. Do you have the right data required to train and run the model?

    Large chevron pointing right.
    Is your organization ready for AI?
    People/Team/ Skills

    New skills and expertise are required through all phases of the implementation: design, build, deployment, support, and maintenance, as well as post-production support, scaling, and adoption.

    Data Architecture/ Infrastructure

    New tool or model will impact your cloud and integration strategy. It will have to integrate with the existing infrastructure, in the cloud or on prem.

    Large chevron pointing right.
    What questions do you need to ask when choosing the solution?
    Product/ Tool or Model Selection

    Do you know what model powers the AI tool? What data was used to train the tool and what data is required to run it? Ask the right questions.

    Small chevron pointing right.
    Are you measuring impact on your processes?
    Business and IT Processes

    Business processes need to be defined or updated to incorporate the output of the tool back into the business processes to deliver value.

    IT governance and support processes need to accommodate the new AI-powered tool.

    Small chevron pointing right.
    Realize and measure business value of your AI investment
    Value

    Do you have a clear understanding of the value that AI will bring to your organization?Optimization?Increased revenue?Operational efficiency?

    Introduction of Off-the-Shelf AI Requires a Strategic Approach

    Business Goals and Value Data People/Team/ Skills Infrastructure Business and IT Processes
    AI/ML–powered tools
    • Define a business problem that can be solved with either an AI-powered tool or an AI/ML pre-built model that will become part of the solution.
    • Define expectations and assumptions around the value that AI can bring.
    • Document business requirements for the tool or model.
    • Define the scope for a prototype or POC.
    • Define data requirements.
    • Define data required for implementation.
    • Determine if the required data can be acquired or captured/generated.
    • Document internal and external sources of data.
    • Validate data quality (define requirements and criteria for data quality).
    • Define where and how the data is stored and will be stored. Does it have to be moved or consolidated?
    • Define all stakeholders involved in the implementation and support.
    • Define skills and expertise required through all phases of the implementation: design, build, deployment, support, and maintenance.
    • Define skills and expertise required to grow AI practice and achieve the next level of adoption, scaling, and development of the tool or model POC.
    • Define infrastructure requirements for either Cloud, Software-as-a-Service, or on-prem deployment of a tool or model.
    • Define how the tool is integrated with existing systems and into existing infrastructure.
    • Determine the cost to deploy and run the tool/model.
    • Define processes that need to be updated to accommodate new functionality.
    • Define how the outcome of the tool or a model (e.g. predictions) are incorporated back into the business processes.
    • Define new business and IT processes that need to be defined around the tool (e.g. chatbot maintenance; analysis of the data generated by the tool).
    Off-the-shelf AI/ML pre-built models
    • Define the business metrics and KPIs to measure success of the implementation against.
    • Determine if there are requirements for a specific data format required for the tool or a model.
    • Determine if there is a need to classify/label the data (supervised learning).
    • Define privacy and security requirements.
    • Define requirements for employee training. This can be vendor training for a tool or platform training in the case of a pre-built model or service.
    • Define if ML/AI expertise is required.
    • Is the organization ready for ML/AI? Conduct an AI literacy survey and understand team’s concerns, fears, and misconceptions and address them.
    • Define requirements for:
      • Data migration.
      • Security.
      • AI/ML pipeline deployment and maintenance.
    • Define requirements for operation and maintenance of the tool or model.
    • Confirm infrastructure readiness.
    • How AI and its output will be used across the organization.

    Define Business Goals and Objectives

    Why do you need AI in your toolset? What value will AI deliver? Have a clear understanding of business benefits and the value AI delivers through the tool.

    • Define a business problem that can be solved with either an AI-powered tool or AI/ML pre-built model.
    • Define expectations and assumptions around the value that AI can bring.
    • Document business requirements for a tool or model.
    • Start with the POC or a prototype to test assumptions, architecture, and components of the solution.
    • Define business metrics and KPIs to measure success of the implementation.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Question the value that AI adds to the tool you are evaluating. Don’t go after the tool simply because it has an AI label attached to it. AI/ML capabilities might add little value but increase implementation complexity. Define the problem you are solving and document business requirements for the tool or a model.

    Venn diagram of 'Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)' with a larger circle at the top, 'Machine Learning (ML)', and three smaller ovals intersecting, 'Computer Vision', 'Natural Language Processing (NLP)', and 'Robotic Process Automation (RPA)'.

    AAI solutions and technologies are helping organizations make faster decisions and predict future outcomes such as:

    • Business process automation
    • Intelligent integration
    • Intelligent insights
    • Operational efficiency improvement
    • Increase revenue
    • Improvement of existing products and services
    • Product and process innovation

    1. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to define business drivers and document business requirements

    2-3 hours
    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Business Drivers tab, a table with columns 'AI/ML Tool or Model', 'Use Case', 'Business problem / goal for AI/ML use case', 'Description', 'Business Owner (Primary Stakeholder)', 'Priority', 'Stakeholder Groups Impacted', 'Requirements Defined? Yes/No', 'Related Data Domains', and 'KPIs'. Use the Business Drivers tab to document:
    • Business objectives of the initiative that might drive the AI/ML use case.
    • The business owner or primary stakeholder who will help to define business value and requirements.
    • All stakeholders who will be involved or impacted.
    • KPIs that will be used to assess the success of the POC.
    • Data required for the implementation.
    • Use the Business Requirements tab to document high-level requirements for a tool or model.
    • These requirements will be used while defining criteria for a tool selection and to validate if the tool or model meets your business goals.
    • You can use either traditional BRD format or a user story to document requirements.
    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Business Requirements tab, a table with columns 'Requirement ID', 'Requirement Description / user story', 'Requirement Category', 'Stakeholder / User Role', 'Requirement Priority', and 'Complexity (point estimates)'.

    Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

    1. Define business drivers and document business requirements

    Input

    • Strategic plan of the organization
    • Data strategy that defines target data capabilities required to support enterprise strategic goals
    • Roadmap of business and data initiatives to support target state of data capabilities

    Output

    • Prioritized list of business use cases where an AI-powered tool or AI/ML can deliver business value
    • List of high-level requirements for the selected use case

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/Flip Charts
    • Off-the-Shelf-AI Analysis Tool, “Business Drivers” and “Business Requirements” tabs

    Participants

    • CIO
    • Senior business and IT stakeholders
    • Data owner(s)
    • Data steward(s)
    • Enterprise Architect
    • Data Architect
    • Data scientist/Data analyst

    Understand data required for implementation

    Do you have the right data to implement and run the AI-powered tool or AI/ML model?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Know your data. Determine data requirements to:

    • Train the model during the implementation and development, and
    • Run the model in production
    AvailabilityArrow pointing rightQualityArrow pointing rightPreparationArrow pointing rightBias, Privacy, SecurityArrow pointing rightData Architecture
    • Define what data is required for implementation, e.g. customer data, financial data, product sentiment.
    • If the data is not available, can it be acquired, gathered, or generated?
    • Define the volume of data required for implementation and production.
    • If the model has to be trained, do you have the data required for training (e.g. dictionary of terms)? Can it be created, gathered, or acquired?
    • Document internal and external sources of data.
    • Evaluate data quality for all data sources based on the requirements and criteria defined in the previous step.
    • For datasets with data quality issues, determine if the data issues can be resolved (e.g. missing values are inferred). If not, can this issue be resolved by using other data sources?
    • Engage a Data Governance organization to address any data quality concerns.
    • Determine if there are requirements for a specific data format required for the tool or model.
    • Determine if there is a need to classify/label or tag the data. What are the metadata requirements?
    • Define whether or not the implementation team needs to aggregate or transform the data before it can be used.
    • Define privacy requirements, as these might affect the availability of the data for ML/AI.
    • Define data bias concerns and considerations. Do you have datasheets for datasets that will be used in this project? What datasets cannot be used to prevent bias?
    • What are the security requirements and how will they affect data storage, product selection, and infrastructure requirements for the tool and overall solution?
    • Define where and how the data is currently stored and will be stored.
    • Does it have to be migrated or consolidated? Does it have to be moved to the cloud or between systems?
    • Is a data lake or data warehouse a requirement for this implementation as defined by the solution architecture?

    2. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to document data requirements

    2-3 hours

    Use the Data tab to document the following for each data source or dataset:
    • Data Domain – e.g. Customer data
    • Data Concept – e.g. Customer
    • Data Internally Accessible – Identify datasets that are required for the implementation even if the data might not be available internally. Work on determining if the data ca be acquired externally or collected internally.
    • Source System – define the primary source system for the data, e.g. Salesforce
    • Target System (if applicable) – Define if the data needs to be migrated/transferred. For example, you might use a datalake or data warehouse for the AI/ML solution or migrate data to the cloud.
    • Classification/Taxonomy/Ontology
    • Data Steward
    • Data Owner
    • Data Quality – Data quality indicator
    • Refresh Rate – Frequency of data refresh. Indicate if the data can be accessed in real time or near-real time

    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Data tab, a spreadsheet table with the columns listed to the left and below.
    • Retention – Retention policy requirements
    • Compliance Requirements – Define if data has to comply with any of the regulatory requirements, e.g. GDPR
    • Privacy, Bias, and Ethics Considerations – Privacy Act, PIPEDA, etc. Identify if the dataset contains sensitive information that should be excluded from the model, such as gender, age, race etc. Indicate fairness metrics, if applicable.

    Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

    2. Document data requirements

    Input

    • Documented business use cases from Step 1.
    • High-level business requirements from Step 1.
    • Data catalog, data dictionaries, business glossary
    • Data flows and data architecture

    Output

    • High-level data requirements
    • List of data sources and datasets that can be used for the implementation
    • Datasets that need to be collected or acquired externally

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/Flip Charts
    • Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Data” tab

    Participants

    • CIO
    • Business and IT stakeholders
    • Data owner(s)
    • Data steward(s)
    • Enterprise Architect
    • Data Architect
    • Data scientist/Data analyst

    Is Your Organization Ready for AI?

    Assess organizational readiness and define stakeholders impacted by the implementation. Build the team with the right skillset to drive the solution.

    • Implementation of the AI/ML-powered Off-the-Shelf Tool or an AI/ML model will require a team with a combination of skills through all phases of the project, from design of the solution to build, production, deployment, and support.
    • Document the skillsets required and determine the skills gap. Before you start hiring, depending on the role, you might find talent within the organization to join the implementation team with little to no training.
    • AI/ML resources that may be needed on your team driving AI implementation (you might consider bringing part-time resources to fill the gaps or use vendor developers) are:
      • Data Scientist
      • Machine Learning Engineer
      • Data Engineer
      • Data Architect
      • AI/ML Ops engineer
    • Define training requirements. Consider vendor training for a tool or platform.
    • Plan for future scaling and the growing of the solution and AI practice. Assess the need to apply AI in other business areas. Work with the team to analyze use cases and prioritize AI initiatives. As the practice grows, grow your team expertise.
    • Identify the stakeholders who will be affected by the AI implementation.
    • Work with them to understand and address any concerns, fears, or misconceptions around the role of AI and the consequences of bringing AI into the organization.
    • Develop a communication and change management plan to educate everyone within the organization on the application and benefits of using AI and machine learning.

    Info-Tech Insight:

    Define the skills required for the implementation and assemble the team that will support the project through its entire lifecycle. Don’t forget about production, support, and maintenance.

    3. Build your implementation team

    1-2 hours

    Input: Solution conceptual design, Current resource availability

    Output: Roles required for the implementation of the solution, Resources gap analysis, Training and hiring plan

    Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “People and Team” tab

    Participants: Project lead, HR, Enterprise Architect

    1. Review your solution conceptual design and define implementation team roles.
    2. Document requirements for each role.
    3. Review current org chart and job descriptions and identify skillset gaps. Draft an action plan to fill in the roles.
    4. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's People and Team tab to document team roles for the entire implementation, including design, build/implement, deployment, support and maintenance, and future development.

    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's People and Team tab, a table with columns 'Design', 'Implement', 'Deployment', 'Support and Maintenance', and 'Future Development'.

    Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

    Cloud, SaaS or On Prem – what are my options and what is the impact?

    Depending on the architecture of the solution, define the impact on the current infrastructure, including system integration, AI/ML pipeline deployment, maintenance, and data storage

    • Data Architecture: use the current data architecture to design the architecture for an AI-powered solution. Assess changes to the data architecture with the introduction of a new tool to make sure it is scalable enough to support the change.
    • Define infrastructure requirements for either Cloud, Software-as-a-Service, or on-prem deployment of a tool or model.
    • Define how the tool will be integrated with existing systems and into existing infrastructure.
    • Define requirements for:
      • Data migration and data storage
      • Security
      • AI/ML pipeline deployment, production monitoring, and maintenance
    • Define requirements for operation and maintenance of the tool or model.
    • Work with your infrastructure architect and vendor to determine the cost of deploying and running the tool/model.
    • Make a decision on the preferred architecture of the system and confirm infrastructure readiness.

    Download the Create an Architecture for AI blueprint

    4. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to document infrastructure decisions

    2-3 hours

    Input: Solution conceptual design

    Output: Infrastructure requirements, Infrastructure readiness assessment

    Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Infrastructure” tab

    Participants: Infrastructure Architect, Solution Architect, Enterprise Architect, Data Architect, ML/AI Ops Engineer

    1. Work with Infrastructure, Data, Solution, and Enterprise Architects to define your conceptual solution architecture.
    2. Define integration and storage requirements.
    3. Document security requirements for the solution in general and the data specifically.
    4. Define MLOps requirements and tools required for ML/AI pipeline deployment and production monitoring.
    5. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Infrastructure tab to document requirements and decisions around Data and Infrastructure Architecture.

    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Infrastructure tab, a table with columns 'Cloud, SaaS or On-Prem', 'Data Migration Requirements', 'Data Storage Requirements', 'Security Requirements', 'Integrations Required', and 'AI/ML Pipeline Deployment and Maintenance Requirements'.

    Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

    What questions do you need to ask vendors when choosing the solution?

    Take advantage of Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework (RASF) to guide tool selection, but ask vendors the right questions to understand implications of having AI/ML built into the tool or a model

    Data Model Implementation and Integration Deployment Security and Compliance
    • What data (attributes) were used to train the model?
    • Do you have datasheets for the data used?
    • How was data bias mitigated?
    • What are the data labeling/classification requirements for training the model?
    • What data is required for production? E.g. volume; type of data, etc.
    • Were there any open-source libraries used in the model? If yes, how were vulnerabilities and security concerns addressed?
    • What algorithms are implemented in the tool/model?
    • Can model parameters be configured?
    • What is model accuracy?
    • Level of customization required for the implementation to meet our requirements.
    • Does the model require training? If yes, can you provide details? Can you estimate the effort required?
    • Integration capabilities and requirements.
    • Data migration requirements for tool operation and development.
    • Administrator console – is this functionality available?
    • Implementation timeframe.
    • Is the model or tool deployable on premises or in the cloud? Do you support hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployment?
    • What cloud platforms are your product/model integrated with (AWS, Azure, GCP)?
    • What are the infrastructure requirements?
    • Is the model containerized/ scalable?
    • What product support and product updates are available?
    • Regulatory compliance (GDPR, PIPEDA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, CCPA, SOX, etc.)?
    • How are data security risks addressed?

    Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Vendor Questionnaire” tab to track vendor responses to these questions.

    Are you measuring impact on your processes?

    Make sure that you understand the impact of the new technology on the existing business and IT processes.

    And make sure your business processes are ready to take advantage of the benefits and new capabilities enabled by AI/ML.

    Process automation, optimization, and improvement enabled by the technology and AI/ML-powered tools allow organizations to reduce manual work, streamline existing business processes, improve customer satisfaction, and get critical insights to assist decision making.

    To take full advantage of the benefits and new capabilities enabled by the technology, make sure that business and IT processes reflect these changes:

    • Processes that need to be updated.
    • How the outcome of the tool or a model (e.g. predictions) is incorporated into the existing business processes and the processes that will monitor the accuracy of the outcome and monitor performance of the tool or model.
    • New business and IT processes that need to be defined for the tool (e.g. chatbot maintenance, analysis of the data generated by the tool, etc.).

    5. Document the Impact on Business and IT Processes

    2-3 hours

    Input: Solution design, Existing business and IT processes

    Output: Documented updates to the existing processes, Documented new business and IT processes

    Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Business and IT Processes” tab

    Participants: Project lead, Business stakeholders, Business analyst

    1. Review current business processes affected by the implementation of the AI/ML- powered tool or model. Define the changes that need to be made. The changes might include simplification of the process due to automation of some of the steps. Some processes will need to be redesigned and some processes might become obsolete.
    2. Document high-level steps for any new processes that need to be defined around the AI/ML-powered tool. An example of such a process would be defining new IT and business processes to support a new chatbot.
    3. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Business and IT Processes tab, to document process changes.

    Screenshot of the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Business and IT Processes tab, a table with columns 'Existing business process affected', 'New business process', 'Stakeholders involved', 'Changes to be made', and 'New Process High-Level Steps'.

    Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

    AI-powered Tools – Considerations

    PROS:
    • Enhanced functionality, allows the power of AI without specialized skills (e.g., Mathematica – recognizing patterns in data).
    • Might be a cheaper option compared to building a solution in-house (chatbot, for ex.).

    Info-Tech Insight:

    No need to reinvent the wheel and build the product you can buy, but be prepared to work around tool limitations, and make sure you understand the data and the model the tool is built on.

    CONS:
    • Dependency on the service provider.
    • The tool might not meet all the business requirements without customization.
    • Bias can be built into the tool:
      • Work with the vendor to understand what data was used to train the model.
      • From the perspective of ethics and bias, learn what model is implemented in the tool and what data attributes the model uses.

    Pre-built/pre-trained models – what to keep in mind when choosing

    PROS:
    • Lower cost and less time to development compared to creating and training models from scratch (e.g. using image recognition models or pre-trained language models like BERT).
    • If the pre-trained and optimized model perfectly fits your needs, the model accuracy might be high and sufficient for your scenario.
    • Off-the-Shelf AI models are useful for creating prototypes or POCs, for testing a hypothesis, and for validating ideas and requirements.
    • Usage of Off-the-Shelf models shortens the development cycle and reduces investment risks.
    • Language models are particularly useful if you don’t have data to train your own model (a “small data” scenario).
    • Infrastructure and model training cost reduction.
    CONS:
    • Might be a challenge to deploy and maintain the system in production.
    • Lack of flexibility: you might not be able to configure input or output parameters to your requirements. For example, a pre-built sentiment analysis model might return four values (“positive,” “negative,” “neutral,” and “mixed”), but your solution will require only two or three values.
    • Might be a challenge to comply with security and privacy requirements.
    • Compliance with privacy and fairness requirements and considerations: what data was used to pretrain the model?
    • If open-source libraries were used to create the model, how will vulnerabilities, risks, and security concerns be addressed?

    Info-Tech Insight:

    Using Off-the-Shelf AI models enables an agile approach to system development – faster POC and validation of ideas and approaches, but the model might not be customizable for your requirements.

    Metrics

    Metrics and KPIs for this project will depend on the business goals and objectives that you will identify in Step 1 of the tool selection process.

    Metrics might include:

    • Reduction of time spent on a specific business process. If the tool is used to automate certain steps of a business process, this metric will measure how much time was saved, in minutes/hours, compared to the process time before the introduction of the tool.
    • Accuracy of prediction. This metric would measure the accuracy of estimations or predictions compared to the same estimations done before the implementation of the tool. It can be measured by generating the same prediction or estimation using the AI-powered tool or using any methods used before the introduction of the tool and comparing the results.
    • Accuracy of the search results. If the AI-powered tool is a search engine, compare a) how much time it would take a user to find an article or a piece of content they were searching for using new tool vs. previous techniques, b) how many steps it took the user to locate the required article in the search results, and c) the location of the correct piece of content in the search result list (at the top of the search result list or on the tenth page).
    • Time spent on manual tasks and activities. This metric will measure how much time, in minutes/hours, is spent by the employees or users on manual tasks if the tool automates some of these tasks.
    • Reduction of business process steps (if the steps are being automated). To derive this metric, create a map of the business process before the introduction of the AI-powered tool and after, and determine if the tool helped to simplify the process by reducing the number of process steps.

    Bibliography

    Adryan, Boris. “Is it all machine learning?” Badryan, Oct. 20, 2015. Accessed Feb. 2022.

    “AI-Powered Data Management Platform.” Informatica, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

    Amazon Rekognition. “Automate your image and video analysis with machine learning.” AWS. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Artificial Intelligence (AI).” IBM Cloud Education, 3 June 2020. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Artificial intelligence (AI) vs machine learning (ML).” Microsoft Azure Documentation. Accessed Feb. 2022.

    “Avante Garde in the Realm of AI” SearchUnify Cognitive Platform. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Azure Cognitive Services.” Microsoft. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Becoming an AI-fueled organization. State of AI in the enterprise, 4th edition,” Deloitte, 2020. Accessed Feb. 2022.

    “Coveo Predictive Search.” Coveo, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

    ”Data and AI Leadership. Executive Survey 2022. Executive Summary of Findings.” NewVantage Partners. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Einstein Discovery in Tableau.” Tableau, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

    Korolov, Maria. “9 biggest hurdles to AI adoption.” CIO, Feb 26, 2019. Accessed Feb 2022.

    Meel, Vidushi. “What Is Deep Learning? An Easy to Understand Guide.” visio.ai. Accessed Feb. 2022.

    Mitchell, Tom. “Machine Learning,” McGraw Hill, 1997.

    Stewart, Matthew. “The Actual Difference Between Statistics and Machine Learning.” Towards Data Science, Mar 24, 2019. Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Sentiment analysis with Cognitive Services.” Microsoft Azure Documentation. Accessed February 2022.

    “Three Principles for Designing ML-Powered Products.” Spotify Blog. Oct 2019, Accessed Feb 2022.

    “Video Intelligence API.” Google Cloud Platform. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022

    Organizational Change Management

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    If you don't know who is responsible for organizational change, it's you.

    Optimize IT Change Management

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    • Parent Category Name: Operations Management
    • Parent Category Link: /i-and-o-process-management
    • Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management processes due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
    • IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
    • Infrastructure changes are often seen as different from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
    • You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
    • A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “pre-approved.”

    Impact and Result

    • Create a unified change management process that reduces risk. The process should be balanced in its approach toward deploying changes while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
    • Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
    • Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
    • Integrate a configuration management database with the change management process to identify dependencies.

    Optimize IT Change Management Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize change management, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Define change management

    Assess the maturity of your existing change management practice and define the scope of change management for your organization.

    • Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool
    • Change Management Risk Assessment Tool

    2. Establish roles and workflows

    Build your change management team and standardized process workflows for each change type.

    • Change Manager
    • Change Management Process Library – Visio
    • Change Management Process Library – PDF
    • Change Management Standard Operating Procedure

    3. Define the RFC and post-implementation activities

    Bookend your change management practice by standardizing change intake, implementation, and post-implementation activities.

    • Request for Change Form Template
    • Change Management Pre-Implementation Checklist
    • Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist

    4. Measure, manage, and maintain

    Form an implementation plan for the project, including a metrics evaluation, change calendar inputs, communications plan, and roadmap.

    • Change Management Metrics Tool
    • Change Management Communications Plan
    • Change Management Roadmap Tool
    • Optimize IT Change Management Improvement Initiative: Project Summary Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Optimize IT Change Management

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Define Change Management

    The Purpose

    Discuss the existing challenges and maturity of your change management practice.

    Build definitions of change categories and the scope of change management.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understand the starting point and scope of change management.

    Understand the context of change request versus other requests such as service requests, projects, and operational tasks.

    Activities

    1.1 Outline strengths and challenges

    1.2 Conduct a maturity assessment

    1.3 Build a categorization scheme

    1.4 Build a risk assessment matrix

    Outputs

    Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool

    Change Management Risk Assessment Tool

    2 Establish Roles and Workflows

    The Purpose

    Define roles and responsibilities for the change management team.

    Develop a standardized change management practice for approved changes, including process workflows.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Built the team to support your new change management practice.

    Develop a formalized and right-sized change management practice for each change category. This will ensure all changes follow the correct process and core activities to confirm changes are completed successfully.

    Activities

    2.1 Define the change manager role

    2.2 Outline the membership and protocol for the Change Advisory Board (CAB)

    2.3 Build workflows for normal, emergency, and pre-approved changes

    Outputs

    Change Manager Job Description

    Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

    Change Management Process Library

    3 Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    The Purpose

    Create a new change intake process, including a new request for change (RFC) form.

    Develop post-implementation review activities to be completed for every IT change.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Bookend your change management practice by standardizing change intake, implementation, and post-implementation activities.

    Activities

    3.1 Define the RFC template

    3.2 Determine post-implementation activities

    3.3 Build your change calendar protocol

    Outputs

    Request for Change Form Template

    Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist

    Project Summary Template

    4 Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    The Purpose

    Develop a plan and project roadmap for reaching your target for your change management program maturity.

    Develop a communications plan to ensure the successful adoption of the new program.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A plan and project roadmap for reaching target change management program maturity.

    A communications plan ready for implementation.

    Activities

    4.1 Identify metrics and reports

    4.2 Build a communications plan

    4.3 Build your implementation roadmap

    Outputs

    Change Management Metrics Tool

    Change Management Communications Plan

    Change Management Roadmap Tool

    Further reading

    Optimize IT Change Management

    Right-size IT change management practice to protect the live environment.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst Perspective

    Balance risk and efficiency to optimize IT change management.

    Change management (change enablement, change control) is a balance of efficiency and risk. That is, pushing changes out in a timely manner while minimizing the risk of deployment. On the one hand, organizations can attempt to avoid all risk and drown the process in rubber stamps, red tape, and bureaucracy. On the other hand, organizations can ignore process and push out changes as quickly as possible, which will likely lead to change related incidents and debilitating outages.

    Right-sizing the process does not mean adopting every recommendation from best-practice frameworks. It means balancing the efficiency of change request fulfillment with minimizing risk to your organization. Furthermore, creating a process that encourages adherence is key to avoid change implementers from skirting your process altogether.

    Benedict Chang, Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Infrastructure and application change occurs constantly and is driven by changing business needs, requests for new functionality, operational releases and patches, and resolution of incidents or problems detected by the service desk.

    IT managers need to follow a standard change management process to ensure that rogue changes are never deployed while the organization remains responsive to demand.

    Common Obstacles

    IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.

    At the same time, an increasingly interlinked technical environment may cause issues to appear in unexpected places. Configuration management systems are often not kept up-to-date and do not catch the potential linkages.

    Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes and two (or more) processes may exist.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Info-Tech’s approach will help you:

    • Create a unified change management practice that balances risk and throughput of innovation.
    • Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
    • Establish and empower a Change Manager and Change Advisory Board (CAB) with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.

    Balance Risk and Efficiency to Optimize IT Change Management

    Two goals of change management are to protect the live environment and deploying changes in a timely manner. These two may seem to sometimes be at odds against each other, but assessing risk at multiple points of a change’s lifecycle can help you achieve both.

    Your challenge

    This research is designed to help organizations who need to:

    • Build a right-sized change management practice that encourages adherence and balances efficiency and risk.
    • Integrate the change management practice with project management, service desk processes, configuration management, and other areas of IT and the business.
    • Communicate the benefits and impact of change management to all the stakeholders affected by the process.

    Change management is heavily reliant on organizational culture

    Having a right-sized process is not enough. You need to build and communicate the process to gather adherence. The process is useless if stakeholders are not aware of it or do not follow it.

    Increase the Effectiveness of Change Management in Your Organization

    The image is a bar graph, with the segments labelled 1 and 2. The y-axis lists numbers 1-10. Segment 1 is at 6.2, and segment 2 is at 8.6.

    Of the eight infrastructure & operations processes measured in Info-Tech’s IT Management and Governance Diagnostic (MGD) program, change management has the second largest gap between importance and effectiveness of these processes.

    Source: Info-Tech 2020; n=5,108 IT professionals from 620 organizations

    Common obstacles

    These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

    • Gaining buy-in can be a challenge no matter how well the process is built.
    • The complexity of the IT environment and culture of tacit knowledge for configuration makes it difficult to assess cross-dependencies of changes.
    • Each silo or department may have their own change management workflows that they follow internally. This can make it difficult to create a unified process that works well for everyone.

    “Why should I fill out an RFC when it only takes five minutes to push through my change?”

    “We’ve been doing this for years. Why do we need more bureaucracy?”

    “We don’t need change management if we’re Agile.”

    “We don’t have the right tools to even start change management.”

    “Why do I have to attend a CAB meeting when I don’t care what other departments are doing?”

    Info-Tech’s approach

    Build change management by implementing assessments and stage gates around appropriate levels of the change lifecycle.

    The image is a circle, comprised of arrows, with each arrow pointing to the next, forming a cycle. Each arrow is labelled, as follows: Improve; Request; Assess; Plan; Approve; Implement

    The Info-Tech difference:

    1. Create a unified change management process that balances risk and throughput of innovation.
    2. Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
    3. Establish and empower a Change Manager and Change Advisory Board (CAB) with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.

    IT change is constant and is driven by:

    Change Management:

    1. Operations - Operational releases, maintenance, vendor-driven updates, and security updates can all be key drivers of change. Example: ITSM version update
      • Major Release
      • Maintenance Release
      • Security Patch
    2. Business - Business-driven changes may include requests from other business departments that require IT’s support. Examples: New ERP or HRIS implementation
      • New Application
      • New Version
    3. Service desk → Incident & Problem - Some incident and problem tickets require a change to facilitate resolution of the incident. Examples: Outage necessitating update of an app (emergency change), a user request for new functionality to be added to an existing app
      • Workaround
      • Fix
    4. Configuration Management Database (CMDB) ↔ Asset Management - In addition to software and hardware asset dependencies, a configuration management database (CMDB) is used to keep a record of changes and is queried to assess change requests.
      • Hardware
      • Software

    Insight summary

    “The scope of change management is defined by each organization…the purpose of change management is to maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that the risk have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to process, and managing the change schedule.” – ALEXOS Limited, ITIL 4

    Build a unified change management process balancing risk and change throughput.

    Building a unified process that oversees all changes to the technical environment doesn’t have to be burdensome to be effective. However, the process is a necessary starting point to identifying cross dependencies and avoiding change collisions and change-related incidents.

    Use an objective framework for estimating risk

    Simply asking, “What is the risk?” will result in subjective responses that will likely minimize the perceived risk. The level of due diligence should align to the criticality of the systems or departments potentially impacted by the proposed changes.

    Integrate your change process with your IT service management system

    Change management in isolation will provide some stability, but maturing the process through service integrations will enable data-driven decisions, decrease bureaucracy, and enable faster and more stable throughput.

    Change management and DevOps can work together effectively

    Change and DevOps tend to be at odds, but the framework does not have to change. Lower risk changes in DevOps are prime candidates for the pre-approved category. Much of the responsibility traditionally assigned to the CAB can be diffused throughout the software development lifecycle.

    Change management and DevOps can coexist

    Shift the responsibility and rigor to earlier in the process.

    • If you are implementing change management in a DevOps environment, ensure you have a strong DevOps lifecycle. You may wish to refer to Info-Tech’s research Implementing DevOps Practices That Work.
    • Consider starting in this blueprint by visiting Appendix II to frame your approach to change management. Follow the blueprint while paying attention to the DevOps Callouts.

    DEVOPS CALLOUTS

    Look for these DevOps callouts throughout this storyboard to guide you along the implementation.

    The image is a horizontal figure eight, with 7 arrows, each pointing into the next. They are labelled are follows: Plan; Create; Verify; Package; Release; Configure; Monitor. At the centre of the circles are the words Dev and Ops.

    Successful change management will provide benefits to both the business and IT

    Respond to business requests faster while reducing the number of change-related disruptions.

    IT Benefits

    • Fewer change-related incidents and outages
    • Faster change turnaround time
    • Higher rate of change success
    • Less change rework
    • Fewer service desk calls related to poorly communicated changes

    Business Benefits

    • Fewer service disruptions
    • Faster response to requests for new and enhanced functionalities
    • Higher rate of benefits realization when changes are implemented
    • Lower cost per change
    • Fewer “surprise” changes disrupting productivity

    IT satisfaction with change management will drive business satisfaction with IT. Once the process is working efficiently, staff will be more motivated to adhere to the process, reducing the number of unauthorized changes. As fewer changes bypass proper evaluation and testing, service disruptions will decrease and business satisfaction will increase.

    Change management improves core benefits to the business: the four Cs

    Most organizations have at least some form of change control in place, but formalizing change management leads to the four Cs of business benefits:

    Control

    Change management brings daily control over the IT environment, allowing you to review every relatively new change, eliminate changes that would have likely failed, and review all changes to improve the IT environment.

    Collaboration

    Change management planning brings increased communication and collaboration across groups by coordinating changes with business activities. The CAB brings a more formalized and centralized communication method for IT.

    Consistency

    Request for change templates and a structured process result in implementation, test, and backout plans being more consistent. Implementing processes for pre-approved changes also ensures these frequent changes are executed consistently and efficiently.

    Confidence

    Change management processes will give your organization more confidence through more accurate planning, improved execution of changes, less failure, and more control over the IT environment. This also leads to greater protection against audits.

    You likely need to improve change management more than any other infrastructure & operations process

    The image shows a vertical bar graph. Each segment of the graph is labelled for an infrastructure/operations process. Each segment has two bars one for effectiveness, and another for importance. The first segment, Change Management, is highlighted, with its Effectiveness at a 6.2 and Importance at 8.6

    Source: Info-Tech 2020; n=5,108 IT Professionals from 620 organizations

    Of the eight infrastructure and operations processes measured in Info-Tech’s IT Management and Governance Diagnostic (MGD) program, change management consistently has the second largest gap between importance and effectiveness of these processes.

    Executives and directors recognize the importance of change management but feel theirs is currently ineffective

    Info-Tech’s IT Management and Governance Diagnostic (MGD) program assesses the importance and effectiveness of core IT processes. Since its inception, the MGD has consistently identified change management as an area for immediate improvement.

    The image is a vertical bar graph, with four segments, each having 2 bars, one for Effectiveness and the other for Importance. The four segments are (with Effectiveness and Importance ratings in brackets, respectively): Frontline (6.5/8.6); Manager (6.6/8.9); Director (6.4/8.8); and Executive (6.1/8.8)

    Source: Info-Tech 2020; n=5,108 IT Professionals from 620 organizations

    Importance Scores

    No importance: 1.0-6.9

    Limited importance: 7.0-7.9

    Significant importance: 8.0-8.9

    Critical importance: 9.0-10.0

    Effectiveness Scores

    Not in place: n/a

    Not effective: 0.0-4.9

    Somewhat Ineffective: 5.0-5.9

    Somewhat effective: 6.0-6.9

    Very effective: 7.0-10.0

    There are several common misconceptions about change management

    Which of these have you heard in your organization?

    Reality
    “It’s just a small change; this will only take five minutes to do.” Even a small change can cause a business outage. That small fix could impact a large system connected to the one being fixed.
    “Ad hoc is faster; too many processes slow things down.” Ad hoc might be faster in some cases, but it carries far greater risk. Following defined processes keeps systems stable and risk-averse.
    “Change management is all about speed.” Change management is about managing risk. It gives the illusion of speed by reducing downtime and unplanned work.
    “Change management will limit our capacity to change.” Change management allows for a better alignment of process (release management) with governance (change management).

    Overcome perceived challenges to implementing change management to reap measurable reward

    Before: Informal Change Management

    Change Approval:

    • Changes do not pass through a formal review process before implementation.
    • 10% of released changes are approved.
    • Implementation challenge: Staff will resist having to submit formal change requests and assessments, frustrated at the prospect of having to wait longer to have changes approved.

    Change Prioritization

    • Changes are not prioritized according to urgency, risk, and impact.
    • 60% of changes are urgent.
    • Implementation challenge: Influential stakeholders accustomed to having changes approved and deployed might resist having to submit changes to a standard cost-benefit analysis.

    Change Deployment

    • Changes often negatively impact user productivity.
    • 25% of changes are realized as planned.
    • Implementation challenge: Engaging the business so that formal change freeze periods and regular maintenance windows can be established.

    After: Right-Sized Change Management

    Change Approval

    • All changes pass through a formal review process. Once a change is repeatable and well-tested, it can be pre-approved to save time. Almost no unauthorized changes are deployed.
    • 95% of changes are approved.
    • KPI: Decrease in change-related incidents

    Change Prioritization

    • The CAB prioritizes changes so that the business is satisfied with the speed of change deployment.
    • 35% of changes are urgent.
    • KPI: Decrease in change turnaround time.

    Change deployment

    • Users are always aware of impending changes and changes don’t interrupt critical business activities.
    • Over 80% of changes are realized as planned
    • KPI: Decrease in the number of failed deployments.

    Info-Tech’s methodology for change management optimization focuses on building standardized processes

    1. Define Change Management 2. Establish Roles and Workflows 3. Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities 4. Measure, Manage, and Maintain
    Phase Steps

    1.1 Assess Maturity

    1.2 Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    2.1 Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    2.2 Build Core Workflows

    3.1 Design the RFC

    3.2 Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    4.2 Implement the Project

    Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Change Management Project Summary Template
    Phase Deliverables
    • Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool
    • Change Management Risk Assessment Tool
    • Change Manager Job Description
    • Change Management Process Library
    • Request for Change (RFC) Form Template
    • Change Management Pre-Implementation Checklist
    • Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist
    • Change Management Metrics Tool
    • Change Management
    • Communications Plan
    • Change Management Roadmap Tool

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

    Change Management Process Library

    Document your normal, pre-approved, and emergency change lifecycles with the core process workflows .

    Change Management Risk Assessment Tool

    Test Drive your impact and likelihood assessment questionnaires with the Change Management Risk Assessment Tool.

    Project Summary Template

    Summarize your efforts in the Optimize IT Change Management Improvement Initiative: Project Summary Template.

    Change Management Roadmap Tool

    Record your action items and roadmap your steps to a mature change management process.

    Key Deliverable:

    Change Management SOP

    Document and formalize your process starting with the change management standard operating procedure (SOP).

    These case studies illustrate the value of various phases of this project

    Define Change Management

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    Define RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    A major technology company implemented change management to improve productivity by 40%. This case study illustrates the full scope of the project.

    A large technology firm experienced a critical outage due to poor change management practices. This case study illustrates the scope of change management definition and strategy.

    Ignorance of change management process led to a technology giant experiencing a critical cloud outage. This case study illustrates the scope of the process phase.

    A manufacturing company created a makeshift CMDB in the absence of a CMDB to implement change management. This case study illustrates the scope of change intake.

    A financial institution tracked and recorded metrics to aid in the success of their change management program. This case study illustrates the scope of the implementation phase.

    Working through this project with Info-Tech can save you time and money

    Engaging in a Guided Implementation doesn’t just offer valuable project advice, it also results in significant cost savings.

    Guided Implementation Measured Vale
    Phase 1: Define Change Management
    • We estimate Phase 1 activities will take 2 FTEs 10 days to complete on their own, but the time saved by using Info-Tech’s methodology will cut that time in half, thereby saving $3,100 (2 FTEs * 5 days * $80,000/year).

    Phase 2: Establish Roles and Workflows

    • We estimate Phase 2 will take 2 FTEs 10 days to complete on their own, but the time saved by using Info-Tech’s methodology will cut that time in half, thereby saving $3,100 (2 FTEs * 5 days * $80,000/year).
    Phase 3: Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities
    • We estimate Phase 3 will take 2 FTEs 10 days to complete on their own, but the time saved by using Info-Tech’s methodology will cut that time in half, thereby saving $3,100 (2 FTEs * 5 days * $80,000/year).

    Phase 4: Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    • We estimate Phase 4 will take 2 FTEs 5 days to complete on their own, but the time saved by using Info-Tech’s methodology will cut that time in half, thereby saving $1,500 (2 FTEs * 2.5 days * $80,000/year).
    Total Savings $10,800

    Case Study

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Daniel Grove, Intel

    Intel implemented a robust change management program and experienced a 40% improvement in change efficiency.

    Founded in 1968, the world’s largest microchip and semiconductor company employs over 100,000 people. Intel manufactures processors for major players in the PC market including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

    ITIL Change Management Implementation

    With close to 4,000 changes occurring each week, managing Intel’s environment is a formidable task. Before implementing change management within the organization, over 35% of all unscheduled downtime was due to errors resulting from change and release management. Processes were ad hoc or scattered across the organization and no standards were in place.

    Results

    After a robust implementation of change management, Intel experienced a number of improvements including automated approvals, the implementation of a formal change calendar, and an automated RFC form. As a result, Intel improved change productivity by 40% within the first year of the program’s implementation.

    Define Change Management

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    Define RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

    Guided Implementation

    "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

    Workshop

    "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

    Consulting

    "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

    Define Change Management

    • Call #1: Introduce change concepts.
    • Call #2: Assess current maturity.
    • Call #3: Identify target-state capabilities.

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    • Call #4: Review roles and responsibilities.
    • Call #5: Review core change processes.

    Define RFC and Post- Implementation Activities

    • Call #6: Define change intake process.
    • Call #7: Create pre-implementation and post-implementation checklists.

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    • Call #8: Review metrics.
    • Call #9: Create roadmap.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
    Activities

    Define Change Management

    1.1 Outline Strengths and Challenges

    1.2 Conduct a Maturity Assessment

    1.3 Build a Change Categorization Scheme

    1.4 Build Your Risk Assessment

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    2.1 Define the Change Manager Role

    2.2 Outline CAB Protocol and membership

    2.3 Build Normal Change Process

    2.4 Build Emergency Change Process

    2.5 Build Pre-Approved Change Process

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    3.1 Create an RFC Template

    3.2 Determine Post-Implementation Activities

    3.3 Build a Change Calendar Protocol

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Reports

    4.2 Create Communications Plan

    4.3 Build an Implementation Roadmap

    Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps

    Deliverables
    1. Maturity Assessment
    2. Risk Assessment
    1. Change Manager Job Description
    2. Change Management Process Library
    1. Request for Change (RFC) Form Template
    2. Pre-Implementation Checklist
    3. Post-Implementation Checklist
    1. Metrics Tool
    2. Communications Plan
    3. Project Roadmap
    1. Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
    2. Workshop Summary Deck

    Phase 1

    Define Change Management

    Define Change Management

    1.1 Assess Maturity

    1.2 Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    2.1 Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    2.2 Build Core Workflows

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    3.1 Design the RFC

    3.2 Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    4.2 Implement the Project

    This phase will guide you through the following steps:

    • Assess Maturity
    • Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Step 1.1

    Assess Maturity

    Activities

    1.1.1 Outline the Organization’s Strengths and Challenges

    1.1.2 Complete a Maturity Assessment

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • An understanding of maturity change management processes and frameworks
    • Identification of existing change management challenges and potential causes
    • A framework for assessing change management maturity and an assessment of your existing change management processes

    Define Change Management

    Step 1.1: Assess Maturity → Step 1.2: Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    Change management is often confused with release management, but they are distinct processes

    Change

    • Change management looks at software changes as well as hardware, database, integration, and network changes, with the focus on stability of the entire IT ecosystem for business continuity.
    • Change management provides a holistic view of the IT environment, including dependencies, to ensure nothing is negatively affected by changes.
    • Change documentation is more focused on process, ensuring dependencies are mapped, rollout plans exist, and the business is not at risk.

    Release

    • Release and deployment are the detailed plans that bundle patches, upgrades, and new features into deployment packages, with the intent to change them flawlessly into a production environment.
    • Release management is one of many actions performed under change management’s governance.
    • Release documentation includes technical specifications such as change schedule, package details, change checklist, configuration details, test plan, and rollout and rollback plans.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Ensure the Release Manager is present as part of your CAB. They can explain any change content or dependencies, communicate business approval, and advise the service desk of any defects.

    Integrate change management with other IT processes

    As seen in the context diagram, change management interacts closely with many other IT processes including release management and configuration management (seen below). Ensure you delineate when these interactions occur (e.g. RFC updates and CMDB queries) and which process owns each task.

    The image is a chart mapping the interactions between Change Management and Configuration Management (CMDB).

    Avoid the challenges of poor change management

    1. Deployments
      • Too frequent: The need for frequent deployments results in reduced availability of critical business applications.
      • Failed deployments or rework is required: Deployments are not successful and have to be backed out of and then reworked to resolve issues with the installation.
      • High manual effort: A lack of automation results in high resource costs for deployments. Human error is likely, which adds to the risk of a failed deployment.
    2. Incidents
      • Too many unauthorized changes: If the process is perceived as cumbersome and ineffective, people will bypass it or abuse the emergency designation to get their changes deployed faster.
      • Changes cause incidents: When new releases are deployed, they create problems with related systems or applications.
    3. End Users
      • Low user satisfaction: Poor communication and training result in surprised and unhappy users and support staff.

    “With no controls in place, IT gets the blame for embarrassing outages. Too much control, and IT is seen as a roadblock to innovation.” – Anonymous, VP IT of a federal credit union

    1.1.1 Outline the Organization’s Strengths and Challenges

    Input

    • Current change documentation (workflows, SOP, change policy, etc.)
    • Organizational chart(s)

    Output

    • List of strengths and challenges for change management

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. As group, discuss and outline the change management challenges facing the organization. These may be challenges caused by poor change management processes or by a lack of process.
    2. Use the pain points found on the previous slide to help guide the discussion.
    3. As a group, also outline the strengths of change management and the strengths of the current organization. Use these strengths as a guide to know what practices to continue and what strengths you can leverage to improve the change management process.
    4. Record the activity results in the Project Summary Template.

    Download the Optimize IT Change Management Improvement Initiative: Project Summary Template

    Assess current change management maturity to create a plan for improvement

    Chaos Reactive Controlled

    Proactive

    Optimized
    Change Requests No defined processes for submitting changes Low process adherence and no RFC form RFC form is centralized and a point of contact for changes exists RFCs are reviewed for scope and completion RFCs trend analysis and proactive change exists
    Change Review Little to no change risk assessment Risk assessment exists for each RFC RFC form is centralized and a point of contact for changes exists Change calendar exists and is maintained System and component dependencies exist (CMDB)
    Change Approval No formal approval process exists Approval process exists but is not widely followed Unauthorized changes are minimal or nonexistent Change advisory board (CAB) is established and formalized Trend analysis exists increasing pre-approved changes
    Post-Deployment No post-deployment change review exists Process exists but is not widely followed Reduction of change-related incidents Stakeholder satisfaction is gathered and reviewed Lessons learned are propagated and actioned
    Process Governance Roles & responsibilities are ad hoc Roles, policies & procedures are defined & documented Roles, policies & procedures are defined & documented KPIs are tracked, reported on, and reviewed KPIs are proactively managed for improvement

    Info-Tech Insight

    Reaching an optimized level is not feasible for every organization. You may be able to run a very good change management process at the Proactive or even Controlled stage. Pay special attention to keeping your goals attainable.

    1.1.2 Complete a Maturity Assessment

    Input

    • Current change documentation (workflows, SOP, change policy, etc.)

    Output

    • Assessment of current maturity level and goals to improve change management

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)
    1. Use Info-Tech’s Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool to assess the maturity and completeness of your change process.
    2. Significant gaps revealed in this assessment should be the focal points of your discussion when investigating root causes and brainstorming remediation activities:
      1. For each activity of each process area of change management, determine the degree of completeness of your current process.
      2. Review your maturity assessment results and discuss as a group potential reasons why you arrived at your maturity level. Identify areas where you should focus your initial attention for improvement.
      3. Regularly review the maturity of your change management practices by completing this maturity assessment tool periodically to identify other areas to optimize.

    Download the Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool

    Case Study

    Even Google isn’t immune to change-related outages. Plan ahead and communicate to help avoid change-related incidents

    Industry: Technology

    Source: The Register

    As part of a routine maintenance procedure, Google engineers moved App Engine applications between data centers in the Central US to balance out traffic.

    Unfortunately, at the same time that applications were being rerouted, a software update was in progress on the traffic routers, which triggered a restart. This temporarily diminished router capacity, knocking out a sizeable portion of Google Cloud.

    The server drain resulted in a huge spike in startup requests, and the routers simply couldn’t handle the traffic.

    As a result, 21% of Google App Engine applications hosted in the Central US experienced error rates in excess of 10%, while an additional 16% of applications experienced latency, albeit at a lower rate.

    Solution

    Thankfully, engineers were actively monitoring the implementation of the change and were able to spring into action to halt the problem.

    The change was rolled back after 11 minutes, but the configuration error still needed to be fixed. After about two hours, the change failure was resolved and the Google Cloud was fully functional.

    One takeaway for the engineering team was to closely monitor how changes are scheduled. Ultimately, this was the result of miscommunication and a lack of transparency between change teams.

    Step 1.2

    Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    Activities

    1.2.1 Define What Constitutes a Change

    1.2.2 Build a Change Categorization Scheme

    1.2.3 Build a Classification Scheme to Assess Impact

    1.2.4 Build a Classification Scheme to Define Likelihood

    1.2.5 Evaluate and Adjust Your Risk Assessment Scheme

    Define Change Management

    Step 1.1: Assess Maturity → Step 1.2: Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Infrastructure/Applications Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • A clear definition of what constitutes a change in your organization
    • A defined categorization scheme to classify types of changes
    • A risk assessment matrix and tool for evaluating and prioritizing change requests according to impact and likelihood of risk

    Change must be managed to mitigate risk to the infrastructure

    Change management is the gatekeeper protecting your live environment.

    Successfully managed changes will optimize risk exposure, severity of impact, and disruption. This will result in the bottom-line business benefits of removal of risk, early realization of benefits, and savings of money and time.

    • IT change is constant; change requests will be made both proactively and reactively to upgrade systems, acquire new functionality, and to prevent or resolve incidents.
    • Every change to the infrastructure must pass through the change management process before being deployed to ensure that it has been properly assessed and tested, and to check that a backout /rollback plan is in place.
    • It will be less expensive to invest in a rigorous change management process than to resolve incidents, service disruptions, and outages caused by the deployment of a bad change.
    • Change management is what gives you control and visibility regarding what is introduced to the live environment, preventing incidents that threaten business continuity.

    80%

    In organizations without formal change management processes, about 80% (The Visible Ops Handbook) of IT service outage problems are caused by updates and changes to systems, applications, and infrastructure. It’s crucial to track and systematically manage change to fully understand and predict the risks and potential impact of the change.

    Attributes of a change

    Differentiate changes from other IT requests

    Is this in the production environment of a business process?

    The core business of the enterprise or supporting functions may be affected.

    Does the task affect an enterprise managed system?

    If it’s for a local application, it’s a service request

    How many users are impacted?

    It should usually impact more than a single user (in most cases).

    Is there a configuration, or code, or workflow, or UI/UX change?

    Any impact on a business process is a change; adding a user or a recipient to a report or mailing list is not a change.

    Does the underlying service currently exist?

    If it’s a new service, then it’s better described as a project.

    Is this done/requested by IT?

    It needs to be within the scope of IT for the change management process to apply.

    Will this take longer than one week?

    As a general rule, if it takes longer than 40 hours of work to complete, it’s likely a project.

    Defining what constitutes a change

    Every change request will initiate the change management process; don’t waste time reviewing requests that are out of scope.

    Change Service Request (User) Operational Task (Backend)
    • Fixing defects in code
    • Changing configuration of an enterprise system
    • Adding new software or hardware components
    • Switching an application to another VM
    • Standardized request
    • New PC
    • Permissions request
    • Change password
    • Add user
    • Purchases
    • Change the backup tape
    • Delete temporary files
    • Maintain database (one that is well defined, repeatable, and predictable)
    • Run utilities to repair a database

    Do not treat every IT request as a change!

    • Many organizations make the mistake of calling a standard service request or operational task a “change.”
    • Every change request will initiate the change management process; don’t waste time reviewing requests that are out of scope.
    • While the overuse of RFCs for out-of-scope requests is better than a lack of process, this will slow the process and delay the approval of more critical changes.
    • Requiring an RFC for something that should be considered day-to-day work will also discourage people from adhering to the process, because the RFC will be seen as meaningless paperwork.

    1.2.1 Define What Constitutes a Change

    Input

    • List of examples of each category of the chart

    Output

    • Definitions for each category to be used at change intake

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
    • Service catalog (if applicable)
    • Sticky notes
    • Markers/pens
    • Change Management SOP

    Participants

    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. As a group, brainstorm examples of changes, projects, service requests (user), operational tasks (backend), and releases. You may add additional categories as needed (e.g. incidents).
    2. Have each participant write the examples on sticky notes and populate the following chart on the whiteboard/flip chart.
    3. Use the examples to draw lines and define what defines each category.
      • What makes a change distinct from a project?
      • What makes a change distinct from a service request?
      • What makes a change distinct from an operational task?
      • When do the category workflows cross over with other categories? (For example, when does a project interact with change management?)
    4. Record the definitions of requests and results in section 2.3 of the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
    Change Project Service Request (User) Operational Task (Backend) Release
    Changing Configuration ERP upgrade Add new user Delete temp files Software release

    Download the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

    Each RFC should define resources needed to effect the change

    In addition to assigning a category to each RFC based on risk assessment, each RFC should also be assigned a priority based on the impact of the change on the IT organization, in terms of the resources needed to effect the change.

    Categories include

    Normal

    Emergency

    Pre-Approved

    The majority of changes will be pre-approved or normal changes. Definitions of each category are provided on the next slide.

    Info-Tech uses the term pre-approved rather than the ITIL terminology of standard to more accurately define the type of change represented by this category.

    A potential fourth change category of expedited may be employed if you are having issues with process adherence or if you experience changes driven from outside change management’s control (e.g. from the CIO, director, judiciary, etc.) See Appendix I for more details.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Do not rush to designate changes as pre-approved. You may have a good idea of which changes may be considered pre-approved, but make sure they are in fact low-risk and well-documented before moving them over from the normal category.

    The category of the change determines the process it follows

    Pre-Approved Normal Emergency
    Definition
    • Tasks are well-known, documented, and proven
    • Budgetary approval is preordained or within control of change requester
    • Risk is low and understood
    • There’s a low probability of failure
    • All changes that are not pre-approved or emergency will be classified as normal
    • Further categorized by priority/risk
    • The change is being requested to resolve a current or imminent critical/severity-1 incident that threatens business continuity
    • Associated with a critical incident or problem ticket
    Trigger
    • The same change is built and changed repeatedly using the same install procedures and resulting in the same low-risk outcome
    • Upgrade or new functionality that will capture a business benefit
    • A fix to a current problem
    • A current or imminent critical incident that will impact business continuity
    • Urgency to implement the change must be established, as well as lack of any alternative or workaround
    Workflow
    • Pre-established
    • Repeatable with same sequence of actions, with minimal judgment or decision points
    • Dependent on the change
    • Different workflows depending on prioritization
    • Dependent on the change
    Approval
    • Change Manager (does not need to be reviewed by CAB)
    • CAB
    • Approval from the Emergency Change Advisory Board (E-CAB) is sufficient to proceed with the change
    • A retroactive RFC must be created and approved by the CAB

    Pay close attention to defining your pre-approved changes. They are going to be critical for running a smooth change management practice in a DevOps Environment

    1.2.2 Build a Change Categorization Scheme

    Input

    • List of examples of each change category

    Output

    • Definitions for each change category

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
    • Service catalog (if applicable)
    • Sticky notes
    • Markers
    • Change Management SOP

    Participants

    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Discuss the change categories on the previous slide and modify the types of descriptions to suit your organization.
    2. Once the change categories or types are defined, identify several examples of change requests that would fall under each category.
    3. Types of normal changes will be further defined in the next activity and can be left blank for now.
    4. Examples are provided below. Capture your definitions in section 4 of your Change Management SOP.
    Pre-Approved (AKA Standard) Normal Emergency
    • Microsoft patch management/deployment
    • Windows update
    • Minor form changes
    • Service pack updates on non-critical systems
    • Advance label status on orders
    • Change log retention period/storage
    • Change backup frequency

    Major

    • Active directory server upgrade
    • New ERP

    Medium

    • Network upgrade
    • High availability implementation

    Minor

    • Ticket system go-live
    • UPS replacement
    • Cognos update
    • Any change other than a pre-approved change
    • Needed to resolve a major outage in a Tier 1 system

    Assess the risk for each normal change based on impact (severity) and likelihood (probability)

    Create a change assessment risk matrix to standardize risk assessment for new changes. Formalizing this assessment should be one of the first priorities of change management.

    The following slides guide you through the steps of formalizing a risk assessment according to impact and likelihood:

    1. Define a risk matrix: Risk matrices can either be a 3x3 matrix (Minor, Medium, or High Risk as shown on the next slide) or a 4x4 matrix (Minor, Medium, High, or Critical Risk).
    2. Build an impact assessment: Enable consistent measurement of impact for each change by incorporating a standardized questionnaire for each RFC.
    3. Build a likelihood assessment: Enable the consistent measurement of impact for each change by incorporating a standardized questionnaire for each RFC.
    4. Test drive your risk assessment and make necessary adjustments: Measure your newly formed risk assessment questionnaires against historical changes to test its accuracy.

    Consider risk

    1. Risk should be the primary consideration in classifying a normal change as Low, Medium, High. The extent of governance required, as well as minimum timeline to implement the change, will follow from the risk assessment.
    2. The business benefit often matches the impact level of the risk – a change that will provide a significant benefit to a large number of users may likely carry an equally major downside if deviations occur.

    Info-Tech Insight

    All changes entail an additional level of risk. Risk is a function of impact and likelihood. Risk may be reduced, accepted, or neutralized through following best practices around training, testing, backout planning, redundancy, timing and sequencing of changes, etc.

    Create a risk matrix to assign a risk rating to each RFC

    Every normal RFC should be assigned a risk rating.

    How is risk rating determined?

    • Priority should be based on the business consequences of implementing or denying the change.
    • Risk rating is assigned using the impact of the risk and likelihood/probability that the event may occur.

    Who determines priority?

    • Priority should be decided with the change requester and with the CAB, if necessary.
    • Don’t let the change requester decide priority alone, as they will usually assign it a higher priority than is justified. Use a repeatable, standardized framework to assess each request.

    How is risk rating used?

    • Risk rating is used to determine which changes should be discussed and assessed first.
    • Time frames and escalation processes should be defined for each risk level.

    RFCs need to clearly identify the risk level of the proposed change. This can be done through statement of impact and likelihood (low/medium/high) or through pertinent questions linked with business rules to assess the risk.

    Risk always has a negative impact, but the size of the impact can vary considerably in terms of cost, number of people or sites affected, and severity of the impact. Impact questions tend to be more objective and quantifiable than likelihood questions.

    Risk Matrix

    Risk Matrix. Impact vs. Likelihood. Low impact, Low Likelihood and Medium Impact, Medium Likelihood are minor risks. High Likelihood, Low Impact; Medium Likelihood, Medium Impact; and Low Likelihood, High Impact are Medium Risk. High Impact, High Likelihood; High Impact, Medium Likelihood; and Medium Impact, High Likelihood are Major risk.

    1.2.3 Build a Classification Scheme to Assess Impact

    Input

    • Current risk assessment (if available)

    Output

    • Tailored impact assessment

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Define a set of questions to measure risk impact.
    2. For each question, assign a weight that should be placed on that factor.
    3. Define criteria for each question that would categorize the risk as high, medium, or low.
    4. Capture your results in section 4.3.1 of your Change Management SOP.
    Impact
    Weight Question High Medium Low
    15% # of people affected 36+ 11-35 <10
    20% # of sites affected 4+ 2-3 1
    15% Duration of recovery (minutes of business time) 180+ 30-18 <3
    20% Systems affected Mission critical Important Informational
    30% External customer impact Loss of customer Service interruption None

    1.2.4 Build a Classification Scheme to Define Likelihood

    Input

    • Current risk assessment (if available)

    Output

    • Tailored likelihood assessment

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Define a set of questions to measure risk likelihood.
    2. For each question, assign a weight that should be placed on that factor.
    3. Define criteria for each question that would categorize the risk as high, medium, or low.
    4. Capture your results in section 4.3.2 of your Change Management SOP.
    LIKELIHOOD
    Weight Question High Medium Low
    25% Has this change been tested? No Yes
    10% Have all the relevant groups (companies, departments, executives) vetted the change? No Partial Yes
    5% Has this change been documented? No Yes
    15% How long is the change window? When can we implement? Specified day/time Partial Per IT choice
    20% Do we have trained and experienced staff available to implement this change? If only external consultants are available, the rating will be “medium” at best. No Yes
    25% Has an implementation plan been developed? No Yes

    1.2.5 Evaluate and Adjust Your Risk Assessment Scheme

    Input

    • Impact and likelihood assessments from previous two activities

    Output

    • Vetted risk assessment

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Draw your risk matrix on a whiteboard or flip chart.
    2. As a group, identify up to 10 examples of requests for changes that would apply within your organization. Depending on the number of people participating, each person could identify one or two changes and write them on sticky notes.
    3. Take turns bringing your sticky notes up to the risk matrix and placing each where it belongs, according to the assessment criteria you defined.
    4. After each participant has taken a turn, discuss each change as a group and adjust the placement of any changes, if needed. Update the risk assessment weightings or questions, if needed.

    Download the Change Management Rick Assessment Tool.

    #

    Change Example

    Impact

    Likelihood

    Risk

    1

    ERP change

    High

    Medium

    Major

    2

    Ticket system go-live

    Medium

    Low

    Minor

    3

    UPS replacement

    Medium

    Low

    Minor

    4

    Network upgrade

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    5

    AD upgrade

    Medium

    Low

    Minor

    6

    High availability implementation

    Low

    Medium

    Minor

    7

    Key-card implementation

    Low

    High

    Medium

    8

    Anti-virus update

    Low

    Low

    Minor

    9

    Website

    Low

    Medium

    Minor


    Case Study

    A CMDB is not a prerequisite of change management. Don’t let the absence of a configuration management database (CMDB) prevent you from implementing change management.

    Industry: Manufacturing

    Source: Anonymous Info-Tech member

    Challenge

    The company was planning to implement a CMDB; however, full implementation was still one year away and subject to budget constraints.

    Without a CMDB, it would be difficult to understand the interdependencies between systems and therefore be able to provide notifications to potentially affected user groups prior to implementing technical changes.

    This could have derailed the change management project.

    Solution

    An Excel template was set up as a stopgap measure until the full implementation of the CMDB. The template included all identified dependencies between systems, along with a “dependency tier” for each IT service.

    Tier 1: The dependent system would not operate if the upstream system change resulted in an outage.

    Tier 2: The dependent system would suffer severe degradation of performance and/or features.

    Tier 3: The dependent system would see minor performance degradation or minor feature unavailability.

    Results

    As a stopgap measure, the solution worked well. When changes ran the risk of degrading downstream dependent systems, the impacted business system owner’s authorization was sought and end users were informed in advance.

    The primary takeaway was that a system to manage configuration linkages and system dependencies was key.

    While a CMDB is ideal for this use case, IT organizations shouldn’t let the lack of such a system stop progress on change management.

    Case Study (part 1 of 4)

    Intel used a maturity assessment to kick-start its new change management program.

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Daniel Grove, Intel

    Challenge

    Founded in 1968, the world’s largest microchip and semiconductor company employs over 100,000 people. Intel manufactures processors for major players in the PC market including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

    Intel IT supports over 65,000 servers, 3.2 petabytes of data, over 70,000 PCs, and 2.6 million emails per day.

    Intel’s change management program is responsible for over 4,000 changes each week.

    Solution

    Due to the sheer volume of change management activities present at Intel, over 35% of unscheduled outages were the result of changes.

    Ineffective change management was identified as the top contributor of incidents with unscheduled downtime.

    One of the major issues highlighted was a lack of process ownership. The change management process at Intel was very fragmented, and that needed to change.

    Results

    Daniel Grove, Senior Release & Change Manager at Intel, identified that clarifying tasks for the Change Manager and the CAB would improve process efficiency by reducing decision lag time. Roles and responsibilities were reworked and clarified.

    Intel conducted a maturity assessment of the overall change management process to identify key areas for improvement.

    Phase 2

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    For running change management in DevOps environment, see Appendix II.

    Define Change Management

    1.1 Assess Maturity

    1.2 Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    2.1 Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    2.2 Build Core Workflows

    Define RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    3.1 Design the RFC

    3.2 Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    4.2 Implement the Project

    This phase will guide you through the following steps:

    • Determine Roles and Responsibilities
    • Build Core Workflows

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Step 2.1

    Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    Activities

    2.1.1 Capture Roles and Responsibilities Using a RACI Chart

    2.1.2 Determine Your Change Manager’s Responsibilities

    2.1.3 Define the Authority and Responsibilities of Your CAB

    2.1.4 Determine an E-CAB Protocol for Your Organization

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    Step 2.1: Determine Roles and Responsibilities → Step 2.2: Build Core Workflows

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • Clearly defined responsibilities to form the job description for a Change Manager
    • Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the change management team, including the business system owner, technical SME, and CAB members
    • Defined responsibilities and authority of the CAB
    • Protocol for an emergency CAB (E-CAB) meeting

    Identify roles and responsibilities for your change management team

    Business System Owner

    • Provides downtime window(s)
    • Advises on need for change (prior to creation of RFC)
    • Validates change (through UAT or other validation as necessary)
    • Provides approval for expedited changes (needs to be at executive level)

    Technical Subject Matter Expert (SME)

    • Advises on proposed changes prior to RFC submission
    • Reviews draft RFC for technical soundness
    • Assesses backout/rollback plan
    • Checks if knowledgebase has been consulted for prior lessons learned
    • Participates in the PIR, if necessary
    • Ensures that the service desk is trained on the change

    CAB

    • Approves/rejects RFCs for normal changes
    • Reviews lessons learned from PIRs
    • Decides on the scope of change management
    • Reviews metrics and decides on remedial actions
    • Considers changes to be added to list of pre-approved changes
    • Communicates to organization about upcoming changes

    Change Manager

    • Reviews RFCs for completeness
    • Ensures RFCs brought to the CAB have a high chance of approval
    • Chairs CAB meetings, including scheduling, agenda preparation, reporting, and follow-ups
    • Manages post-implementation reviews and reporting
    • Organizes internal communications (within IT)

    2.1.1 Capture Roles and Responsibilities Using a RACI Chart

    Input

    • Current SOP

    Output

    • Documented roles and responsibilities in change management in a RACI chart

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. As a group, work through developing a RACI chart to determine the roles and responsibilities of individuals involved in the change management practice based on the following criteria:
      • Responsible (performs the work)
      • Accountable (ensures the work is done)
      • Consulted (two-way communication)
      • Informed (one-way communication)
    2. Record your results in slide 14 of the Project Summary Template and section 3.1 of your Change Management SOP.
    Change Management Tasks Originator System Owner Change Manager CAB Member Technical SME Service Desk CIO/ VP IT E-CAB Member
    Review the RFC C C A C R C R
    Validate changes C C A C R C R
    Assess test plan A C R R C I
    Approve the RFC I C A R C I
    Create communications plan R I A I I
    Deploy communications plan I I A I R
    Review metrics C A R C I
    Perform a post implementation review C R A I
    Review lessons learned from PIR activities R A C

    Designate a Change Manager to own the process, change templates, and tools

    The Change Manager will be the point of contact for all process questions related to change management.

    • The Change Manager needs the authority to reject change requests, regardless of the seniority of the requester.
    • The Change Manager needs the authority to enforce compliance to a standard process.
    • The Change Manager needs enough cross-functional subject-matter expertise to accurately evaluate the impact of change from both an IT and business perspective.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Some organizations will not be able to assign a dedicated Change Manager, but they must still task an individual with change review authority and with ownership of the risk assessment and other key parts of the process.

    Responsibilities

    1. The Change Manager is your first stop for change approval. Both the change management and release and deployment management processes rely on the Change Manager to function.
    2. Every single change that is applied to the live environment, from a single patch to a major change, must originate with a request for change (RFC), which is then approved by the Change Manager to proceed to the CAB for full approval.
    3. Change templates and tools, such as the change calendar, list of preapproved changes, and risk assessment template are controlled by the Change Manager.
    4. The Change Manager also needs to have ownership over gathering metrics and reports surrounding deployed changes. A skilled Change Manager needs to have an aptitude for applying metrics for continual improvement activities.

    2.1.2 Document Your Change Manager’s Responsibilities

    Input

    • Current Change Manager job description (if available)

    Output

    • Change Manager job description and list of responsibilities

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
    • Markers/pens
    • Info-Tech’s Change Manager Job Description
    • Change Management SOP

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    1.Using the previous slide, Info-Tech’s Change Manager Job Description, and the examples below, brainstorm responsibilities for the Change Manager.

    2.Record the responsibilities in Section 3.2 of your Change Management SOP.

    Example:

    Change Manager: James Corey

    Responsibilities

    1. Own the process, tools, and templates.
    2. Control the Change Management SOP.
    3. Provide standard RFC forms.
    4. Distribute RFCs for CAB review.
    5. Receive all initial RFCs and check them for completion.
    6. Approve initial RFCs.
    7. Approve pre-approved changes.
    8. Approve the conversion of normal changes to pre-approved changes.
    9. Assemble the Emergency CAB (E-CAB) when emergency change requests are received.
    10. Approve submission of RFCs for CAB review.
    11. Chair the CAB:
      • Set the CAB agenda and distribute it at least 24 hours before the meeting.
      • Ensure the agenda is adhered to.
      • Make the final approval/prioritization decision regarding a change if the CAB is deadlocked and cannot come to an agreement.
      • Distribute CAB meeting minutes to all members and relevant stakeholders.

    Download the Change Manager Job Description

    Create a Change Advisory Board (CAB) to provide process governance

    The primary functions of the CAB are to:

    1. Protect the live environment from poorly assessed, tested, and implemented changes.
      • CAB approval is required for all normal and emergency changes.
      • If a change results in an incident or outage, the CAB is effectively responsible; it’s the responsibility of the CAB to assess and accept the potential impact of every change.
    2. Prioritize changes in a way that fairly reflects change impact and urgency.
      • Change requests will originate from multiple stakeholders, some of whom have competing interests.
      • It’s up to the CAB to prioritize these requests effectively so that business need is balanced with any potential risk to the infrastructure.
      • The CAB should seek to reduce the number of emergency/expedited changes.
    3. Schedule deployments in a way that minimizes conflict and disruption.
      • The CAB uses a change calendar populated with project work, upcoming organizational initiatives, and change freeze periods. They will schedule changes around these blocks to avoid disrupting user productivity.
      • The CAB should work closely with the release and deployment management teams to coordinate change/release scheduling.

    See what responsibilities in the CAB’s process are already performed by the DevOps lifecycle (e.g. authorization, deconfliction etc.). Do not duplicate efforts.

    Use diverse representation from the business to form an effective CAB

    The CAB needs insight into all areas of the business to avoid approving a high-risk change.

    Based on the core responsibilities you have defined, the CAB needs to be composed of a diverse set of individuals who provide quality:

    • Change need assessments – identifying the value and purpose of a proposed change.
    • Change risk assessments – confirmation of the technical impact and likelihood assessments that lead to a risk score, based on the inputs in RFC.
    • Change scheduling – offer a variety of perspectives and responsibilities and will be able to identify potential scheduling conflicts.
    CAB Representation Value Added
    Business Members
    • CIO
    • Business Relationship Manager
    • Service Level Manager
    • Business Analyst
    • Identify change blackout periods, change impact, and business urgency.
    • Assess impact on fiduciary, legal, and/or audit requirements.
    • Determine acceptable business risk.
    IT Operations Members
    • Managers representing all IT functions
    • IT Directors
    • Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
    • Identify dependencies and downstream impacts.
    • Identify possible conflicts with pre-existing OLAs and SLAs.
    CAB Attendees
    • Specific SMEs, tech specialists, and business and vendor reps relevant to a particular change
    • Only attend meetings when invited by the Change Manager
    • Provide detailed information and expertise related to their particular subject areas.
    • Speak to requirements, change impact, and cost.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Form a core CAB (members attend every week) and an optional CAB (members who attend only when a change impacts them or when they can provide value in discussions about a change). This way, members can have their voice heard without spending every week in a meeting where they do not contribute.

    2.1.3 Define the Authority and Responsibilities of Your CAB

    Input

    • Current SOP or CAB charter (if available)

    Output

    • Documented list of CAB authorities and responsibilities

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    1.Using the previous slide and the examples below, list the authorities and responsibilities of your CAB.

    2.Record the responsibilities in section 3.3.2 of your Change Management SOP and the Project Summary Template.

    Example:

    CAP Authority CAP Responsibilities
    • Final authority over the deployment of all normal and emergency changes.
    • Authority to absorb the risk of a change.
    • Authority to set the change calendar:
      • Maintenance windows.
      • Change freeze periods.
      • Project work.
      • Authority to delay changes.
    • Evaluate all normal and emergency changes.
    • Verify all normal change test, backout, and implementation plans.
    • Verify all normal change test results.
    • Approve all normal and emergency changes.
    • Prioritize all normal changes.
    • Schedule all normal and emergency changes.
    • Review failed change deployments.

    Establish an emergency CAB (E-CAB) protocol

    • When an emergency change request is received, you will not be able to wait until the regularly scheduled CAB meeting.
    • As a group, decide who will sit on the E-CAB and what their protocol will be when assessing and approving emergency changes.

    Change owner conferences with E-CAB (best efforts to reach them) through email or messaging.

    E-CAB members and business system owners are provided with change details. No decision is made without feedback from at least one E-CAB member.

    If business continuity is being affected, the Change Manager has authority to approve change.

    Full documentation of the change (a retroactive RFC) is done after the change and is then reviewed by the CAB.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Members of the E-CAB should be a subset of the CAB who are typically quick to respond to their messages, even at odd hours of the night.

    2.1.4 Determine an E-CAB Protocol for Your Organization

    Input

    • Current SOP or CAB charter (if available)

    Output

    • E-CAB protocol

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Gather the members of the E-CAB and other necessary representatives from the change management team.
    2. Determine the order of operations for the E-CAB in the event that an emergency change is needed.
    3. Consult the example emergency protocol below. Determine what roles and responsibilities are involved at each stage of the emergency change’s implementation.
    4. Document the E-CAB protocol in section 3.4 of your Change Management SOP.

    Example

    Assemble E-CAB

    Assess Change

    Test (if Applicable)

    Deploy Change

    Create Retroactive RFC

    Review With CAB

    Step 2.2

    Build Core Workflows

    Activities

    2.2.1 Build a CMDB-lite as a Reference for Requested Changes

    2.2.2 Create a Normal Change Process

    2.2.3 Create a Pre-Approved Change Process

    2.2.4 Create an Emergency Change Process

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    Step 2.1: Determine Roles and Responsibilities → Step 2.2: Build Core Workflows

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • Emergency change workflow
    • Normal process workflow
    • Pre-approved change workflow

    Establishing Workflows: Change Management Lifecycle

    Improve

    • A post-implementation review assesses the value of the actual change measured against the proposed change in terms of benefits, costs, and impact.
    • Results recorded in the change log.
    • Accountability: Change Manager Change Implementer

    Request

    • A change request (RFC) can be submitted via paper form, phone, email, or web portal.
    • Accountability: Change requester/Initiator

    Assess

    • The request is screened to ensure it meets an agreed-upon set of business criteria.
    • Changes are assessed on:
      • Impact of change
      • Risks or interdependencies
      • Resourcing and costs
    • Accountability: Change Manager

    Plan

    • Tasks are assigned, planned, and executed.
    • Change schedule is consulted and necessary resources are identified.
    • Accountability: Change Manager

    Approve

    • Approved requests are sent to the most efficient channel based on risk, urgency, and complexity.
    • Change is sent to CAB members for final review and approval
    • Accountability: Change Manager
      • Change Advisory Board

    Implement

    • Approved changes are deployed.
    • A rollback plan is created to mitigate risk.
    • Accountability: Change Manager Change Implementer

    Establishing workflows: employ a SIPOC model for process definition

    A good SIPOC (supplier, input, process, output, customer) model helps establish the boundaries of each process step and provides a concise definition of the expected outcomes and required inputs. It’s a useful and recommended next step for every workflow diagram.

    For change management, employ a SIPOC model to outline your CAB process:

    Supplier

    • Who or what organization provides the inputs to the process? The supplier can be internal or external.

    Input

    • What goes into the process step? This can be a document, data, information, or a decision.

    Process

    • Activities that occur in the process step that’s being analyzed.

    Output

    • What does the process step produce? This can be a document, data, information, or a decision.

    Customer

    • Who or what organization(s) takes the output of the process? The customer can be internal or external.

    Optional Fields

    Metrics

    • Top-level indicators that usually relate to the input and output, e.g. turnaround time, risk matrix completeness.

    Controls

    • Checkpoints to ensure process step quality.

    Dependencies

    • Other process steps that require the output.

    RACI

    • Those who are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed (RACI) about the input, output, and/or process.

    Establish change workflows: assess requested changes to identify impact and dependencies

    An effective change assessment workflow is a holistic process that leaves no stone unturned in an effort to mitigate risk before any change reaches the approval stage. The four crucial areas of risk in a change workflow are:

    Dependencies

    Identify all components of the change.

    Ask how changes will affect:

    • Services on the same infrastructure?
    • Applications?
    • Infrastructure/app architecture?
    • Security?
    • Ability to support critical systems?

    Business Impact

    Frame the change from a business point of view to identify potential disruptions to business activities.

    Your assessment should cover:

    • Business processes
    • User productivity
    • Customer service
    • BCPs

    SLA Impact

    Each new change can impact the level of service available.

    Examine the impact on:

    • Availability of critical systems
    • Infrastructure and app performance
    • Infrastructure and app capacity
    • Existing disaster recovery plans and procedures

    Required Resources

    Once risk has been assessed, resources need to be identified to ensure the change can be executed.

    These include:

    • People (SMEs, tech support, work effort/duration)
    • System time for scheduled implementation
    • Hardware or software (new or existing, as well as tools)

    Establishing workflows: pinpoint dependencies to identify the need for additional changes

    An assessment of each change and a query of the CMDB needs to be performed as part of the change planning process to mitigate outage risk.

    • A version upgrade on one piece of software may require another component to be upgraded as well. For example, an upgrade to the database management system requires that an application that uses the database be upgraded or modified.
    • The sequence of the release must also be determined, as certain components may need to be upgraded before others. For example, if you upgrade the Exchange Server, a Windows update must be installed prior to the Exchange upgrade.
    • If you do not have a CMDB, consider building a CMDB-lite, which consists of a listing of systems, primary users, SMEs, business owners, and system dependencies (see next slide).

    Services Impacted

    • Have affected services been identified?
    • Have supporting services been identified?
    • Has someone checked the CMDB to ensure all dependencies have been accounted for?
    • Have we referenced the service catalog so the business approves what they’re authorizing?

    Technical Teams Impacted

    • Who will support the change throughout testing and implementation?
    • Will additional support be needed?
    • Do we need outside support from eternal suppliers?
    • Has someone checked the contract to ensure any additional costs have been approved?

    Build a dependency matrix to avoid change related collisions (optional)

    A CMDB-lite does not replace a CMDB but can be a valuable tool to leverage when requesting changes if you do not currently have configuration management. Consider the following inputs when building your own CMDB-lite.

    • System
      • To build a CMDB-lite, start with the top 10 systems in your environment that experience changes. This list can always be populated iteratively.
    • Primary Users
      • Listing the primary users will give a change requester a first glance at the impact of the change.
      • You can also use this information when looking at the change communication and training after the change is implemented.
    • SME/Backup
      • These are the staff that will likely build and implement the change. The backup is listed in case the primary is on holiday.
    • Business System Owner
      • The owner of the system is one of the people needed to sign off on the change. Having their support from the beginning of a change is necessary to build and implement it successfully.
    • Tier 1 Dependency
      • If the primary system experiences and outage, Tier 1 dependency functionality is also lost. To request a change, include the business system owner signoffs of the Tier 1 dependencies of the primary system.
    • Tier 2 Dependency
      • If the primary system experiences an outage, Tier 2 dependency functionality is lost, but there is an available workaround. As with Tier 1, this information can help you build a backout plan in case there is a change-related collision.
    • Tier 3 Dependency
      • Tier 3 functionality is not lost if the primary system experiences an outage, but nice-to-haves such as aesthetics are affected.

    2.2.1 Build a CMDB-lite as a Reference for Requested Changes

    Input

    • Current system ownership documentation

    Output

    • Documented reference for change requests (CMDB-lite)

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
    • Sticky notes
    • Markers/pens

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Start with a list of your top 10-15 systems/services with the highest volume of changes.
    2. Using a whiteboard, flip chart, or shared screen, complete the table below by filling the corresponding Primary Users, SMEs, Business System Owner, and Dependencies as shown below. It may help to use sticky notes.
    3. Iteratively populate the table as you notice gaps with incoming changes.
    System Primary Users SME Backup SME(s) Business System Owner Tier 1 Dependency (system functionality is down) Tier 2 (impaired functionality/ workaround available) Tier 3 Dependency (nice to have)
    Email Enterprise Naomi Amos James
    • ITSMs
    • Scan-to-email
    • Reporting
    • Lots
    Conferencing Tool Enterprise Alex Shed James
    • Videoconferencing
    • Conference rooms (can use Facebook messenger instead in worst case scenario)
    • IM
    ITSM (Service Now) Enterprise (Intl.) Anderson TBD Mike
    • Work orders
    • Dashboards
    • Purchasing
    ITSM (Manage Engine) North America Bobbie Joseph Mike
    • Work orders
    • Dashboards
    • Purchasing

    Establishing workflows: create standards for change approvals to improve efficiency

    • Not all changes are created equal, and not all changes require the same degree of approval. As part of the change management process, it’s important to define who is the authority for each type of change.
    • Failure to do so can create bureaucratic bottlenecks if each change is held to an unnecessary high level of scrutiny, or unplanned outages may occur due to changes circumventing the formal approval process.
    • A balance must be met and defined to ensure the process is not bypassed or bottlenecked.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Define a list pre-approved changes and automate them (if possible) using your ITSM solution. This will save valuable time for more important changes in the queue.

    Example:

    Change Category Change Authority
    Pre-approved change Department head/manager
    Emergency change E-CAB
    Normal change – low and medium risk CAB
    Normal change – high risk CAB and CIO (for visibility)

    Example process: Normal Change – Change Initiation

    Change initiation allows for assurance that the request is in scope for change management and acts as a filter for out-of-scope changes to be redirected to the proper workflow. Initiation also assesses who may be assigned to the change and the proper category of the change, and results in an RFC to be populated before the change reaches the build and test phase.

    The image is a horizontal flow chart, depicting an example of a change process.

    The change trigger assessment is critical in the DevOps lifecycle. This can take a more formal role of a technical review board (TRB) or, with enough maturity, may be automated. Responsibilities such as deconfliction, dependency identification, calendar query, and authorization identification can be done early in the lifecycle to decrease or eliminate the burden on CAB.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    Example process: Normal Change – Technical Build and Test

    The technical build and test stage includes all technical prerequisites and testing needed for a change to pass before proceeding to approval and implementation. In addition to a technical review, a solution consisting of the implementation, rollback, communications, and training plan are also built and included in the RFC before passing it to the CAB.

    The image is a flowchart, showing the process for change during the technical build and test stage.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    Example process: Normal Change – Change Approval (CAB)

    Change approval can start with the Change Manager reviewing all incoming RFCs to filter them for completeness and check them for red flags before passing them to the CAB. This saves the CAB from discussing incomplete changes and allows the Change Manager to set a CAB agenda before the CAB meeting. If need be, change approval can also set vendor communications necessary for changes, as well as the final implementation date of the change. The CAB and Change Manager may follow up with the appropriate parties notifying them of the approval decision (accepted, rescheduled, or rejected).

    The image shows a flowchart illustrating the process for change approval.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    Example process: Normal Change – Change Implementation

    Changes should not end at implementation. Ensure you define post-implementation activities (documentation, communication, training etc.) and a post-implementation review in case the change does not go according to plan.

    The image is a flowchart, illustrating the work process for change implementation and post-implementation review.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    2.2.2 Create a Normal Change Process

    Input

    • Current SOP/workflow library

    Output

    • Normal change process

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Gather representatives from the change management team.
    2. Using the examples shown on the previous few slides, work as a group to determine the workflow for a normal change, with particular attention to the following sub-processes:
      1. Request
      2. Assessment
      3. Plan
      4. Approve
      5. Implementation and Post-Implementation Activities
    3. Optionally, you may create variations of the workflow for minor, medium, and major changes (e.g. there will be fewer authorizations for minor changes).
    4. For further documentation, you may choose to run the SIPOC activity for your CAB as outlined on this slide.
    5. Document the resulting workflows in the Change Management Process Library and section 11 of your Change Management SOP.

    Download the Change Management Process Library.

    Identify and convert low-risk normal changes to pre-approved once the process is established

    As your process matures, begin creating a list of normal changes that might qualify for pre-approval. The most potential for value in gains from change management comes from re-engineering and automating of high-volume changes. Pre-approved changes should save you time without threatening the live environment.

    IT should flag changes they would like pre-approved:

    • Once your change management process is firmly established, hold a meeting with all staff that make change requests and build changes.
    • Run a training session detailing the traits of pre-approved changes and ask these individuals to identify changes that might qualify.
    • These changes should be submitted to the Change Manager and reviewed, with the help of the CAB, to decide whether or not they qualify for pre-approval.

    Pre-approved changes are not exempt from due diligence:

    • Once a change is designated as pre-approved, the deployment team should create and compile all relevant documentation:
      • An RFC detailing the change, dependencies, risk, and impact.
      • Detailed procedures and required resources.
      • Implementation and backout plan.
      • Test results.
    • When templating the RFC for pre-approved changes, aim to write the documentation as if another SME were to implement it. This reduces confusion, especially if there’s staff turnover.
    • The CAB must approve, sign off, and keep a record of all documents.
    • Pre-approved changes must still be documented and recorded in the CMDB and change log after each deployment.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    At the beginning of a change management process, there should be few active pre-approved changes. However, prior to launch, you may have IT flag changes for conversion.

    Example process: Pre-Approved Change Process

    The image shows two horizontal flow charts, the first labelled Pre-Approval of Recurring RFC, and the second labelled Implementation of Child RFC.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    Review the pre-approved change list regularly to ensure the list of changes are still low-risk and repeatable.

    IT environments change. Don’t be caught by surprise.

    • Changes which were once low-risk and repeatable may cause unforeseen incidents if they are not reviewed regularly.
    • Dependencies change as the IT environment changes. Ensure that the changes on the pre-approved change list are still low-risk and repeatable, and that the documentation is up to date.
    • If dependencies have changed, then move the change back to the normal category for reassessment. It may be redesignated as a pre-approved change once the documentation is updated.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Other reasons for moving a pre-approved change back to the normal category is if the change led to an incident during implementation or if there was an issue during implementation.

    Seek new pre-approved change submissions. → Re-evaluate the pre-approved change list every 4-6 months.

    The image shows a horizontal flow chart, depicting the process for a pre-approved change list review.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    2.2.3 Create a Pre-Approved Change Process

    Input

    • Current SOP/workflow library

    Output

    • Pre-approved change process

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Gather representatives from the change management team.
    2. Using the examples shown on the previous few slides, work as a group to determine the workflow for a pre-approved change, with particular attention to the following sub-processes:
      1. Request
      2. Assessment
      3. Plan
      4. Approve
    3. Document the process of a converting a normal change to pre-approved. Include the steps from flagging a low-risk change to creating the related RFC template.
    4. Document the resulting workflows in the Change Management Process Library and sections 4.2 and 13 of your Change Management SOP.

    Reserve the emergency designation for real emergencies

    • Emergency changes have one of the following triggers:
      • A critical incident is impacting user productivity.
      • An imminent critical incident will impact user productivity.
    • Unless a critical incident is being resolved or prevented, the change should be categorized as normal.
    • An emergency change differs from a normal change in the following key aspects:
      • An emergency change is required to recover from a major outage – there must be a validated service desk critical incident ticket.
      • An urgent business requirement is not an “emergency.”
      • An RFC is created after the change is implemented and the outage is over.
      • A review by the full CAB occurs after the change is implemented.
      • The first responder and/or the person implementing the change may not be the subject matter expert for that system.
    • In all cases, an RFC must be created and the change must be reviewed by the full CAB. The review should occur within two business days of the event.
    Sample Change Quick Check Emergency?
    Install the latest critical patches from the vendor. Are the patches required to resolve or prevent an imminent critical incident? No
    A virus or worm invades the network and a patch is needed to eliminate the threat. Is the patch required to resolve or prevent an imminent critical incident? Yes

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Change requesters should be made aware that senior management will be informed if an emergency RFC is submitted inappropriately. Emergency requests trigger urgent CAB meetings, are riskier to deploy, and delay other changes waiting in the queue.

    Example process: Emergency Change Process

    The image is a flowchart depicting the process for an emergency change process

    When building your emergency change process, have your E-CAB protocol from activity 2.1.4 handy.

    • Focus on the following requirements for an emergency process:
      • E-CAB protocol and scope: Does the SME need authorization first before working on the change or can the SME proceed if no E-CAB members respond?
      • Documentation and communication to stakeholders and CAB after the emergency change is completed.
      • Input from incident management.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    2.2.4 Create an Emergency Change Process

    Input

    • Current SOP/workflow library

    Output

    • Emergency change process

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Gather representatives from the change management team.
    2. Using the examples shown on the previous few slides, work as a group to determine the workflow for an emergency change, with particular attention to the following sub-processes:
      1. Request
      2. Assessment
      3. Plan
      4. Approve
    3. Ensure that the E-CAB protocol from activity 2.1.4 is considered when building your process.
    4. Document the resulting workflows in the Change Management Process Library and section 12 of your Change Management SOP.

    Case Study (part 2 of 4)

    Intel implemented a robust change management process.

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Daniel Grove, Intel

    Challenge

    Founded in 1968, the world’s largest microchip and semiconductor company employs over 100,000 people. Intel manufactures processors for major players in the PC market including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

    Intel IT supports over 65,000 servers, 3.2 petabytes of data, over 70,000 PCs, and 2.6 million emails per day.

    Intel’s change management program is responsible for over 4,000 changes each week.

    Solution

    Intel identified 37 different change processes and 25 change management systems of record with little integration.

    Software and infrastructure groups were also very siloed, and this no doubt contributed to the high number of changes that caused outages.

    The task was simple: standards needed to be put in place and communication had to improve.

    Results

    Once process ownership was assigned and the role of the Change Manager and CAB clarified, it was a simple task to streamline and simplify processes among groups.

    Intel designed a new, unified change management workflow that all groups would adopt.

    Automation was also brought into play to improve how RFCs were generated and submitted.

    Phase 3

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    Define Change Management

    1.1 Assess Maturity

    1.2 Categorize Changes and Build Your Risk Assessment

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    2.1 Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    2.2 Build Core Workflows

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    3.1 Design the RFC

    3.2 Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    4.2 Implement the Project

    This phase will guide you through the following activities:

    • Design the RFC
    • Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • IT Director
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Step 3.1

    Design the RFC

    Activities

    3.1.1 Evaluate Your Existing RFC Process

    3.1.2 Build the RFC Form

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    Step 3.1: Design the RFC

    Step 3.2: Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • A full RFC template and process that compliments the workflows for the three change categories

    A request for change (RFC) should be submitted for every non-standard change

    An RFC should be submitted through the formal change management practice for every change that is not a standard, pre-approved change (a change which does not require submission to the change management practice).

    • The RFC should contain all the information required to approve a change. Some information will be recorded when the change request is first initiated, but not everything will be known at that time.
    • Further information can be added as the change progresses through its lifecycle.
    • The level of detail that goes into the RFC will vary depending on the type of change, the size, and the likely impact of the change.
    • Other details of the change may be recorded in other documents and referenced in the RFC.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Keep the RFC form simple, especially when first implementing change management, to encourage the adoption of and compliance with the process.

    RFCs should contain the following information, at a minimum:

    1. Contact information for requester
    2. Description of change
    3. References to external documentation
    4. Items to be changed, reason for the change, and impact of both implementing and not implementing the change
    5. Change type and category
    6. Priority and risk assessment
    7. Predicted time frame, resources, and cost
    8. Backout or remediation plan
    9. Proposed approvers
    10. Scheduled implementation time
    11. Communications plan and post-implementation review

    3.1.1 Evaluate Your Existing RFC Process

    Input

    • Current RFC form or stock ITSM RFC
    • Current SOP (if available)

    Output

    • List of changes to the current RFC form and RFC process

    Materials

    Participants

    • IT Director
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. If the organization is already using an RFC form, review it as a group now and discuss its contents:
      • Does this RFC provide adequate information for the Change Manager and/or CAB to review?
      • Should any additional fields be added?
    2. Show the participants Info-Tech’s Request for Change Form Template and compare it to the one the organization is currently using.
    3. As a group, finalize an RFC table of contents that will be used to formalize a new or improved RFC.
    4. Decide which fields should be filled out by the requester before the initial RFC is submitted to the Change Manager:
      • Many sections of the RFC are relevant for change assessment and review. What information does the Change Manager need when they first receive a request?
      • The Change Manager needs enough information to ensure that the change is in scope and has been properly categorized.
    5. Decide how the RFC form should be submitted and reviewed; this can be documented in section 5 of your Change Management SOP.

    Download the Request for Change Form Template.

    Design the RFC to encourage process buy-in

    • When building the RFC, split the form up into sections that follow the normal workflow (e.g. Intake, Assessment and Build, Approval, Implementation/PIR). This way the form walks the requester through what needs to be filled and when.
    • Revisit the form periodically and solicit feedback to continually improve the user experience. If there’s information missing on the RFC that the CAB would like to know, add the fields. If there are sections that are not used or not needed for documentation, remove them.
    • Make sure the user experience surrounding your RFC form is a top priority – make it accessible, otherwise change requesters simply will not use it.
    • Take advantage of your ITSM’s dropdown lists, automated notifications, CMDB integrations, and auto-generated fields to ease the process of filling the RFC

    Draft:

    • Change requester
    • Requested date of deployment
    • Change risk: low/medium/high
    • Risk assessment
    • Description of change
    • Reason for change
    • Change components

    Technical Build:

    • Assess change:
      • Dependencies
      • Business impact
      • SLA impact
      • Required resources
      • Query the CMS
    • Plan and test changes:
      • Test plan
      • Test results
      • Implementation plan
      • Backout plan
      • Backout plan test results

    CAB:

    • Approve and schedule changes:
      • Final CAB review
      • Communications plan

    Complete:

    • Deploy changes:
      • Post-implementation review

    Designing your RFC: RFC draft

    • Change requester – link your change module to the active directory to pull the change requester’s contact information automatically to save time.
    • A requested date of deployment gives approvers information on timeline and can be used to query the change calendar for possible conflicts
    • Information about risk assessment based on impact and likelihood questionnaires are quick to fill out but provide a lot of information to the CAB. The risk assessment may not be complete at the draft stage but can be updated as the change is built. Ensure this field is up-to- date before it reaches CAB.
    • If you have a technical review stage where changes are directed to the proper workflow and resourcing is assessed, the description, reason, and change components are high-level descriptors of the change that will aid in discovery and lining the change up with the business vision (viability from both a technical and business standpoint).
    • Change requester
    • Requested date of deployment
    • Change Risk: low/medium/high
    • Risk assessment
    • Description of change
    • Reason for change
    • Change components

    Use the RFC to point to documentation already gathered in the DevOps lifecycle to cut down on unnecessary manual work while maintaining compliance.

    Designing your RFC: technical build

    • Dependencies and CMDB query, along with the proposed implementation date, are included to aid in calendar deconfliction and change scheduling. If there’s a conflict, it’s easier to reschedule the proposed change early in the lifecycle.
    • Business, SLA impact, and required resources can be tracked to provide the CAB with information on the business resources required. This can also be used to prioritize the change if conflicts arise.
    • Implementation, test, and backout plans must be included and assessed to increase the probability that a change will be implemented without failure. It’s also useful in the case of PIRs to determine root causes of change-related incidents.
    • Assess change:
      • Dependencies
      • Business impact
      • SLA impact
      • Required resources
      • Query the CMS
    • Plan and test changes:
      • Test plan
      • Test results
      • Implementation plan
      • Backout plan
      • Backout plan test results

    Designing your RFC: approval and deployment

    • Documenting approval, rejection, and rescheduling gives the change requester the go-ahead to proceed with the change, rationale on why it was prioritized lower than another change (rescheduled), or rationale on rejection.
    • Communications plans for appropriate stakeholders can also be modified and forwarded to the communications team (e.g. service desk or business system owners) before deployment.
    • Post-implementation activities and reviews can be conducted if need be before a change is closed. The PIR, if filled out, should then be appended to any subsequent changes of the same nature to avoid making the same mistake twice.
    • Approve and schedule changes:
      • Final CAB review
      • Communications plan
    • Deploy changes:
      • Post-implementation review

    Standardize the request for change protocol

    1. Submission Standards
      • Electronic submission will make it easier for CAB members to review the documentation.
      • As the change goes through the assessment, plan, and test phase, new documentation (assessments, backout plans, test results, etc.) can be attached to the digital RFC for review by CAB members prior to the CAB meeting.
      • Change management software won’t be necessary to facilitate the RFC submission and review; a content repository system, such as SharePoint, will suffice.
    2. Designate the first control point
      • All RFCs should be submitted to a single point of contact.
      • Ideally, the Change Manager or Technical Review Board should fill this role.
      • Whoever is tasked with this role needs the subject matter expertise to ensure that the change has been categorized correctly, to reject out-of-scope requests, or to ask that missing information be provided before the RFC moves through the full change management practice.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Technical and SME contacts should be noted in each RFC so they can be easily consulted during the RFC review.

    3.1.2 Build the RFC Form

    Input

    • Current RFC form or stock ITSM RFC
    • Current SOP (if available)

    Output

    • List of changes to the current RFC and RFC process

    Materials

    Participants

    • IT Director
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Use Info-Tech’s Request for Change Form Template as a basis for your RFC form.
    2. Use this template to standardize your change request process and ensure that the appropriate information is documented effectively each time a request is made. The change requester and Change Manager should consolidate all information associated with a given change request in this form. This form will be submitted by the change requester and reviewed by the Change Manager.

    Case Study (part 3 of 4)

    Intel implemented automated RFC form generation.

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Daniel Grove, Intel

    Challenge

    Founded in 1968, the world’s largest microchip and semiconductor company employs over 100,000 people. Intel manufactures processors for major players in the PC market including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

    Intel IT supports over 65,000 servers, 3.2 petabytes of data, over 70,000 PCs, and 2.6 million emails per day.

    Intel’s change management program is responsible for over 4,000 changes each week.

    Solution

    One of the crucial factors that was impacting Intel’s change management efficiency was a cumbersome RFC process.

    A lack of RFC usage was contributing to increased ad hoc changes being put through the CAB, and rescheduled changes were quite high.

    Additionally, ad hoc changes were also contributing heavily to unscheduled downtime within the organization.

    Results

    Intel designed and implemented an automated RFC form generator to encourage end users to increase RFC usage.

    As we’ve seen with RFC form design, the UX/UI of the form needs to be top notch, otherwise end users will simply circumvent the process. This will contribute to the problems you are seeking to correct.

    Thanks to increased RFC usage, Intel decreased emergency changes by 50% and reduced change-caused unscheduled downtime by 82%.

    Step 3.2

    Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    Activities

    3.2.1 Determine When the CAB Would Reject Tested Changes

    3.2.2 Create a Post-Implementation Activity Checklist

    Define the RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    Step 3.1: Design RFC

    Step 3.2: Establish Post-Implementation Activities

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Outcomes of this step

    • A formalized post-implementation process for continual improvement

    Why would the CAB reject a change that has been properly assessed and tested?

    Possible reasons the CAB would reject a change include:

    • The product being changed is approaching its end of life.
    • The change is too costly.
    • The timing of the change conflicts with other changes.
    • There could be compliance issues.
    • The change is actually a project.
    • The risk is too high.
    • There could be regulatory issues.
    • The peripherals (test, backout, communication, and training plans) are incomplete.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Many reasons for rejection (listed above) can be caught early on in the process during the technical review or change build portion of the change. The earlier you catch these reasons for rejection, the less wasted effort there will be per change.

    Sample RFC Reason for CAP Rejection
    There was a request for an update to a system that a legacy application depends on and only a specific area of the business was aware of the dependency. The CAB rejects it due to the downstream impact.
    There was a request for an update to a non-supported application, and the vendor was asking for a premium support contract that is very costly. It’s too expensive to implement, despite the need for it. The CAB will wait for an upgrade to a new application.
    There was a request to update application functionality to a beta release. The risk outweighs the business benefits.

    Determine When the CAB Would Reject Tested Changes

    Input

    • Current SOP (if available)

    Output

    • List of reasons to reject tested changes

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
    • Projector
    • Markers/pens
    • Laptop with ITSM admin access
    • Project Summary Template

    Participants

    • IT Director
    • Infrastructure Manager
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board

    Avoid hand-offs to ensure a smooth implementation process

    The implementation phase is the final checkpoint before releasing the new change into your live environment. Once the final checks have been made to the change, it’s paramount that teams work together to transition the change effectively rather than doing an abrupt hand-off. This could cause a potential outage.

    1.

    • Deployment resources identified, allocated, and scheduled
    • Documentation complete
    • Support team trained
    • Users trained
    • Business sign-off
    • Target systems identified and ready to receive changes
    • Target systems available for installation maintenance window scheduled
    • Technical checks:
      • Disk space available
      • Pre-requisites met
      • Components/Services to be updated are stopped
      • All users disconnected
    • Download Info-Tech’sChange Management Pre-Implementation Checklist

    Implement change →

    2.

    1. Verification – once the change has been implemented, verify that all requirements are fulfilled.
    2. Review – ensure that all affected systems and applications are operating as predicted. Update change log.
    3. Transition – a crucial phase of implementation that’s often overlooked. Once the change implementation is complete from a technical point of view, it’s imperative that the team involved with the change inform and train the group responsible for managing the new change.

    Create a backout plan to reduce the risk of a failed change

    Every change process needs to plan for the potential for failure and how to address it effectively. Change management’s solution to this problem is a backout plan.

    A backout plan needs to contain a record of the steps that need to be taken to restore the live environment back to its previous state and maintain business continuity. A good backout plan asks the following questions:

    1. How will failure be determined? Who will make the determination to back out of a change be made and when?
    2. Do we fix on fail or do we rollback to the previous configuration?
    3. Is the service desk aware of the impending change? Do they have proper training?

    Notify the Service Desk

    • Notify the Service Desk about backout plan initiation.

    Disable Access

    • Disable user access to affected system(s).

    Conduct Checks

    • Conduct checks to all affected components.

    Enable User Access

    • Enable user access to affected systems.

    Notify the Service Desk

    • Notify the service desk that the backout plan was successful.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    As part of the backout plan, consider the turnback point in the change window. That is, the point within the change window where you still have time to fully back out of the change.

    Ensure the following post-implementation review activities are completed

    Service Catalog

    Update the service catalog with new information as a result of the implemented change.

    CMDB

    Update new dependencies present as a result of the new change.

    Asset DB

    Add notes about any assets newly affected by changes.

    Architecture Map

    Update your map based on the new change.

    Technical Documentation

    Update your technical documentation to reflect the changes present because of the new change.

    Training Documentation

    Update your training documentation to reflect any information about how users interact with the change.

    Use a post-implementation review process to promote continual improvement

    The post-implementation review (PIR) is the most neglected change management activity.

    • All changes should be reviewed to understand the reason behind them, appropriateness, and recommendations for next steps.
    • The Change Manager manages the completion of information PIRs and invites RFC originators to present their findings and document the lessons learned.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Review PIR reports at CAB meetings to highlight the root causes of issues, action items to close identified gaps, and back-up documentation required. Attach the PIR report to the relevant RFC to prevent similar changes from facing the same issues in the future.

    1. Why do a post-implementation review?
      • Changes that don’t fail but don’t perform well are rarely reviewed.
      • Changes may fail subtly and still need review.
      • Changes that cause serious failures (i.e. unplanned downtime) receive analysis that is unnecessarily in-depth.
    2. What are the benefits?
      • A proactive, post-implementation review actually uses less resources than reactionary change reviews.
      • Root-cause analysis of failed changes, no matter what the impact.
      • Insight into changes that took longer than projected.
      • Identification of previously unidentified risks affecting changes.

    Determine the strategy for your PIR to establish a standardized process

    Capture the details of your PIR process in a table similar to the one below.

    Frequency Part of weekly review (IT team meeting)
    Participants
    • Change Manager
    • Originator
    • SME/supervisor/impacted team(s)

    Categories under review

    Current deviations and action items from previous PIR:

    • Complete
    • Partially complete
    • Complete, late
    • Change failed, rollback succeeded
    • Change failed, rollback failed
    • Major deviation from implementation plan
    Output
    • Root cause or failure or deviation
    • External factors
    • Remediation focus areas
    • Remediation timeline (follow-up at appropriate time)
    Controls
    • Reviewed at next CAB meeting
    • RFC close is dependent on completion of PIR
    • Share with the rest of the technical team
    • Lessons learned stored in the knowledgebase and attached to RFC for easy search of past issues.

    3.2.2 Create a Post-Implementation Activity Checklist

    Input

    • Current SOP (if available)

    Output

    • List of reasons to reject tested changes

    Materials

    Participants

    • CIO
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    1. Gather representatives from the change management team.
    2. Brainstorm duties to perform following the deployment of a change. Below is a sample list:
      • Example:
        • Was the deployment successful?
          • If no, was the backout plan executed successfully?
        • List change-related incidents
        • Change assessment
          • Missed dependencies
          • Inaccurate business impact
          • Incorrect SLA impact
          • Inaccurate resources
            • Time
            • Staff
            • Hardware
        • System testing
        • Integration testing
        • User acceptance testing
        • No backout plan
        • Backout plan failure
        • Deployment issues
    3. Record your results in the Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist.

    Download the Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist

    Case Study

    Microsoft used post-implementation review activities to mitigate the risk of a critical Azure outage.

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Jason Zander, Microsoft

    Challenge

    In November 2014, Microsoft deployed a change intended to improve Azure storage performance by reducing CPU footprint of the Azure Table Front-Ends.

    The deployment method was an incremental approach called “flighting,” where software and configuration deployments are deployed incrementally to Azure infrastructure in small batches.

    Unfortunately, this software deployment caused a service interruption in multiple regions.

    Solution

    Before the software was deployed, Microsoft engineers followed proper protocol by testing the proposed update. All test results pointed to a successful implementation.

    Unfortunately, engineers pushed the change out to the entire infrastructure instead of adhering to the traditional flighting protocol.

    Additionally, the configuration switch was incorrectly enabled for the Azure Blob storage Front-Ends.

    A combination of the two mistakes exposed a bug that caused the outage.

    Results

    Thankfully, Microsoft had a backout plan. Within 30 minutes, the change was rolled back on a global scale.

    It was determined that policy enforcement was not integrated across the deployment system. An update to the system shifted the process of policy enforcement from human-based decisions and protocol to automation via the deployment platform.

    Defined PIR activities enabled Microsoft to take swift action against the outage and mitigate the risk of a serious outage.

    Phase 4

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    Define Change Management

    1.1 Assess Maturity

    1.2 Categorize Changes and Build Risk Assessment

    Establish Roles and Workflows

    2.1 Determine Roles and Responsibilities

    2.2 Build Core Workflows

    Define RFC and Post-Implementation Activities

    3.1 Design RFC

    3.2 Establish post-implementation activities

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    4.1 Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    4.2 Implement the Project

    This phase will guide you through the following activities:

    • Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar
    • Implement the Project

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO/IT Director
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager

    Step 4.1

    Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    Activities

    4.1.1 Create an Outline for Your Change Calendar

    4.1.2 Determine Metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

    4.1.3 Track and Record Metrics Using the Change Management Metrics Tool

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    Step 4.1: Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    Step 4.2: Implement the Project

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO/IT Director
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager

    Outcomes of this step

    • Clear definitions of change calendar content
    • Guidelines for change calendar scheduling
    • Defined metrics to measure the success of change management with associated reports, KPIs, and CSFs

    Enforce a standard method of prioritizing and scheduling changes

    The impact of not deploying the change and the benefit of deploying it should determine its priority.

    Risk of Not Deploying

    • What is the urgency of the change?
    • What is the risk to the organization if the change is not deployed right away?
    • Will there be any lost productivity, service disruptions, or missed critical business opportunities?
      • Timing
        • Does the proposed timing work with the approved changes already on the change schedule?
        • Has the change been clash checked so there are no potential conflicts over services or resources?
      • Once prioritized, a final deployment date should be set by the CAB. Check the change calendar first to avoid conflicts.

    Positive Impact of Deployment

    • What benefits will be realized once the change is deployed?
    • How significant is the opportunity that triggered the change?
    • Will the change lead to a positive business outcome (e.g. increased sales)?

    “The one who has more clout or authority is usually the one who gets changes scheduled in the time frame they desire, but you should really be evaluating the impact to the organization. We looked at the risk to the business of not doing the change, and that’s a good way of determining the criticality and urgency of that change.” – Joseph Sgandurra, Director, Service Delivery, Navantis

    Info-Tech Insight

    Avoid a culture where powerful stakeholders are able to push change deployment on an ad hoc basis. Give the CAB the full authority to make approval decisions based on urgency, impact, cost, and availability of resources.

    Develop a change schedule to formalize the planning process

    A change calendar will help the CAB schedule changes more effectively and increase visibility into upcoming changes across the organization.

    1. Establish change windows in a consistent change schedule:
      • Compile a list of business units that would benefit from a change.
      • Look for conflicts in the change schedule.
      • Avoid scheduling two or more major business units in a day.
      • Consider clients when building your change windows and change schedule.
    2. Gain commitments from key participants:
      • These individuals can confirm if there are any unusual or cyclical business requirements that will impact the schedule.
    3. Properly control your change calendar to improve change efficiency:
      • Look at the proposed start and end times: Are they sensible? Does the implementation window leave time for anything going wrong or needing to roll back the change?
      • Special considerations: Are there special circumstances that need to be considered? Ask the business if you don’t know.
      • The key principle is to have a sufficient window available for implementing changes so you only need to set up calendar freezes for sound business or technical reasons.

    Our mantra is to put it on the calendar. Even if it’s a preapproved change and doesn’t need a vote, having it on the calendar helps with visibility. The calendar is the one-stop shop for scheduling and identifying change dependencies.“ – Wil Clark, Director of Service and Performance Management, University of North Texas Systems

    Provide clear definitions of what goes on the change calendar and who’s responsible

    Roles

    • The Change Manager will be responsible for creating and maintaining a change calendar.
    • Only the Change Manager can physically alter the calendar by adding a new change after the CAB has agreed upon a deployment date.
    • All other CAB members, IT support staff, and other impacted stakeholders should have access to the calendar on a read-only basis to prevent people from making unauthorized changes to deployment dates.

    Inputs

    • Freeze periods for individual business departments/applications (e.g. finance month-end periods, HR payroll cycle, etc. – all to be investigated).
    • Maintenance windows and planned outage periods.
    • Project schedules, and upcoming major/medium changes.
    • Holidays.
    • Business hours (some departments work 9-5, others work different hours or in different time zones, and user acceptance testing may require business users to be available).

    Guidelines

    • Business-defined freeze periods are the top priority.
    • No major or medium normal changes should occur during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
    • Vendor SLA support hours are the preferred time for implementing changes.
    • The vacation calendar for IT will be considered for major changes.
    • Change priority: High > Medium > Low.
    • Minor changes and preapproved changes have the same priority and will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

    The change calendar is a critical pre-requisite to change management in DevOps. Use the calendar to be proactive with proposed implementation dates and deconfliction before the change is finished.

    4.1.1 Create Guidelines for Your Change Calendar

    Input

    • Current change calendar guidelines

    Output

    • Change calendar inputs and schedule checklist

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)
    1. Gather representatives from the change management team.
      • Example:
        • The change calendar/schedule includes:
          • Approved and scheduled normal changes.
          • Scheduled project work.
          • Scheduled maintenance windows.
          • Change freeze periods with affected users noted:
            • Daily/weekly freeze periods.
            • Monthly freeze periods.
            • Annual freeze periods.
            • Other critical business events.
    2. Create a checklist to run through before each change is scheduled:
      • Check the schedule and assess resource availability:
        • Will user productivity be impacted?
        • Are there available resources (people and systems) to implement the change?
        • Is the vendor available? Is there a significant cost attached to pushing change deployment before the regularly scheduled refresh?
        • Are there dependencies? Does the deployment of one change depend on the earlier deployment of another?
    3. Record your results in your Project Summary Template.

    Start measuring the success of your change management project using three key metrics

    Number of change-related incidents that occur each month

    • Each month, record the number of incidents that can be directly linked to a change. This can be done using an ITSM tool or manually by service desk staff.
    • This is a key success metric: if you are not tracking change-related incidents yet, start doing so as soon as possible. This is the metric that the CIO and business stakeholders will be most interested in because it impacts users directly.

    Number of unauthorized changes applied each month

    • Each month, record the number of changes applied without approval. This is the best way to measure adherence to the process.
    • If this number decreases, it demonstrates a reduction in risk, as more changes are formally assessed and approved before being deployed.

    Percentage of emergency changes

    • Each month, compare the number of emergency change requests to the total number of change requests.
    • Change requesters often designate changes as emergencies as a way of bypassing the process.
    • A reduction in emergency changes demonstrates that your process is operating smoothly and reduces the risk of deploying changes that have not been properly tested.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Start simple. Metrics can be difficult to tackle if you’re starting from scratch. While implementing your change management practice, use these three metrics as a starting point, since they correlate well with the success of change management overall. The following few slides provide more insight into creating metrics for your change process.

    If you want more insight into your change process, measure the progress of each step in change management with metrics

    Improve

    • Number of repeat failures (i.e. making the same mistake twice)
    • Number of changes converted to pre-approved
    • Number of changes converted from pre-approved back to normal

    Request

    • What percentage of change requests have errors or lack appropriate support?
    • What percentage of change requests are actually projects, service requests, or operational tasks?
    • What percentage of changes have been requested before (i.e. documented)?

    Assess

    • What percentage of change requests are out of scope?
    • What percentage of changes have been requested before (i.e. documented)?
    • What are the percentages of changes by category (normal, pre-approved, emergency)?

    Plan

    • What percentage of change requests are reviewed by the CAB that should have been pre-approved or emergency (i.e. what percentage of changes are in the wrong category)?

    Approve

    • Number of changes broken down by department (business unit/IT department to be used in making core/optional CAB membership more efficient)
    • Number of workflows that can be automated

    Implement

    • Number of changes completed on schedule
    • Number of changes rolled back
    • What percentage of changes caused an incident?

    Use metrics to inform project KPIs and CSFs

    Leverage the metrics from the last slide and convert them to data communicable to IT, management, and leadership

    • To provide value, metrics and measurements must be actionable. What actions can be taken as a result of the data being presented?
    • If the metrics are not actionable, there is no value and you should question the use of the metric.
    • Data points in isolation are mostly meaningless to inform action. Observe trends in your metrics to inform your decisions.
    • Using a framework to develop measurements and metrics provides a defined methodology that enables a mapping of base measurements through CSFs.
    • Establishing the relationship increases the value that measurements provide.

    Purposely use SDLC and change lifecycle metrics to find bottlenecks and automation candidates.

    Metrics:

    Metrics are easily measured datapoints that can be pulled from your change management tool. Examples: Number of changes implemented, number of changes without incident.

    KPIs:

    Key Performance Indicators are metrics presented in a way that is easily digestible by stakeholders in IT. Examples: Change efficiency, quality of changes.

    CSFs:

    Critical Success Factors are measures of the business success of change management taken by correlating the CSF with multiple KPIs. Examples: consistent and efficient change management process, a change process mapped to business needs

    List in-scope metrics and reports and align them to benefits

    Metric/Report (by team) Benefit
    Total number of RFCs and percentages by category (pre-approved, normal, emergency, escalated support, expedited)
    • Understand change management activity
    • Tracking maturity growth
    • Identifying “hot spots”
    Pre-approved change list (and additions/removals from the list) Workload and process streamlining (i.e. reduce “red tape” wherever possible)
    Average time between RFC lifecycle stages (by service/application) Advance planning for proposed changes
    Number of changes by service/application/hardware class
    • Identifying weaknesses in the architecture
    • Vendor-specific TCO calculations
    Change triggers Business- vs. IT-initiated change
    Number of RFCs by lifecycle stage Workload planning
    List of incidents related to changes Visible failures of the CM process
    Percentage of RFCs with a tested backout/validation plan Completeness of change planning
    List of expedited changes Spotlighting poor planning and reducing the need for this category going forward (“The Hall of Shame”)
    CAB approval rate Change coordinator alignment with CAB priorities – low approval rate indicates need to tighten gatekeeping by the change coordinator
    Calendar of changes Planning

    4.1.2 Determine Metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

    Input

    • Current metrics

    Output

    • List of trackable metrics, KPIs and CSFs

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)
    1. Draw three tables for metrics, KPIs, and CSFs.
    2. Starting with the CSF table, fill in all relevant CSFs that your group wishes to track and measure.
    3. Next, work to determine relevant KPIs correlated with the CSFs and metrics needed to measure the KPIs. Use the tables included below (taken from section 14 of the Change Management SOP) to guide the process.
    4. Record the results in the tables in section 14 of your Change Management SOP.
    5. Decide on where and when to review the metrics to discuss your change management strategy. Designate and owner and record in the RACI and Communications section of your Change Management SOP.
    Ref # Metric

    M1

    Number of changes implemented for a time period
    M2 Number of changes successfully implemented for a time period
    M3 Number of changes implemented causing incidents
    M4 Number of accepted known errors when change is implemented
    M5 Total days for a change build (specific to each change)
    M6 Number of changes rescheduled
    M7 Number of training questions received following a change
    Ref# KPI Product
    K1 Successful changes for a period of time (approach 100%) M2 / M1 x 100%
    K2 Changes causing incidents (approach 0%) M3 / M1 x 100%
    K3 Average days to implement a change ΣM5 / M1
    K4 Change efficiency (approach 100%) [1 - (M6 / M1)] x 100%
    K5 Quality of changes being implemented (approach 100%) [1 - (M4 / M1)] x 100%
    K6 Change training efficiency (approach 100%) [1 - (M7 / M1)] x 100%
    Ref# CSF Indicator
    C1 Successful change management process producing quality changes K1, K5
    C2 Consistent efficient change process K4, K6
    C3 Change process maps to business needs K5, K6

    Measure changes in selected metrics to evaluate success

    Once you have implemented a standardized change management practice, your team’s goal should be to improve the process, year over year.

    • After a process change has been implemented, it’s important to regularly monitor and evaluate the CSFs, KPIs, and metrics you chose to evaluate. Examine whether the process change you implemented has actually resolved the issue or achieved the goal of the critical success factor.
    • Establish a schedule for regularly reviewing the key metrics. Assess changes in those metrics and determine progress toward reaching objectives.
    • In addition to reviewing CSFs, KPIs, and metrics, check in with the release management team and end users to measure their perceptions of the change management process once an appropriate amount of time has passed.
    • Ensure that metrics are telling the whole story and that reporting is honest in order to be informative.

    Outcomes of standardizing change management should include:

    1. Improved efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of changes.
    2. Changes and processes are more aligned with the business needs and strategy.
    3. Improved maturity of change processes.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Make sure you’re measuring the right things and considering all sources of information. It’s very easy to put yourself in a position where you’re congratulating yourselves for improving on a specific metric such as number of releases per month, but satisfaction remains low.

    4.1.3 Track and Record Metrics Using the Change Management Metrics Tool

    Input

    • Current metrics

    Output

    • List of trackable metrics, KPIs and CSFs to be observed over the length of a year

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)

    Tracking the progress of metrics is paramount to the success of any change management process. Use Info-Tech’s Change Management Metrics Tool to record metrics and track your progress. This tool is intended to be a substitute for organizations who do not have the capability to track change-related metrics in their ITSM tool.

    1. Input metrics from the previous activity to track over the course of a year.
    2. To record your metrics, open the tool and go to tab 2. The tool is currently primed to record and track five metrics. If you need more than that, you can edit the list in the hidden calculations tab.
    3. To see the progress of your metrics, move to tab 3 to view a dashboard of all metrics in the tool.

    Download the Change Management Metrics Tool

    Case Study

    A federal credit union was able to track maturity growth through the proper use of metrics.

    Industry: Federal Credit Union (anonymous)

    Source: Info-Tech Workshop

    Challenge

    At this federal credit union, the VP of IT wanted a tight set of metrics to engage with the business, communicate within IT, enable performance management of staff, and provide visibility into workload demands, among other requirements.

    The organization was suffering from “metrics fatigue,” with multiple reports being generated from all groups within IT, to the point that weekly/monthly reports were being seen as spam.

    Solution

    Stakeholders were provided with an overview of change management benefits and were asked to identify one key attribute that would be useful to their specific needs.

    Metrics were designed around the stakeholder needs, piloted with each stakeholder group, fine-tuned, and rolled out.

    Some metrics could not be automated off-the-shelf and were rolled out in a manual fashion. These metrics were subsequently automated and finally made available through a dashboard.

    Results

    The business received clear guidance regarding estimated times to implement changes across different elements of the environment.

    The IT managers were able to plan team workloads with visibility into upstream change activity.

    Architects were able to identify vendors and systems that were the leading source of instability.

    The VP of IT was able to track the maturity growth of the change management process and proactively engage with the business on identified hot spots.

    Step 4.2

    Implement the Project

    Activities

    4.2.1 Use a Communications Plan to Gain End User Buy-In

    4.2.2 Create a Project Roadmap to Track Your Implementation Progress

    Measure, Manage, and Maintain

    Step 4.1: Identify Metrics and Build the Change Calendar

    Step 3.2: Implement the Project

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO/IT Director
    • IT Managers
    • Change Manager

    Outcomes of this step

    • A communications plan for key messages to communicate to relevant stakeholders and audiences
    • A roadmap with assigned action items to implement change management

    Success of the new process will depend on introducing change and gaining acceptance

    Change management provides value by promptly evaluating and delivering changes required by the business and by minimizing disruption and rework caused by failed changes. Communication of your new change management process is key. If people do not understand the what and why, it will fail to provide the desired value.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Gather feedback from end users about the new process: if the process is too bureaucratic, end users are more likely to circumvent it.

    Main Challenges with Communication

    • Many people fail before they even start because they are buried in a mess created before they arrived – either because of a failed attempt to get change management implemented or due to a complicated system that has always existed.
    • Many systems are maintained because “that’s the way it’s always been done.”
    • Organizations don’t know where to start; they think change management is too complex a process.
    • Each group needs to follow the same procedure – groups often have their own processes, but if they don’t agree with one another, this could cause an outage.

    Educate affected stakeholders to prepare for organizational change

    An organizational change management plan should be part of your change management project.

    • Educate stakeholders about:
      • The process change (describe it in a way that the user can understand and is clear and concise).
        • IT changes will be handled in a standardized and repeatable fashion to minimize change-related incidents.
      • Who is impacted?
        • All users.
      • How are they impacted?
        • All change requests will be made using a standard form and will not be deployed until formal approval is received.
      • Change messaging.
        • How to communicate the change (benefits).
      • Learning and development – training your users on the change.
        • Develop and deliver training session on the Change Management SOP to familiarize users with this new method of handling IT change.

    Host a lunch-and-learn session

    • For the initial deployment, host a lunch-and-learn session to educate the business on the change management practice. Relevant stakeholders of affected departments should host it and cover the following topics:
    • What is change management (change management/change control)?
    • The value of change management.
    • What the Change Management SOP looks like.
    • Who is involved in the change management process (the CAB, etc.)?
    • What constitutes a pre-approved change and an emergency change?
    • An overview of the process, including how to avoid unauthorized changes.
    • Who should they contact in case of questions?

    Communicate the new process to all affected stakeholders

    Do not surprise users or support staff with changes. This will result in lost productivity and low satisfaction with IT services.

    • User groups and the business need to be given sufficient notice of an impending change.
    • This will allow them to make appropriate plans to accept the change, minimizing the impact of the change on productivity.
    • A communications plan will be documented in the RFC while the release is being built and tested.
    • It’s the responsibility of the change team to execute on the communications plan.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The success of change communication can be measured by monitoring the number of service desk tickets related to a change that was not communicated to users.

    Communication is crucial to the integration and overall implementation of your change management initiative. An effective communications plan will:

    • Gain support from management at the project proposal phase.
    • Create end-user buy-in once the program is set to launch.
    • Maintain the presence of the program throughout the business.
    • Instill ownership throughout the business from top-level management to new hires.

    Create your communications plan to anticipate challenges, remove obstacles, and ensure buy-in

    Management

    Technicians

    Business Stakeholders

    Provide separate communications to key stakeholder groups

    Why? What problems are you trying to solve?

    What? What processes will it affect (that will affect me)?

    Who? Who will be affected? Who do I go to if I have issues with the new process?

    When? When will this be happening? When will it affect me?

    How? How will these changes manifest themselves?

    Goal? What is the final goal? How will it benefit me?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Pay close attention to the medium of communication. For example, stakeholders on their feet all day would not be as receptive to an email communication compared to those who primarily work in front of a computer. Put yourself into various stakeholders’ shoes to craft a tailored communication of change management.

    4.2.1 Use a Communications Plan to Gain End User Buy-In

    Input

    • List of stakeholder groups for change management

    Output

    • Tailored communications plans for various stakeholder groups

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)
    1. Using Info-Tech’s Change Management Communications Plan, identify key audiences or stakeholder groups that will be affected by the new change management practice.
    2. For each group requiring a communications plan, identify the following:
      • The benefits for that group of individuals.
      • The impact the change will have on them.
      • The best communication method(s) for them.
      • The time frame of the communication.
    3. Complete this information in a table like the one below:
    Group Benefits Impact Method Timeline
    IT Standardized change process All changes must be reviewed and approved Poster campaign 6 months
    End Users Decreased wait time for changes Formal process for RFCs Lunch-and-learn sessions 3 months
    Business Reduced outages Increased involvement in planning and approvals Monthly reports 1 year
    1. Discuss the communications plan:
      • Will this plan ensure that users are given adequate opportunities to accept the changes being deployed?
      • Is the message appropriate for each audience? Is the format appropriate for each audience?
      • Does the communication include training where necessary to help users adopt any new functions/workflows being introduced?

    Download the Change Management Communications Plan

    Present your SOP to key stakeholders and obtain their approval

    Now that you have completed your Change Management SOP, the final step is to get sign-off from senior management to begin the rollout process.

    Know your audience:

    • Determine the service management stakeholders who will be included in the audience for your presentation.
    • You want your presentation to be succinct and hard hitting. Management’s time is tight and they will lose interest if you drag out the delivery.
    • Briefly speak about the need for more formal change management and emphasize the benefits of implementing a more formal process with a SOP.
    • Present your current state assessment results to provide context before presenting the SOP itself.
    • As with any other foundational activity, be prepared with some quick wins to gain executive attention.
    • Be prepared to review with both technical and less technical stakeholders.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The support of senior executive stakeholders is critical to the success of your SOP rollout. Try to wow them with project benefits and make sure they know about the risks/pain points.

    Download the Change Management Project Summary Template

    4.2.2 Create a Project Roadmap to Track Your Implementation Progress

    Input

    • List of implementation tasks

    Output

    • Roadmap and timeline for change management implementation

    Materials

    Participants

    • Change Manager
    • Members of the Change Advisory Board
    • Service Desk Manager
    • Operations (optional)
    1. Info-Tech’s Change Management Roadmap Tool helps you identify and prioritize tasks that need to be completed for the change management implementation project.
    2. Use this tool to identify each action item that will need to be completed as part of the change management initiative. Chart each action item, assign an owner, define the duration, and set a completion date.
    3. Use the resulting rocket diagram as a guide to task completion as you work toward your future state.

    Download the Change Management Roadmap Tool

    Case Study (part 4 of 4)

    Intel implemented a robust change management process.

    Industry: Technology

    Source: Daniel Grove, Intel

    Challenge

    Founded in 1968, the world’s largest microchip and semiconductor company employs over 100,000 people. Intel manufactures processors for major players in the PC market including Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell.

    Intel IT supports over 65,000 servers, 3.2 petabytes of data, over 70,000 PCs, and 2.6 million emails per day.

    Intel’s change management program is responsible for over 4,000 changes each week.

    Solution

    Intel had its new change management program in place and the early milestones planned, but one key challenge with any new project is communication.

    The company also needed to navigate the simplification of a previously complex process; end users could be familiar with any of the 37 different change processes or 25 different change management systems of record.

    Top-level buy-in was another concern.

    Results

    Intel first communicated the process changes by publishing the vision and strategy for the project with top management sponsorship.

    The CIO published all of the new change policies, which were supported by the Change Governance Council.

    Intel cited the reason for success as the designation of a Policy and Guidance Council – a group designed to own communication and enforcement of the new policies and processes put in place.

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Problem Solved

    You now have an outline of your new change management process. The hard work starts now for an effective implementation. Make use of the communications plan to socialize the new process with stakeholders and the roadmap to stay on track.

    Remember as you are starting your implementation to keep your documents flexible and treat them as “living documents.” You will likely need to tweak and refine the processware and templates several times to continually improve the process. Furthermore, don’t shy away from seeking feedback from your stakeholders to gain buy-in.

    Lastly, keep an eye on your progress with objective, data-driven metrics. Leverage the trends in your data to drive your decisions. Be sure to revisit the maturity assessment not only to measure and visualize your progress, but to gain insight into your next steps.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshops@infotech.com

    1-888-670-8889

    Additional Support

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

    To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.

    Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    1.1.2 Complete a Change Management Maturity Assessment

    Run through the change management maturity assessment with tailored commentary for each action item outlining context and best practices.

    2.2.1 Plot the Process for a Normal Change

    Build a normal change process using Info-Tech’s Change Management Process Library template with an analyst helping you to right size the process for your organization.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Standardize the Service Desk

    Improve customer service by driving consistency in your support approach and meeting SLAs.

    Stabilize Release and Deployment Management

    Maintain both speed and control while improving the quality of deployments and releases within the infrastructure team.

    Incident and Problem Management

    Don’t let persistent problems govern your department.

    Select Bibliography

    AXELOS Limited. ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4th edition. TSO, 2019, pp. 118–120.

    Behr, Kevin and George Spafford. The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps. IT Revolution Press. 2013.

    BMC. “ITIL Change Management.” BMC Software Canada, 22 December 2016.

    Brown, Vance. “Change Management: The Greatest ROI of ITIL.” Cherwell Service Management.

    Cisco. “Change Management: Best Practices.” Cisco, 10 March 2008.

    Grove, Daniel. “Case Study ITIL Change Management Intel Corporation.” PowerShow, 2005.

    ISACA. “COBIT 5: Enabling Processes.” ISACA, 2012.

    Jantti, M. and M. Kainulainen. “Exploring an IT Service Change Management Process: A Case Study.” ICDS 2011: The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society, 23 Feb. 2011.

    Murphy, Vawns. “How to Assess Changes.” The ITSM Review, 29 Jan. 2016.

    Nyo, Isabel. “Best Practices for Change Management in the Age of DevOps.” Atlassian Engineering, 12 May 2021.

    Phillips, Katherine W., Katie A. Liljenquist, and Margaret A. Neale. “Better Decisions Through Diversity.” Kellogg Insight, 1 Oct. 2010.

    Pink Elephant. “Best Practices for Change Management.” Pink Elephant, 2005.

    Sharwood, Simon. “Google broke its own cloud by doing two updates at once.” The Register, 24 Aug. 2016.

    SolarWinds. “How to Eliminate the No: 1 Cause of Network Downtime.” SolarWinds Tech Tips, 25 Apr. 2014.

    The Stationery Office. “ITIL Service Transition: 2011.” The Stationary Office, 29 July 2011.

    UCISA. “ITIL – A Guide to Change Management.” UCISA.

    Zander, Jason. “Final Root Cause Analysis and Improvement Areas: Nov 18 Azure Storage Service Interruption.” Microsoft Azure: Blog and Updates, 17 Dec. 2014.

    Appendix I: Expedited Changes

    Employ the expedited change to promote process adherence

    In many organizations, there are changes which may not fit into the three prescribed categories. The reason behind why the expedited category may be needed generally falls between two possibilities:

    1. External drivers dictate changes via mandates which may not fall within the normal change cycle. A CIO, judge, state/provincial mandate, or request from shared services pushes a change that does not fall within a normal change cycle. However, there is no imminent outage (therefore it is not an emergency). In this case, an expedited change can proceed. Communicate to the change requester that IT and the change build team will still do their best to implement the change without issue, but any extra risk of implementing this expedited change (compared to an normal change) will be absorbed by the change requester.
    2. The change requester did not prepare for the change adequately. This is common if a new change process is being established (and stakeholders are still adapting to the process). Change requesters or the change build team may request the change to be done by a certain date that does not fall within the normal change cycle, or they simply did not give the CAB enough time to vet the change. In this case, you may use the expedited category as a metric (or a “Hall of Shame” example). If you identify a department or individual that frequently request expedited changes, use the expedited category as a means to educate them about the normal change to discourage the behavior moving forward.

    Two possible ways to build an expedited change category”

    1. Build the category similar to an emergency change. In this case, one difference would be the time allotted to fully obtain authorization of the change from the E-CAB and business owner before implementing the change (as opposed to the emergency change workflow).
    2. Have the expedited change reflect the normal change workflow. In this case, all the same steps of the normal change workflow are followed except for expedited timelines between processes. This may include holding an impromptu CAB meeting to authorize the change.

    Example process: Expedited Change Process

    The image is a flowchart, showing the process for Expedited Change.

    For the full process, refer to the Change Management Process Library.

    Appendix II: Optimize IT Change Management in a DevOps Environment

    Change Management cannot be ignored because you are DevOps or Agile

    But it can be right-sized.

    The core tenets of change management still apply no matter the type of development environment an organization has. Changes in any environment carry risk of degrading functionality, and must therefore be vetted. However, the amount of work and rigor put into different stages of the change life cycle can be altered depending on the maturity of the development workflows. The following are several stage gates for change management that MUST be considered if you are a DevOps or Agile shop:

    • Intake assessment (separation of changes from projects, service requests, operational tasks)
      • Within a DevOps or Agile environment, many of the application changes will come directly from the SDLC and projects going live. It does not mean a change must go through CAB, but leveraging the pre-approved category allows for an organization to stick to development lifecycles without being heavily bogged down by change bureaucracy.
    • Technical review
      • Leveraging automation, release contingencies, and the current SDLC documentation to decrease change risk allows for various changes to be designated as pre-approved.
    • Authorization
      • Define the authorization and dependencies of a change early in the lifecycle to gain authorization and necessary signoffs.
    • Documentation/communication
      • Documentation and communication are post-implementation activities that cannot be ignored. If documentation is required throughout the SDLC, then design the RFC to point to the correct documentation instead of duplicating information.

    "Understand that process is hard and finding a solution that fits every need can be tricky. With this change management process we do not try to solve every corner case so much as create a framework by which best judgement can be used to ensure maximum availability of our platforms and services while still complying with our regulatory requirements and making positive changes that will delight our customers.“ -IT Director, Information Cybersecurity Organization

    Five principals for implementing change in DevOps

    Follow these best practices to make sure your requirements are solid:

    People

    The core differences between an Agile or DevOps transition and a traditional approach are the restructuring and the team behind it. As a result, the stakeholders of change management must be onboard for the process to work. This is the most difficult problem to solve if it’s an issue, but open avenues of feedback for a process build is a start.

    DevOps Lifecycles

    • Plan the dev lifecycle so people can’t skirt it. Ensure the process has automated checks so that it’s more work to skirt the system than it is to follow it. Make the right process the process of least resistance.
    • Plan changes from the start to ensure that cross-dependencies are identified early and that the proposed implementation date is deconflicted and visible to other change requesters and change stakeholders.

    Automation

    Automation comes in many forms and is well documented in many development workflows. Having automated signoffs for QA/security checks and stakeholders/cross dependency owner sign offs may not fully replace the CAB but can ease the burden on discussions before implementation.

    Contingencies

    Canary releases, phased releases, dark releases, and toggles are all options you can employ to reduce risk during a release. Furthermore, building in contingencies to the test/rollback plan decreases the risk of the change by decreasing the factor of likelihood.

    Continually Improve

    Building change from the ground up doesn’t meant the process has to be fully fledged before launch. Iterative improvements are possible before achieving an optimal state. Having the proper metrics on the pain points and bottlenecks in the process can identify areas for automation and improvement.

    Increasing the proportion of pre-approved changes

    Leverage the traditional change infrastructure to deploy changes quickly while keeping your risk low.

    • To designate a change as a pre-approved change it must have a low risk rating (based on impact and likelihood). Fortunately, many of the changes within the Agile framework are designed to be small and lower risk (at least within application development). Putting in the work ahead of time to document these changes, template RFCs, and document the dependencies for various changes allows for a shift in the proportion of pre-approved changes.
    • The designation of pre-approved changes is an ongoing process. This is not an overnight initiative. Measure the proportion of changes by category as a metric, setting goals and interim goals to shift the change proportion to a desired ratio.

    The image is a bar graph, with each bar having 3 colour-coded sections: Emergency, Normal, and Pre-Approved. The first bar is before, where the largest change category is Normal. The second bar is after, and the largest change category is Pre-Approved.

    Turn your CAB into a virtual one

    • The CAB does not have to fully disappear in a DevOps environment. If the SDLC is built in a way that authorizes changes through peer reviews and automated checks, by the time it’s deployed, the job of the CAB should have already been completed. Then the authorization stage-gate (traditionally, the CAB) shifts to earlier in the process, reducing the need for an actual CAB meeting. However, the change must still be communicated and documented, even if it’s a pre-approved change.
    • As the proportion of changes shifts from a high degree of normal changes to a high degree of pre-approved changes, the need for CAB meetings should decrease even further. As an end-state, you may reserve actual CAB meetings for high-profile changes (as defined by risk).
    • Lastly, change management does not disappear as a process. Periodic reviews of change management metrics and the pre-approved change list must still be completed.

    Enter Into Mobile Development Without Confusion and Frustration

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    • Parent Category Name: Mobile Development
    • Parent Category Link: /mobile-development
    • IT managers don’t know where to start when initiating a mobile program.
    • IT has tried mobile development in the past but didn't achieve success.
    • IT must initiate a mobile program quickly based on business priorities and needs a roadmap based on best practices.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Form factors and mobile devices won't drive success – business alignment and user experience will. Don't get caught up with the latest features in mobile devices.
    • Software emulation testing is not true testing. Get on the device and run your tests.
    • Cross form-factor testing cannot be optimized to run in parallel. Therefore, anticipate longer testing cycles for cross form-factor testing.

    Impact and Result

    • Prepare your development, testing, and deployment teams for mobile development.
    • Get a realistic assessment of ROI for the launch of a mobile program.

    Enter Into Mobile Development Without Confusion and Frustration Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Make the Case for a Mobile Program

    Understand the current mobile ecosystem. Use this toolkit to help you initiate a mobile development program.

    • Storyboard: Enter Into Mobile Development Without Confusion and Frustration

    2. Assess Your Dev Process for Readiness

    Review and evaluate your current application development process.

    3. Prepare to Execute Your Mobile Program

    Prioritize your mobile program based on your organization’s prioritization profile.

    • Mobile Program Tool

    4. Communicate with Stakeholders

    Summarize the execution of the mobile program.

    • Project Status Communication Worksheet
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Enter Into Mobile Development Without Confusion and Frustration

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Build your Future Mobile Development State

    The Purpose

    Understand the alignment of stakeholder objectives and priorities to mobile dev IT drivers.

    Assess readiness of your organization for mobile dev.

    Understand how to build your ideal mobile dev process.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Identify and address the gaps in your existing app dev process.

    Build your future mobile dev state.

    Activities

    1.1 Getting started

    1.2 Assess your current state

    1.3 Establish your future state

    Outputs

    List of key stakeholders

    Stakeholder and IT driver mapping and assessment of current app dev process

    List of practices to accommodate mobile dev

    2 Prepare and Execute your Mobile Program

    The Purpose

    Assess the impact of mobile dev on your existing app dev process.

    Prioritize your mobile program.

    Understand the dev practice metrics to gauge success.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Properly prepare for the execution of your mobile program.

    Calculate the ROI of your mobile program.

    Prioritize your mobile program with dependencies in mind.

    Build a communication plan with stakeholders.

    Activities

    2.1 Conduct an impact analysis

    2.2 Prepare to execute

    2.3 Communicate with stakeholders

    Outputs

    Impact analysis of your mobile program and expected ROI

    Mobile program order of execution and project dependencies mapping

    List of dev practice metrics

    Explore the Secrets of IBM Software Contracts to Optimize Spend and Reduce Compliance Risk

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    • Parent Category Name: Licensing
    • Parent Category Link: /licensing
    • IBM customers want to make effective use of their paid-up licenses to avoid overspending and stay compliant with agreements.
    • Each IBM software product is subject to different rules.
    • Clients control and have responsibility for aligning usage and payments. Over time, the usage of the software may be out of sync with what the client has paid for, resulting in either overspending or violation of the licensing agreement.
    • IBM audits software usage in order to generate revenue from non-compliant customers.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • You have a lot of work to do if you haven’t been paying attention to your IBM software.
    • Focus on needs first. Conduct and document a thorough requirements assessment. Well-documented needs will be your core asset in negotiation.
    • Know what’s in IBM’s terms and conditions. Failure to understand these can lead to major penalties after an audit.
    • Review your agreements and entitlements quarterly. IBM may have changed the rules, and you have almost certainly changed your usage.

    Impact and Result

    • Establish clear licensing requirements.
    • Maintain an effective process for managing your IBM license usage and compliance.
    • Identify any cost-reduction opportunities.
    • Prepare for penalty-free IBM audits.

    Explore the Secrets of IBM Software Contracts to Optimize Spend and Reduce Compliance Risk Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read this Executive Brief to understand why you need to invest effort in managing usage and licensing of your IBM software.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Review terms and conditions for your IT contract

    Use Info-Tech’s licensing best practices to avoid the common mistakes of overspending on IBM licensing or failing an IBM audit.

    • IBM Passport Advantage Software RFQ Template
    • IBM 3-Year Bundled Price Analysis Tool
    [infographic]

    Develop a Use Case for Smart Contracts

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    • Parent Category Name: Innovation
    • Parent Category Link: /innovation
    • Organizations today continue to use traditional and often archaic methods of manual processing with physical paper documents.
    • These error-prone methods introduce cumbersome administrative work, causing businesses to struggle with payments and contract disputes.
    • The increasing scale and complexity of business processes has led to many third parties, middlemen, and paper hand-offs.
    • Companies remain bogged down by expensive and inefficient processes while losing sight of their ultimate stakeholder: the customer. A failure to focus on the customer is a failure to do business.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Simplify, automate, secure. Smart contracts enable businesses to simplify, automate, and secure traditionally complex transactions.
    • Focus on the customer. Smart contracts provide a frictionless experience for customers by removing unnecessary middlemen and increasing the speed of transactions.
    • New business models. Smart contracts enable the redesign of your organization and business-to-business relationships and transactions.

    Impact and Result

    • Simplify and optimize your business processes by using Info-Tech’s methodology to select processes with inefficient transactions, unnecessary middlemen, and excessive manual paperwork.
    • Use Info-Tech’s template to generate a smart contract use case customized for your business.
    • Customize Info-Tech’s stakeholder presentation template to articulate the goals and benefits of the project and get buy-in from business executives.

    Develop a Use Case for Smart Contracts Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should leverage smart contracts in your business, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand smart contracts

    Understand the fundamental concepts of smart contract technology and get buy-in from stakeholders.

    • Develop a Use Case for Smart Contracts – Phase 1: Understand Smart Contracts
    • Smart Contracts Executive Buy-in Presentation Template

    2. Develop a smart contract use case

    Select a business process, create a smart contract logic diagram, and complete a smart contract use-case deliverable.

    • Develop a Use Case for Smart Contracts – Phase 2: Develop the Smart Contract Use Case
    • Smart Contracts Use-Case Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Develop a Use Case for Smart Contracts

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Understand Smart Contracts

    The Purpose

    Review blockchain basics.

    Understand the fundamental concepts of smart contracts.

    Develop smart contract use-case executive buy-in presentation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of blockchain basics.

    Understanding the fundamentals of smart contracts.

    Development of an executive buy-in presentation.

    Activities

    1.1 Review blockchain basics.

    1.2 Understand smart contract fundamentals.

    1.3 Identify business challenges and smart contract benefits.

    1.4 Create executive buy-in presentation.

    Outputs

    Executive buy-in presentation

    2 Smart Contract Logic Diagram

    The Purpose

    Brainstorm and select a business process to develop a smart contract use case around.

    Generate a smart contract logic diagram.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Selected a business process.

    Developed a smart contract logic diagram for the selected business process.

    Activities

    2.1 Brainstorm candidate business processes.

    2.2 Select a business process.

    2.3 Identify phases, actors, events, and transactions.

    2.4 Create the smart contract logic diagram.

    Outputs

    Smart contract logic diagram

    3 Smart Contract Use Case

    The Purpose

    Develop smart contract use-case diagrams for each business process phase.

    Complete a smart contract use-case deliverable.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Smart contract use-case diagrams.

    Smart contract use-case deliverable.

    Activities

    3.1 Build smart contract use-case diagrams for each phase of the business process.

    3.2 Create a smart contract use-case summary diagram.

    3.3 Complete smart contract use-case deliverable.

    Outputs

    Smart contract use case

    4 Next Steps and Action Plan

    The Purpose

    Review workshop week and lessons learned.

    Develop an action plan to follow through with next steps for the project.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Reviewed workshop week with common understanding of lessons learned.

    Completed an action plan for the project.

    Activities

    4.1 Review workshop deliverables.

    4.2 Create action plan.

    Outputs

    Smart contract action plan

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market

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    Your challenge:

    • Rising supplier costs and inflation are eroding margins and impacting customers' budgets.
    • There is pressure from management to make a gut-feeling decision because of time, lack of skills, and process limitations.
    • You must navigate competing pricing-related priorities among product, sales, and finance teams.
    • Product price increases fail because discovery lacks understanding of costs, price/value equation, and competitive price points.
    • Customers can react negatively, and results are seen much later (more than 12 months) after the price decision.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Product leaders will price products based on a deep understanding of the buyer price/value equation and alignment with financial and competitive pricing strategies, and make ongoing adjustments based on an ability to monitor buyer, competitor, and product cost changes.

    Impact and Result

    • Success for many SaaS product managers requires a reorganization and modernization of pricing tools, techniques, and assumptions. Leaders will develop the science of tailored price changes versus across-the-board price actions and account for inflation exposure and the customers’ willingness to pay.
    • This will build skills on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products. The disciplines using our pricing strategy methodology will strengthen efforts to develop repeatable pricing models and processes and build credibility with senior management.

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief - A deck to build your skills on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products.

    This Executive Brief will build your skills on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products.

    • Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief

    2. Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Storyboard – A deck that provides key steps to complete the project.

    This blueprint will build your skills on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products with documented key steps to complete the pricing project and use the Excel workbook and customer presentation.

    • Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market – Phases 1-3

    3. Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook – A tool that enables product managers to simplify the organization and collection of customer and competitor information for pricing decisions.

    These five organizational workbooks for product pricing priorities, interview tracking, sample questions, and critical competitive information will enable the price team to validate price change data through researching the three pricing schemes (competitor, customer, and cost-based).

    • Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    4. Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template – A template that serves as a guide to communicating the Optimize Pricing Strategy team's results for a product or product line.

    This template includes the business case to justify product repricing, contract modifications, and packaging rebuild or removal for launch. This template calls for the critical summarized results from the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market blueprint and the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook to complete.

    • Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Infographic

    Further reading

    SoftwareReviews — A Division of INFO~TECH RESEARCH GROUP

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market

    Leading SaaS product managers align pricing strategy to company financial goals and refresh the customer price/value equation to avoid leaving revenues uncaptured.

    Table of Contents

    Section Title Section Title
    1 Executive Brief 2 Key Steps
    3 Concluding Slides

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market

    Leading SaaS product managers align pricing strategy to company financial goals and refresh the customer price/value equation to avoid leaving revenues uncaptured.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst Perspective

    Optimized Pricing Strategy

    Product managers without well-documented and repeatable pricing management processes often experience pressure from “Agile” management to make gut-feel pricing decisions, resulting in poor product revenue results. When combined with a lack of customer, competitor, and internal cost understanding, these process and timing limitations drive most product managers into suboptimal software pricing decisions. And, adding insult to injury, the poor financial results from bad pricing decisions aren’t fully measured for months, which further compounds the negative effects of poor decision making.

    A successful product pricing strategy aligns finance, marketing, product management, and sales to optimize pricing using a solid understanding of the customer perception of price/value, competitive pricing, and software production costs.

    Success for many SaaS product managers requires a reorganization and modernization of pricing tools, techniques, and data. Leaders will develop the science of tailored price changes versus across-the-board price actions and account for inflation exposure and the customers’ willingness to pay.

    This blueprint will build your skills on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products. The discipline you build using our pricing strategy methodology will strengthen your team’s ability to develop repeatable pricing and will build credibility with senior management and colleagues in marketing and sales.

    Photo of Joanne Morin Correia, Principal Research Director, SoftwareReviews.

    Joanne Morin Correia
    Principal Research Director
    SoftwareReviews

    Executive Summary

    Organizations struggle to build repeatable pricing processes:
    • A lack of alignment and collaboration among finance, marketing, product development, and sales.
    • A lack of understanding of customers, competitors, and market pricing.
    • Inability to stay ahead of complex and shifting software pricing models.
    • Time is wasted without a deep understanding of pricing issues and opportunities, and revenue opportunities go unrealized.
    Obstacles add friction to the pricing management process:
    • Pressure from management to make quick decisions results in a gut-driven approach to pricing.
    • A lack of pricing skills and management processes limits sound decision making.
    • Price changes fail because discovery often lacks competitive intelligence and buyer value to price point understanding. Customers’ reactions are often observed much later, after the decision is made.
    • Economic disruptions, supplier price hikes, and higher employee salaries/benefits are driving costs higher.
    Use SoftwareReviews’ approach for more successful pricing:
    • Organize for a more effective pricing project including roles & responsibilities as well as an aligned pricing approach.
    • Work with CFO/finance partner to establish target price based on margins and key factors affecting costs.
    • Perform a competitive price assessment and understand the buyer price/value equation.
    • Arrive at a target price based on the above and seek buy-in and approvals.

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    Product leaders will price products based on a deep understanding of the buyer price/value equation and alignment with financial and competitive pricing strategies, and they will make ongoing adjustments based on an ability to monitor buyers, competitors, and product cost changes.

    What is an optimized price strategy?

    “Customer discovery interviews help reduce the chance of failure by testing your hypotheses. Quality customer interviews go beyond answering product development and pricing questions.” (Pricing Strategies, Growth Ramp, March 2022)

    Most product managers just research their direct competitors when launching a new SaaS product. While this is essential, competitive pricing intel is insufficient to create a long-term optimized pricing strategy. Leaders will also understand buyer TCO.

    Your customers are constantly comparing prices and weighing the total cost of ownership as they consider your competition. Why?

    Implementing a SaaS solution creates a significant time burden as buyers spend days learning new software, making sure tools communicate with each other, configuring settings, contacting support, etc. It is not just the cost of the product or service.

    Optimized Price Strategy Is…
    • An integral part of any product plan and business strategy.
    • Essential to improving and maintaining high levels of margins and customer satisfaction.
    • Focused on delivering the product price to your customer’s business value.
    • Understanding customer price-value for your software segment.
    • Monitoring your product pricing with real-time data to ensure support for competitive strategy.
    Price Strategy Is Not…
    • Increasing or decreasing price on a gut feeling.
    • Changing price for short-term gain.
    • Being wary of asking customers pricing-related questions.
    • Haphazardly focusing entirely on profit.
    • Just covering product costs.
    • Only researching direct competitors.
    • Focusing on yourself or company satisfaction but your target customers.
    • Picking the first strategy you see.

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    An optimized pricing strategy establishes the “best” price for a product or service that maximizes profits and shareholder value while considering customer business value vs. the cost to purchase and implement – the total cost of ownership (TCO).

    Challenging environment

    Product managers are currently experiencing the following:
    • Supplier costs and inflation are rising, eroding product margins and impacting customers’ budgets.
    • Pressure from management to make a gut-feeling decision because of time, lack of skills, and process limitations.
    • Navigating competing pricing-related priorities among product, sales, and finance.
    • Product price increases that fail because discovery lacks understanding of costs, price/value equation, and competitive price points.
    • Slowing customer demand due to poorly priced offerings may not be fully measured for many months following the price decision.
    Doing nothing is NOT an option!
    Offense Double Down

    Benefit: Leverage long-term financial and market assets

    Risk: Market may not value those assets in the future
    Fight Back

    Benefit: Move quickly

    Risk: Hard to execute and easy to get pricing wrong
    Defense Retrench

    Benefit: Reduce threats from new entrants through scale and marketing

    Risk: Causes managed decline and is hard to sell to leadership
    Move Away

    Benefit: Seize opportunities for new revenue sources

    Risk: Diversification is challenging to pull off
    Existing Markets and Customers New Markets and Customers

    Pricing skills are declining

    Among product managers, limited pricing skills are big obstacles that make pricing difficult and under-optimized.

    Visual of a bar chart with descending values, each bar has written on it: 'Limited - Limits in understanding of engineering, marketing, and sales expectations or few processes for pricing and/or cost', 'Inexperienced - Inexperience in pricing project skills and corporate training', 'Lagging - Financial lag indicators (marketing ROI, revenue, profitability, COGs)', 'Lacking - Lack of relevant competitive pricing/packaging information', 'Shifting - Shift to cloud subscription-based revenue models is challenging'.

    The top three weakest product management skills have remained constant over the past five years:
    • Competitive analysis
    • Pricing
    • End of life
    Pricing is the weakest skill and has been declining the most among surveyed product professionals every year. (Adapted from 280 Group, 2022)

    Key considerations for more effective pricing decisions

    Pricing teams can improve software product profitability by:
    • Optimizing software profit with four critical elements: properly pricing your product, giving complete and accurate quotations, choosing the terms of the sale, and selecting the payment method.
    • Implementing tailored price changes (versus across-the-board price actions) to help account for inflation exposure, customer willingness to pay, and product attribute changes.
    • Accelerating ongoing pricing decision-making with a dedicated cross-functional team ready to act quickly.
    • Resetting discounting and promotion, and revisiting service-level agreements.
    Software pricing leaders will regularly assess:

    Has it been over a year since prices were updated?

    Have customers told you to raise your prices?

    Do you have the right mix of customers in each pricing plan?

    Do 40% of your customers say they would be very disappointed if your product disappeared? (Adapted from Growth Ramp, 2021)

    Case Study

    Middleware Vendor

    INDUSTRY
    Technology Middleware
    SOURCE
    SoftwareReviews Custom Pricing Strategy Project
    A large middleware vendor, who is running on Microsoft Azure, known for quality development and website tools, needed to react strategically to the March 2022 Microsoft price increase.

    Key Initiative: Optimize New Pricing Strategy

    The program’s core objective was to determine if the vendor should implement a price increase and how the product should be packaged within the new pricing model.

    For this initiative, the company interviewed buyers using three key questions: What are the core capabilities to focus on building/selling? What are the optimal features and capabilities valued by customers that should be sold together? And should they be charging more for their products?

    Results
    This middleware vendor saw buyer support for a 10% price increase to their product line and restructuring of vertical contract terms. This enabled them to retain customers over multi-year subscription contracts, and the price increase enabled them to protect margins after the Microsoft price increase.

    The Optimize New Pricing Strategy included the following components:

    Components: 'Product Feature Importance & Satisfaction', 'Correlation of Features and Value Drivers', 'Fair Cost to Value Average for Category', 'Average Discounting for Category', 'Customer Value Is an Acceptable Multiple of Price'. First four: 'Component fails into the scope of optimizing price strategy to value'; last one: 'They are optimizing their price strategy decisions'.

    New product price approach

    As a collaborative team across product management, marketing, and finance, we see leaders taking a simple yet well-researched approach when setting product pricing.

    Iterating to a final price point is best done with research into how product pricing:

    • Delivers target margins.
    • Is positioned vs. key competitors.
    • Delivers customer value at a fair price/value ratio.
    To arrive at our new product price, we suggest iterating among 3 different views:

    New Target Price:

    • Buyer Price vs. Value
    • Cost - Plus
    • Vs. Key Competitors
    We analyzed:
    • Customer price/value equation interviews
    • Impacts of Supplier cost increases
    • Competitive pricing research
    • How product pricing delivers target margins

    Who should care about optimized pricing?

    Product managers and marketers who:

    • Support the mandate for optimizing pricing and revenue generation.
    • Need a more scientific way to plan and implement new pricing processes and methods to optimize revenues and profits.
    • Want a way to better apply customer and competitive insights to product pricing.
    • Are evaluating current pricing and cost control to support a refreshed pricing strategy.

    Finance, sales, and marketing professionals who are pricing stakeholders in:

    • Finding alternatives to current pricing and packaging approaches.
    • Looking for ways to optimize price within the shifting market momentum.

    How will they benefit from this research?

    • Refine the ability to effectively target pricing to specific market demands and customer segments.
    • Strengthen product team’s reputation for reliable and repeatable price-management capabilities among senior leadership.
    • Recognize and plan for new revenue opportunities or cost increases.
    • Allow for faster, more accurate intake of customer and competitive data. 
    • Improve pricing skills for professional development and business outcomes.
    • Create new product price, packaging, or market opportunities. 
    • Reduce financial costs and mistakes associated with manual efforts and uneducated guessing.
    • Price software products that better achieve financial goals optimizing revenue, margins, or market share.
    • Enhance the product development and sales processes with real competitive and customer expectations.

    Is Your Pricing Strategy Optimized?

    With the right pricing strategy, you can invest more money into your product, service, or growth. A 1% price increase will improv revenues by:

    Three bars: 'Customer acquisition, 3.32%', 'Customer retention, 6.71%', 'Price monetization, 12.7%'.

    Price monetization will almost double the revenue increases over customer acquisition and retention. (Pricing Strategies, Growth Ramp, March 2022)

    DIAGNOSE PRICE CHALLENGES

    Prices of today's cloud-based services/products are often misaligned against competition and customers' perceived value, leaving more revenues on the table.
    • Do you struggle to price new products with confidence?
    • Do you really know your SaaS product's costs?
    • Have you lost pricing power to stronger competitors?
    • Has cost focus eclipsed customer value focus?
    If so, you are likely skipping steps and missing key outputs in your pricing strategy.

    OPTIMIZE THESE STEPS

    ALIGNMENT
    1. Assign Team Responsibilities
    2. Set Timing for Project Deliverables
    3. Clarify Financial Expectations
    4. Collect Customer Contacts
    5. Determine Competitors
    6. BEFORE RESEARCH, HAVE YOU
      Documented your executive's financial expectations? If "No," return.

    RESEARCH & VALIDATE
    1. Research Competitors
    2. Interview Customers
    3. Test Pricing vs. Financials
    4. Create Pricing Presentation
    5. BEFORE PRESENTING, HAVE YOU:
      Clarified your customer and competitive positioning to validate pricing? If "No," return.

    BUY-IN
    1. Executive Pricing Presentation
    2. Post-Mortem of Presentation
    3. Document New Processes
    4. Monitor the Pricing Changes
    5. BEFORE RESEARCH, HAVE YOU:
      Documented your executive's financial expectations? If "No," return.

    DELIVER KEY OUTPUTS

    Sponsoring executive(s) signs-offs require a well-articulated pricing plan and business case for investment that includes:
    • Competitive features and pricing financial templates
    • Customer validation of price value
    • Optimized price presentation
    • Repeatable pricing processes to monitor changes

    REAP THE REWARDS

    • Product pricing is better aligned to achieve financial goals
    • Improved pricing skills or professional development
    • Stronger team reputation for reliable price management

    Key Insights

    1. Gain a competitive edge by using market and customer information to optimize product financials, refine pricing, and speed up decisions.
    2. Product leaders will best set software product price based on a deep understanding of buyer/price value equation, alignment with financial strategy, and an ongoing ability to monitor buyer, competitor, and product costs.

    SoftwareReviews’ methodology for optimizing your pricing strategy

    Steps

    1.1 Establish the Team and Responsibilities
    1.2 Educate/Align Team on Pricing Strategy
    1.2 Document Portfolio & Target Product(s) for Pricing Updates
    1.3 Clarify Product Target Margins
    1.4 Establish Customer Price/Value
    1.5 Identify Competitive Pricing
    1.6 Establish New Price and Gain Buy-In

    Outcomes

    1. Well-organized project
    2. Clarified product pricing strategy
    3. Customer value vs. price equation
    4. Competitive price points
    5. Approvals

    Insight summary

    Modernize your price planning

    Product leaders will price products based on a deep understanding of the buyer price/value equation and alignment with financial and competitive pricing strategies, and make ongoing adjustments based on an ability to monitor buyer, competitor, and product cost changes.

    Ground pricing against financials

    Meet and align with financial stakeholders.
    • Give finance a heads-up that you want to work with them.
    • Find out the CFO’s expectations for pricing and margins.
    • Ask for a dedicated finance team member.

    Align on pricing strategy

    Lead stakeholders in SaaS product pricing decisions to optimize pricing based on four drivers:
    • Customer’s price/value
    • Competitive strategy
    • Reflective of costs
    • Alignment with financial goals

    Decrease time for approval

    Drive price decisions, with the support of the CFO, to the business value of the suggested change:
    • Reference current product pricing guidelines
    • Compare to the competition and our strategy and weigh results against our customer’s price/value
    • Compare against the equation to business value for the suggested change
    Develop the skill of pricing products

    Increase product revenues and margins by enhancing modern processes and data monetization. Shift from intuitive to information-based pricing decisions.

    Look at other options for revenue

    Adjust product design, features, packaging, and contract terms while maintaining the functionality customers find valuable to their business.

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:
    Key deliverable:

    New Pricing Strategy Presentation Template

    Capture key findings for your price strategy with the Optimize Your Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Sample of the 'Acme Corp New Product Pricing' blueprint.

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief

    This executive brief will build your knowledge on how to price new products or adjust pricing for existing products.

    Sample of the 'Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market' blueprint.

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    This workbook will help you prioritize which products require repricing, hold customer interviews, and capture competitive insights.

    Sample of the 'Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market' workbook.

    Guided Implementation

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with a SoftwareReviews analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is 4 to 8 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

    What does a typical GI on optimizing software pricing look like?

    Alignment

    Research & Reprice

    Buy-in

    Call #1: Share the pricing team vision and outline activities for the pricing strategy process. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #2: Outline products that require a new pricing approach and steps with finance. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #3: Discuss the customer interview process. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #4 Outline competitive analysis. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #5: Review customer and competitive results for initial new pricing business case with finance for alignment. Plan next call – 3 weeks.

    Call #6: Review the initial business case against financial plans across marketing, sales, and product development. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #7 Review the draft executive pricing presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #8: Discuss gaps in executive presentation. Plan next call – 3 days.

    SoftwareReviews Offers Various Levels of Support to Meet Your Needs

    Included in Advisory Membership Optional add-ons

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Desire a Guided Implementation?

    • A GI is where your SoftwareReviews engagement manager and executive advisor/counselor will work with SoftwareReviews research team members to craft with you a Custom Key Initiative Plan (CKIP).
    • A CKIP guides your team through each of the major steps, outlines responsibilities between members of your team and SoftwareReviews, describes expected outcomes, and captures actual value delivered.
    • A CKIP also provides you and your team with analyst/advisor/counselor feedback on project outputs, helps you communicate key principles and concepts to your team, and helps you stay on project timelines.
    • If Guided Implementation assistance is desired, contact your engagement manager.

    Workshop overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com1-888-670-8889
    Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
    Align Team, Identify Customers, and Document Current Knowledge
    Validate Initial Insights and Identify Competitors and Market View
    Schedule and Hold Buyer Interviews
    Summarize Findings and Provide Actionable Guidance to Stakeholders
    Present, Go Forward, and Measure Impact and Results
    Activities

    1.1 Identify Team Members, roles, and responsibilities

    1.2 Establish timelines and project workflow

    1.3 Gather current product and future financial margin expectations

    1.4 Review the Optimize Software Executive Brief and Workbook Templates

    1.4 Build prioritized pricing candidates hypothesis

    2.1 Identify customer interviewee types by segment, region, etc.

    2.2 Hear from industry analysts their perspectives on the competitors, buyer expectations, and price trends

    2.3 Research competitors for pricing, contract type, and product attributes

    3.2 Review pricing and attributes survey and interview questionnaires

    3.2 Hold interviews and use interview guides (over four weeks)

    A gap of up to 4 weeks for scheduling of interviews.

    3.3 Hold review session after initial 3-4 interviews to make adjustments

    4.1 Review all draft price findings against the market view

    4.2 Review Draft Executive Presentation

    5.1 Review finalized pricing strategy plan with analyst for market view

    5.2 Review for comments on the final implementation plan

    Deliverables
    1. Documented steering committee and working team
    2. Current and initial new pricing targets for strategy
    3. Documented team knowledge
    1. Understanding of market and potential target interviewee types
    2. Objective competitive research
    1. Initial review – “Are we going in the right direction with surveys?”
    2. Validate or adjust the pricing surveys to what you hear in the market
    1. Complete findings and compare to the market
    2. Review and finish drafting the Optimize Software Pricing Strategy presentation
    1. Final impute on strategy
    2. Review of suggested next steps and implementation plan

    Our process

    Align team, perform research, and gain executive buy-in on updated price points

    1. Establish the team and responsibilities
    2. Educate/align team on pricing strategy
    3. Document portfolio & target product(s) for pricing updates
    4. Clarify product target margins
    5. Establish customer price/value
    6. Identify competitive pricing
    7. Establish new price and gain buy-in

    Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market

    Our process will help you deliver the following outcomes:

    • Well-organized project
    • Clarified product pricing strategy
    • Customer value vs. price equation
    • Competitive price points
    • Approvals

    This project involves the following participants:

    • Product management
    • Program leadership
    • Product marketing
    • CFO or finance representative/partner
    • Others
    • Representative(s) from Sales

    1.0 Assign team responsibilities

    Input: Steering committee roles and responsibilities, Steering committee interest and role

    Output: List of new pricing strategy steering committee and workstream members, roles, and timelines, Updated Software Pricing Strategy presentation

    Materials: Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Participants: CFO, sponsoring executive, Functional leads – development, product marketing, product management, marketing, sales, customer success/support

    1-2 hours
    1. The product manager/member running this pricing/repricing program should review the entire Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market blueprint and each blueprint attachment.
    2. The product manager should also refer to slide 19 of the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market blueprint and decide if help via a Guided Implementation (GI) is of value. If desired, alert your SoftwareReviews engagement manager.
    1-2 hours
    1. The product manager should meet with the chief product officer/CPO and functional leaders, and set the meeting agenda to:
      1. Nominate steering committee members.
      2. Nominate work-stream leads.
      3. Establish key pricing project milestones.
      4. Schedule both the steering committee (suggest monthly) and workstream lead meetings (suggest weekly) through the duration of the project.
      5. Ask the CPO to craft, outside this meeting, his/her version of the "Message from the chief product officer.”
      6. If a Guided Implementation is selected, inform the meeting attendees that a SoftwareReviews analyst will join the next meeting to share his/her Executive Brief on Pricing Strategy.
    2. Record all above findings in the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:

    Pricing steering committees are needed to steer overall product, pricing, and packaging decisions. Some companies include the CEO and CFO on this committee and designate it as a permanent body that meets monthly to give go/no-go decisions to “all things product and pricing related” across all products and business units.

    2.0 Educate the team

    1 hour

    Input: Typically, a joint recognition that pricing strategies need upgrading and have not been fully documented, Steering committee and working team members

    Output: Communication of team members involved and the makeup of the steering committee and working team, Alignment of team members on a shared vision of “why a new price strategy is critical” and what key attributes define both the need and impact on business

    Materials: Optimize Your Software Strategy Executive Brief PowerPoint presentation

    Participants: Initiative manager – individual leading the new pricing strategy, CFO/sponsoring executive, Working team – typically representatives in product marketing, product management, and sales, SoftwareReviews marketing analyst (optional)

    1. Walk the team through the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief PowerPoint presentation.
    2. Optional – Have the SoftwareReviews Advisory (SRA) analyst walk the team through the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief PowerPoint presentation as part of your session. Contact your engagement manager to schedule.
    3. Walk the team through the current version of the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template outlining project goals, steering committee and workstream make-up and responsibilities, project timeline and key milestones, and approach to arriving at new product pricing.
    4. Set expectations among team members of their specific roles and responsibilities for this project, review the frequency of steering committee and workstream meetings to set expectations of key milestones and deliverable due dates.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief

    3.0 Document portfolio and target products for pricing update

    1-3 Hours

    Input: List of entire product portfolio

    Output: Prioritized list of product candidates that should be repriced

    Materials: Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Executive Brief presentation, Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    Participants: Initiative manager – individual leading the new pricing strategy, CFO/sponsoring executive, Working team – typically representatives in product marketing, product management, and sales

    1. Walk the team through the current version of Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market workbook, tab 2: “Product Portfolio Organizer.” Modify sample attributes to match your product line where necessary.
    2. As a group, record the product attributes for your entire portfolio.
    3. Prioritize the product price optimization candidates for repricing with the understanding that it might change after meeting with finance.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    4.0 Clarify product target margins

    2-3 sessions of 1 Hour each

    Input: Finance partner/CFO knowledge of target product current and future margins, Finance partner/CFO who has information on underlying costs with details that illustrate supplier contributions

    Output: Product finance markup target percentage margins and revenues

    Materials: Finance data on the product family, Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Participants: Initiative manager, Finance partner/CFO

    1. Schedule a meeting with your finance partner/CFO to validate expectations for product margins. The goal is to understand the detail of underlying costs/margins and if the impacts of supplier costs affect the product family. The information will be placed into the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook on tab 2, Product Portfolio Organizer under the “Unit Margins” heading.
    2. Arrive at a final “Cost-Plus New Price” based on underlying costs and target margins for each of the products. Record results in the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 2, under the “Cost-Plus New Price” heading.
    3. Record product target finance markup price under “Cost-Plus” in Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template, slide 9, and details in Appendix, “Cost-Plus Analysis,” slide 11.
    4. Repeat this process for any other products to be repriced.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    5.0 Establish customer price to value

    1-4 weeks

    Input: Identify segments within which you require price-to-value information, Understand your persona insight gaps, Review Sample Interview Guide using the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile, Competitive Market Workbook, Tab 4. Interview Guide.

    Output: List of interviewees, Updated Interview Guide

    Materials: Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Participants: Initiative manager, Customer success to help identify interviewees, Customers, prospects

    1. Identify a list of customers and prospects that best represent your target persona when interviewed. Choose interviewees who will inform key differences among key segments (geographies, company size, a mix of customers and prospects, etc.) and who are decision makers and can best inform insights on price/value and competitors.
    2. Recruit interviewees and schedule 30-minute interviews.
    3. Keep track of interviewees using the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 3: “Interviewee Tracking.”
    4. Review the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 4: “Interview Guide,” and modify/update it where appropriate.
    5. Record interviewee perspectives on the “price they are willing to pay for the value received” (price/value equation) using the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 4: “Interview Guide.”
    6. Summarize findings to result in an average “customer’s value price.” Record product target ”customer’s value price” in Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template, slide 9 and supporting details in Appendix, “Customer Pricing Analysis,” slide 12.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    6.0 Identify competitive pricing

    1-2 weeks

    Input: Identify price candidate competitors, Your product pricing, contract type, and product attribute information to compare against, Knowledge of existing competitor information, websites, and technology research sites to guide questions

    Output: Competitive product average pricing

    Materials: Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Participants: Initiative manager, Customers, prospects

    1. Identify the top 3-5 competitors’ products that you most frequently compete against with your selected product.
    2. Perform competitive intelligence research on deals won or lost that contain competitive pricing insights by speaking with your sales force.
    3. Use the interviews with key customers to also inform competitive pricing insights. Include companies which you may have lost to a competitor in your customer interviewee list.
    4. Modify and add key competitive pricing, contract, or product attributes in the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 5: “Competitive Information.”
    5. Place your product’s information into the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook, tab 5: “Competitive Information.”
    6. Research your competitors’ summarized pricing and product attribute insights into the workbook.
    7. Record research in the Summarize research on competitors to arrive at an average “Competitors Avg. Price”. Record in ”Customer’s Value Price” in Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template, slide 9, and details in Appendix, “Competitor Pricing Analysis,” slide 13.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Workbook

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    7.0 Establish new price and gain buy-in

    2-3 hours

    Input: Findings from competitive, cost-plus, and customer price/value analysis

    Output: Approvals for price change

    Materials: Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Participants: Initiative manager, Steering committee, Working team – typically representatives in product marketing, product management, sales

    1. Using prior recorded findings of Customer’s Value Price, Competitors’ Avg. Price, and Finance Markup Price, arrive at a recommended “New Price” and record in Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template, slide 9 and the Appendix for Project Analysis Details.
    2. Present findings to steering committee. Be prepared to show customer interviews and competitive analysis results to support your recommendation.
    3. Plan internal and external communications and discuss the timing of when to “go live” with new pricing. Discuss issues related to migration to a new price, how to handle currently low-priced customers, and how to migrate them over time to the new pricing.
    4. Identify if it makes sense to target a date to launch the new pricing in the future, so customers can be alerted in advance and therefore take advantage of “current pricing” to drive added revenues.
    5. Confer with IT to assess times required to implement within CPQ systems and with product marketing for time to change sales proposals, slide decks, and any other affected assets and systems.

    Download the Optimize Software Pricing in a Volatile Competitive Market Presentation Template

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Problem Solved

    With the help of this blueprint, you have deepened your and your company’s understanding of how to look at new pricing opportunities and what the market and the buyer will pay for your product. You are among the minority of product and marketing leaders that have thoroughly documented their new pricing strategy and processes – congratulations!

    The benefits of having led your team through the process are significant and include the following:

    • Allow for faster, more accurate intake of customer and competitive data 
    • Refine the ability to effectively target pricing to specific market demands and customer segments 
    • Understand the association between the value proposition of products and services
    • Reduce financial costs and mistakes associated with manual efforts & uneducated guessing
    • Recognize and plan for new revenue opportunities or cost increases
    • Create new market or product packaging opportunities
    And finally, by bringing your team along with you in this process, you have also led your team to become more customer-focused while pricing your products – a strategic shift that all organizations should pursue.

    If you would like additional support, contact us and we’ll make sure you get the professional expertise you need.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    info@softwarereviews.com
    1-888-670-8889

    Bibliography

    “Chapter 4 Reasons for Project Failure.” Kissflow's Guide to Project Management. Kissflow, n.d. Web.

    Edie, Naomi. “Microsoft Is Raising SaaS Prices, and Other Vendors Will, Too.” CIO Dive, 8 December 2021. Web.

    Gruman, Galen, Alan S. Morrison, and Terril A. Retter. “Software Pricing Trends.” PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2018. Web.

    Hargrave, Marshall. “Example of Economic Exposure.” Investopedia, 12 April 2022. Web.

    Heaslip, Emily. “7 Smart Pricing Strategies to Attract Customers.” CO—, 17 November 2021. Web.

    Higgins, Sean. “How to Price a Product That Your Sales Team Can Sell.” HubSpot, 4 April 2022. Web.

    “Pricing Strategies.” Growth Ramp, March 2022. Web.

    “Product Management Skills Benchmark Report 2021.” 280 Group, 9 November 2021. Web.

    Quey, Jason. “Price Increase: How to Do a SaaS Pricing Change in 8 Steps.” Growth Ramp, 22 March 2021. Web.

    Steenburg, Thomas, and Jill Avery. “Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Pricing and Profitability Analysis.” Harvard Business School, 16 July 2010. Web.

    “2021 State of Competitive Intelligence.” Crayon and SCIO, n.d. Web.

    Valchev, Konstantin. “Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Business.” OpenView Venture Partners, OV Blog, 20 April 2020. Web.

    “What Is Price Elasticity?” Market Business News, n.d. Web.

    Build Better Workflows

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    Do you experience any of the following challenges:

    • You lack process documentation.
    • Your documentation lacks flowchart examples.
    • Your workflows have points of friction and need improvement.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Don’t just document – target your future state as you document your workflows.
    • Find opportunities for automation, pinpoint key handoff points, and turn cold handoffs into warm handoffs

    Impact and Result

    • Understand the basics of documenting a workflow in flowchart format.
    • Run activities to revise and stress-test your workflows to improve their accuracy and effectiveness.
    • Ensure your workflows are part of a continuous improvement cycle – keep them up to date as a living document.

    Build Better Workflows Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Build Better Workflows – A step by step document that walks you through the process of convening a working group to design and update a process flowchart.

    Ask the right questions and pressure test the workflow so the documentation is as helpful as possible to all who consult it.

    • Build Better Workflows Storyboard

    2. Workflow Activity: An onboarding example for a completed flowchart review.

    Use this workflow as an example of the output of an onboarding workflow-improvement activity.

    • Workflow Activity: Onboarding Example (Visio)
    • Workflow Activity: Onboarding Example (PDF)
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Build Better Workflows

    Go beyond draft one to refine and pressure test your process.

    Analyst Perspective

    Remove friction as you document workflows

    Emily Sugerman

    Emily Sugerman
    Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations

    Info-Tech Research Group

    You can’t mature processes without also documenting them. Process documentation is most effective when workflows are both written out and also visualized in the form of flow charts.

    Your workflows may appear in standard operating procedures, in business continuity and disaster recovery plans, or anywhere else a process’ steps need to be made explicit. Often, just getting something down on paper is a win. However, the best workflows usually do not emerge fully-formed out of a first draft. Your workflow documentation must achieve two things:

    • Be an accurate representation of how you currently operate or how you will operate in the near future as a target state.
    • Be the output of a series of refinements and improvements as the workflow is reviewed and iterated.

    This research will use the example of improving an onboarding workflow. Ask the right questions and pressure test the workflow so the documentation is as helpful as possible to all who consult it.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Common Obstacles

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    • Your documentation lacks workflows entirely, or ...
    • Your workflows are documented in flowchart form but are not accurate, and/or ...
    • Your workflows are documented in flowchart form but contain points of friction and need process improvement.
    • Getting the relevant stakeholders together to contribute to workflow design and validate them.
    • Selecting the right detail level to include in the workflow – not too much and not too little.
    • Knowing the right questions to ask to review and improve your workflow flowcharts.

    Use this material to help

    • Understand the basics of documenting a workflow in flowchart format.
    • Run activities to revise and stress-test your workflows to improve their accuracy and effectiveness.
    • Ensure your workflows are part of a continuous improvement cycle – keep them up-to-date as a living document.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Don’t just document – target your future state as you document your workflows. Find opportunities for automation, pinpoint key handoff points, and turn cold handoffs into warm handoffs.

    Follow these steps to build, analyze, and improve the workflow

    The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates the steps needed to build better workflows.

    Insight Summary

    Keep future state in mind.
    Don’t just document – target your future state as you document your workflows. Find opportunities for automation, pinpoint key handoff points, and turn cold handoffs into warm handoffs.

    Promote the benefits of documenting workflows as flowcharts.
    Foreground to the IT team how this will improve customer experience. End-users will benefit from more efficient workflows.

    Remember the principle of constructive criticism.
    Don’t be afraid to critique the workflow but remember this can be a team-building experience. Focus on how these changes will be mutually beneficial, not assigning blame for workflow friction.

    Don’t waste time building shelfware.
    Establish a review cadence to ensure the flowchart is a living document that people actually use.

    Benefits of building better workflows

    Risks of inadequate workflows

    Benefits of documented workflows

    • Lack of clear communication: If you don’t have workflows, you are losing out on an effective way to document and communicate processes.
    • Outdated documentation: If you do have workflows documented in standard operating procedures, they probably need to be updated unless you already consistently update documentation.
    • Facilitate knowledge transfer.
    • Standardize processes for service delivery consistency.
    • Optimize processes by discovering and improving points of friction within the workflow.
    • Improve transparency of processes to set expectations for other stakeholders.
    • Reduce risk.

    Why are visualized workflows useful?

    Use these talking points to build commitment toward documenting/updating processes.

    Risk reduction
    “Our outdated documentation is a risk, as people will assume the documented process is accurate.”

    Transparency
    “The activity of mapping our processes will bring transparency to everyone involved.”

    Accountability
    “Flow charts will help us clarify task ownership at a glance.”

    Accessibility
    “Some team members prefer diagrams over written steps, so we should provide both.”

    Knowledge centralization
    “Our flow charts will include links to other supporting documentation (checklists, vendor documentation, other flowcharts).”

    Role clarification
    “Separating steps into swim lanes can clarify different tiers, process stages, and ownership, while breaking down silos.”

    Communication
    To leadership/upper management: “This process flow chart quickly depicts the big picture.”

    Knowledge transfer
    “Flow charts will help bring new staff up to speed more quickly.”

    Consistency
    “Documenting a process standardizes it and enables everyone to do it in the same way.”

    Review what process mapping is

    A pictorial representation of a process that is used to achieve transparency.

    This research will use one specific example of an onboarding process workflow. Before drilling down into onboarding workflows specifically, review Info-Tech’s Process Mapping Guide for general guidance on what to do before you begin:

    • Know the purpose of process mapping.
    • Articulate the benefits of process mapping.
    • Recognize the risks of not process mapping.
    • Understand the different levels of processes.
    • Adopt BPMN 2.0 as a standard.
    • Consider tools for process mapping.
    • Select a process to map.
    • Learn methods to gather information.

    The image contains screenshots of the Process Mapping Guide.

    Download the Process Mapping Guide

    Select the workflow your team will focus upon

    Good candidates include:

    • Processes you don’t have documented and need to build from scratch.
    • An existing process that results in an output your users are currently dissatisfied with (if you run an annual IT satisfaction survey, use this data to find this information).
    • An existing process that is overly manual, lacks automation, and causes work slowdown for your staff.

    Info-Tech workflow examples

    Active Directory Processes

    Application Development Process

    Application Maintenance Process

    Backup Process

    Benefits Legitimacy Workflow

    Business Continuity Plan Business Process

    Business Continuity Plan Recovery Process

    Commitment Purchasing Workflow

    Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process

    Crisis Management Process

    Data Protection Recovery Workflow

    Disaster Recovery Process

    Disaster Recovery Plan/Business Continuity Plan Review Workflow

    End-User Device Management Workflow Library

    Expense Process

    Event Management Process

    Incident Management and Service Desk Workflows

    MACD Workflow Mapping

    Problem Management Process

    Project Management Process

    Ransomware Response Process

    Sales Process for New Clients

    Security Policy Exception Process

    Self-Service Resolution Process

    Service Definition Process

    Service Desk Ticket Intake by Channel

    Software Asset Management Processes

    Target State Maintenance Workflow

    Example: Onboarding workflow

    Onboarding is a perennial challenge due to the large number of separate teams and departments who are implicated in the process.

    There can be resistance to alignment. As a result, everyone needs to be pulled in to see the big picture and the impact of an overly manual and disconnected process.

    Additionally, the quality of the overall onboarding process (of which IT is but one part) has a significant impact on the employee experience of new hires, and the long-term experience of those employees. This workflow is therefore often a good one to target for improvement.

    “Organizations with a standardized onboarding process experience 62% greater new hire productivity, along with 50% greater new hire retention.”1

    “Companies that focus on onboarding retain 50% more new employees than companies that don’t.”2

    1. Carucci, “To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them,” 2018
    2. Uzialko, “What Does Poor Onboarding, 2023

    Tabletop exercise: Generate first draft

    In the tabletop exercise, your team will walk through your onboarding process step by step and document what happens at each stage. Prep for this meeting with the following steps:

    1. Identify roles: facilitator, notetaker, and participants. Determine who should be involved in the working group in addition to IT (HR, Hiring Team, Facilities, etc.).
    2. Decide what method of documentation you will use in the meeting. If meeting in person, cue cards are useful because they can be easily rearranged or inserted. If meeting remotely, the notetaker or facilitator will need to share their screen and capture each step with software (such as Visio, PowerPoint, or a whiteboarding software).
    3. Before you even begin mapping out the process, conduct a quick brainstorming session. What are your current challenges with it? What is working? Document on a whiteboard (electronic or hard copy).
    4. Document each step of the process as it currently happens. You will improve it later. Include task ownership.

    Roles

    Facilitator
    Tasks:

    • Guide discussion – restate contributors’ ideas, ask probing questions.
    • Keep group on track – cut off or redirect conversation when off track.

    Notetaker
    Tasks:

    • Ensure the steps are documented via the agreed-upon tools (e.g. cue cards). If the process is being documented in software, the notetaker may be solely responsible for documentation.
    • The notetaker may be the same person as the facilitator.

    Document your workflow challenges: Onboarding

    Brainstorm and document. Group similar challenges together to pull out themes.

    Lack of communication/expectation setting with users:

    Messy process, poor coordination among task owners:

    User experience affected:

    • Users submit onboarding requests with too little lead time.
    • HR/hiring manager does not include all necessary information when submitting new hire request.
    • Approvals are slowing down our ability to fulfill in a timely manner.
    • Lots of manual, repeated tasks.
    • Too much back and forth between technicians.
    • Procurement delays (supply chain challenges) leading to new user starting with no device/workaround.
    • Inconsistent resolution times for these types of requests.
    • Complaints about onboarding were one of the most frequently recurring issues in our most recent annual IT satisfaction survey.
    • Some of these complaints fall more to the responsibility of HR and direct managers, but some of the complaints relate to onboarding tasks not being completed by start date, which is our responsibility.

    Establish flowcharting standards

    If you don’t have existing flowchart standards, use the basic notation conventions used in the examples here.

    Basic notation convention shapes: Circle, oval, square, rectangle, diamond, thought bubble.

    Start, End, and Connector. Traditional flowcharting standards reserve this shape for connectors to other flowcharts or other points in the existing flowchart. Unified modeling language (UML) also uses the circle for start and end points.

    Start, End. Traditional flowcharting standards use this for start and end. However, Info-Tech recommends using the circle shape to reduce the number of shapes and avoid confusion with other similar shapes.

    Process Step. Individual process steps or activities (e.g. create ticket or escalate ticket). If it’s a series of steps, then use the sub-process symbol and flowchart the sub-process separately.

    Sub-Process. A series of steps. For example, a critical incident standard operating procedure (SOP) might reference a recovery process as one of the possible actions. Marking it as a sub-process, rather than listing each step within the critical incident SOP, streamlines the flowchart and avoids overlap with other flowcharts (e.g. the recovery process).

    Decision. Represents decision points, typically with yes/no branches, but you could have other branches depending on the question (e.g. a “Priority” question could branch into separate streams for Priority 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 issues).

    Document/Report Output. For example, the output from a backup process might include an error log.

    Map the current process

    Prompt the working group with the following questions.

    • What happens when the ticket comes in? Who submits it? Where is it coming from? What are the trigger events? Are there any input channels we should eliminate?
    • What is the terminal event? Where does the workflow end?
    • Do we have a triage step?
    • Is the ticket prioritized? Does this need to be a step?
    • Do we create child tickets? Separate tasks for different teams? Do we create a primary/main ticket and sub-tickets? How should we represent this in the flowchart?
    • How should we represent escalations? How should we represent task ownership by different teams?
    • What are our decision points: points when the path can potentially branch (e.g. into yes/no branches)?

    Map the process: First pass

    The image contains a screenshot example of the first pass.

    Tabletop exercise: Revise workflow

    Time to review and revise the workflow. What gaps exist? How can you improve the process? What documentation gaps have been overlooked?

    Consider the following refinements for the onboarding workflow:

    • Identify missing steps
    • Clearly identify task ownership
    • Establish SLAs and timepoints
    • Capture/implement user feedback
    • Identify approval roadblocks
    • Identify communication points
    • Identify opportunities for automation
    • Create personas
    • Create onboarding checklist

    Roles

    Facilitator
    Tasks:

    • Guide discussion – restate contributors’ ideas, ask probing questions.
    • Keep group on track – cut off or redirect conversation when off track.

    Notetaker
    Tasks:

    • Ensure the steps are documented via the agreed-upon tools (e.g. cue cards). If the process is being documented in software, the notetaker may be solely responsible for documentation.
    • The notetaker may be the same person as the facilitator, but this takes some practice.

    Map the process: Critique draft

    The image contains a screenshot example of critique draft.

    Solicit feedback from the group.

    "

    • Our workflow is slowed down by hidden approvals that we haven’t mapped.
    • We have no efficient way to prevent submission of incomplete requests.
    • Our workflow doesn’t clearly show how different tasks are assigned to different teams.
    • We still don’t know how long this all takes.
    • We’re missing some tasks – what about including facilities?
    • We’re missing next steps for some of the decision points.
    "

    Review: Identify missing steps

    Consider the following refinements.

    Be complete.

    The workflow should surface tacit knowledge, so make it explicit (Haddadpoor et al.):

    • Where are the inputs coming from? Do you need to account for various input channels? Have you forgotten any?
    • Are there any input channels that you want to eliminate?
    • Have you overlooked any hardware, software, or services entitlements that should be called out?
    • Have all decision paths been worked through? Do you need to add any missing decision points?
    • Add information flows and annotations as needed.

    Review: Task ownership

    Identify task ownership.

    The flow chart will be more useful if it clearly identifies who does what in the process.

    • Consider organizing the sub-processes within the overall onboarding process into swim lanes, one for each team or group involved in the process.
    • Swim lanes help clarify who does what in the overall process (e.g. all the tasks completed by HR appear in the HR swim lane, all the tasks completed by service desk appear in the service desk swim lane).
    • They can also help draw attention to escalation points or handoff points between different teams. Assess the steps around the boundary of each swim lane. Does the working group experience/know of friction at these handoff points? What might solve it?
    • In what order should the tasks occur? What dependencies do they have?

    The image contains a screenshot of a model that demonstrates task ownership swim lanes.

    “Each task has an owner, and the task list is visible to the employee and other stakeholders, so there's visibility about whether each person has done their actions.”

    Matthew Stibbe, qtd. in Zapier, 2022

    Review: The time the workflow takes

    For onboarding, this means setting SLOs/SLAs and internal timepoints.

    Add internal timepoints for the major steps/tasks in the workflow. Begin to track these service level objectives and adjust as necessary.

    • Review old onboarding tickets and track how long each main step/task takes (or should take). Every additional approval risks adding days.
    • Consider where there are opportunities to increase automation or use templates to save time.
    • Zero in on which task within the onboarding workflow is slowing down the process.
    • Create an overall service level objective that communicates how many days the onboarding workflow is expected to take. Decide where escalations go when the SLA is breached.

    When you have validated the service level objectives are accurate and you can meet them an acceptable amount of time, communicate the overall SLA to your users. This will ensure they submit future onboarding requests to your team with enough lead time to fulfill the request. Try to place the SLA directly in the service catalog.

    “Tracking the time within the workflow can be a powerful way to show the working group why there is user dissatisfaction.”

    Sandi Conrad, Principal Advisory Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Review: Capture user feedback

    For onboarding, this means implementing a transactional survey.

    The onboarding workflow will be subject to periodic reviews and continual improvement. Suggestions for improvement should come not only from the internal IT team, but also the users themselves.

    • Transactional surveys, launched at the close of a ticket, allow the ticket submitter to provide feedback on their customer service experience.
    • Onboarding tickets are somewhat more complex than the average incident or service request, since the ticket is often opened by one user (e.g. in HR) on behalf of another (the new employee).
    • Decide whose experience you want feedback on – the submitter of the request or the new user. Investigate your ITSM tool’s capabilities: is it possible to direct the survey to someone who is not the ticket submitter?
    Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback

    Use Info-Tech’s Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback for more guidance on creating these surveys.

    Review: Identify approval roadblocks

    For onboarding, approvals can be the main roadblock to fulfilling requests

    • How are the requests coming in? Do we have a predefined service catalog?
    • What kinds of approvals do we receive (manager, financial, legal, security, regulatory)? Ask the team to think about where there are instances of back and forth and clean that up.
    • Identify where approvals interrupt the technical flow.
      • Confirm that these approvals are indeed necessary (e.g. are certain approval requests ever declined? If not, follow up on whether they are necessary or whether some can be made into preapprovals).
      • Avoid putting agents in charge of waiting on or following up about approvals.
      • Investigate whether interruptive approvals can be moved.

    Review: Identify communication points

    A positive onboarding experience is an important part of a new employee’s success.

    Though IT is only one part of an employee’s onboarding experience, it’s an important part. Delays for hardware procurement and a lack of communication can lead to employee disengagement. Ask the team:

    • Are we communicating with our users when delays occur? When do delays occur most often?
    • How can we mitigate delays? Though we can’t resolve larger supply chain problems, can we increase stock in the meantime?
    • Can we start tracking delays to incorporate into the SLA
    • Do we offer loaner devices in the meantime?

    Place communication bullet points in the flow chart to indicate where the team will reach out to users to update or notify them of delays.

    Review: Identify opportunities for automation

    Where can we automate for onboarding?

    Identify when the process is dragged out due to waiting times (e.g. times when the technician can’t address the ticket right away).

    • Analyze the workflow to identify which tasks tend to stagnate because technician is busy elsewhere. Are these candidates for automation?
    • Is our ITSM tool capable of setting up automatically routed child tickets triggered by the main onboarding ticket? Does it generate a series of tasks? Is it a manual process? Which teams do these tasks/tickets go to?
    • Can we automate notifications if devices are delayed?
    • Can we use mobile device management for automated software installation?
    • If we have a robust service catalog, can we provide it to the users to download what they need? Or is this too many extra steps for our users?
    • Can we create personas to speed up onboarding?

    Avoid reinforcing manual processes, which make it even harder for departmental silos to work together.

    Review: Automation example – create personas

    Create role-based templates.

    Does HR know which applications our users need? Are they deferring to the manager, who then asks IT to simply duplicate an existing user?

    Personas are asset profiles that apply to multiple users (e.g. in a department) and that can be easily duplicated for new hires. You might create three persona groups in a department, with variations within each subgroup or title. To do this, you need accurate information upfront.

    Then, if you’re doing zero touch deployment, you can automate software to automatically load.

    Many HRIS systems have the ability to create a persona, and also to add users to the AD, email, and distribution groups without IT getting involved. This can alleviate work from the sysadmin. Does our HRIS do this?

    • Review old onboarding tickets. Do they include manual steps like setting up mailboxes, creating user accounts, adding to groups?
    • Investigate your ITSM tool’s onboarding template. Does it allow you to create a form through which to create dynamic required fields?
    • Identify the key information service desk needs from the department supervisor, or equivalent role, to begin the onboarding request – employee type, access level, hardware and software entitlements, etc.

    Revised workflow

    How does the group feel about the revised workflow?

    • Are any outputs still missing?
    • Can we add any more annotations to provide more context to someone reading this for the first time?
    • Do the task names follow a “verb-noun” format?
    • Are the handoffs clear?
    • Are some of the steps overly detailed compared to others?
    • Does it help resolve the challenges we listed?
    • Does it achieve the benefits we want to achieve?

    Download the Workflow Activity: Onboarding Example

    Remember the principle of constructive criticism.

    Don’t be afraid to critique the workflow but remember this can also be a team-building experience. Focus on how these changes will be mutually beneficial, not assigning blame for workflow friction.

    Post-review: Revised workflow

    The image contains a screenshot example of a revised workflow.

    Final check

    • Do we need to run this by Legal?
    • Have we included too many sub-processes? Not enough?
    • Is the flowchart easy to read and follow?

    Decide how often this workflow will be revised.

    • Is this workflow part of a larger piece of documentation that has a set review cadence? Where is it stored?
    • If not, what is a realistic time frame for regular review?
    • Who will own this process in an ongoing way and be in charge of convening a future review working group?

    Validation with stakeholders

    • What documentation does the flowchart belong to? When will you review it again?
    • Who do you need to validate the flowchart with?

    Share the flowchart and set up a review meeting.

    • Walk through the workflow with stakeholders who did not participate in building it.
    • Do they find it easy to follow?
    • Can they identify missing steps?

    Don’t waste time building shelfware.

    Establish a review cadence to ensure the flowchart is a living document that people actually use.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Bibliography

    Bushkill, Claire. “The top 5 ways to automate your onboarding checklist.” Rippling Blog. 18 Mar 2022. Accessed 29 Nov 2022. Ha https://www.rippling.com/blog/the-top-5-ways-to-automate-your-onboarding-checklist
    Carucci, Ron. “To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them.” Harvard Business Review, 3 Dec 2018
    Haddadpoor, Asefeh, et al. “Process Documentation: A Model for Knowledge Management in Organizations.” Materia Socio-Medica, vol. 27, no. 5, Oct. 2015, pp. 347–50. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.5455/msm.2015.27.347-350.
    King, Melissa. “New hire checklist: An employee onboarding checklist template for 2022.” Zapier. 14 Jul 2022. Accessed 29 Nov 2022. https://zapier.com/blog/onboarding-checklist/
    Uzialko, Adam. “What Does Poor Onboarding Really Do to Your Team?” Business News Daily. 23 Jan 2023.
    https://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk...

    Contributors

    Sandi Conrad, Principal Advisory Director, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group

    Christine Coz, Executive Counselor, Info-Tech Research Group

    Allison Kinnaird, Practice Lead, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group

    Natalie Sansone, Research Director, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group

    Improve Your IT Recruitment Process

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}578|cart{/j2store}
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    • Parent Category Name: Attract & Select
    • Parent Category Link: /attract-and-select

    Business and IT leaders aiming to recruit and select the best talent need to:

    • Get involved in the talent acquisition process at key moments.
    • Market their organization to top talent through an authentic employer brand.
    • Create engaging and accurate job ads.
    • Leverage purposeful sourcing for anticipated talent needs.
    • Effectively assess candidates with a strong interview process.
    • Set up new employees for success.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    To create a great candidate experience, IT departments must be involved in the process at key points, recruitment and selection is not a job for HR alone!

    Impact and Result

    • Use this how-to guide to articulate an authentic (employee value proposition) EVP and employer brand.
    • Perform an analysis of current sourcing methods and build an action plan to get IT involved.
    • Create an effective and engaging job ad to insure the right people are applying.
    • Train hiring managers to effectively deliver interviews that correctly assess candidate suitability.
    • Get links to in-depth Info-Tech resources and tools.

    Improve Your IT Recruitment Process Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Improve Your IT Recruitment Process – A guide to help you attract and select the best talent.

    Train your IT department to get involved in the recruitment process to attract and select the best talent.

    • Improve Your IT Recruitment Process Capstone Deck

    2. Improve Your IT Recruitment Process Workbook – A tool to document your action plans.

    Use this tool in conjunction with the Improve you IT Recruitment Process to document your action plans

    • Improve Your IT Recruitment Process Workbook

    3. Interview Guide Template – A template to organize interview questions and their rating scales, take notes during the interview, and ensure all interviews follow a similar structure.

    To get useful information from an interview, the interviewer should be focused on what candidates are saying and how they are saying it, not on what the next question will be, what probes to ask, or how they will score the responses. This Interview Guide Template will help interviewers stay focused and collect good information about candidates.

    • Interview Guide Template

    4. IT Behavioral Interview Question Library – A tool that contains a complete list of sample questions aligned with core, leadership, and IT competencies.

    Hiring managers can choose from a comprehensive collection of core, functional, and leadership competency-based behavioral interview questions.

    • IT Behavioral Interview Question Library

    5. Job Ad Template – A template to allow complete documentation of the characteristics, responsibilities, and requirements for a given job posting in IT.

    Use this template to develop a well-written job posting that will attract the star candidates and, in turn, deflect submission of irrelevant applications by those unqualified.

    • Job Ad Template

    6. Idea Catalog – A tool to evaluate virtual TA solutions.

    The most innovative technology isn’t necessarily the right solution. Review talent acquisition (TA) solutions and evaluate the purpose each option serves in addressing critical challenges and replacing critical in-person activities.

    • Idea Catalog: Adapt the Talent Acquisition Process to a Virtual Environment
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Improve Your IT Recruitment Process

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Employee Value Proposition and Employer Branding

    The Purpose

    Establish the employee value proposition (EVP) and employer brand.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Have a well-defined EVP that you communicate through your employer brand.

    Activities

    1.1 Gather feedback.

    1.2 Build key messages.

    1.3 Assess employer brand.

    Outputs

    Content and themes surrounding the EVP

    Draft EVP and supporting statements

    A clearer understanding of the current employer brand and how it could be improved

    2 Job Ads and Sourcing

    The Purpose

    Develop job postings and build a strong sourcing program.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Create the framework for an effective job posting and analyze existing sourcing methods.

    Activities

    2.1 Review and update your job ads.

    2.2 Review the effectiveness of existing sourcing programs.

    2.3 Review job ads and sourcing methods for bias.

    Outputs

    Updated job ad

    Low usage sourcing methods identified for development

    Minimize bias present in ads and sourcing methods

    3 Effective Interviewing

    The Purpose

    Create a high-quality interview process to improve candidate assessment.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Training on being an effective interviewer.

    Activities

    3.1 Create an ideal candidate scorecard.

    3.2 Map out your interview process.

    3.3 Practice behavioral interviews.

    Outputs

    Ideal candidate persona

    Finalized interview and assessment process

    Practice interviews

    4 Onboarding and Action Plan

    The Purpose

    Drive employee engagement and retention with a robust program that acclimates, guides, and develops new hires.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Evaluation of current onboarding practice.

    Activities

    4.1 Evaluate and redesign the onboarding program.

    Outputs

    Determine new onboarding activities to fill identified gaps.

    Further reading

    Improve Your IT Recruitment Process

    Train your IT department to get involved in the recruitment process to attract and select the best talent.

    Own the IT recruitment process

    Train your IT department to get involved in the recruitment process to attract and select the best talent.

    Follow this blueprint to:

    • Define and communicate the unique benefits of working for your organization to potential candidates through a strong employer brand.
    • Learn best practices around creating effective job postings.
    • Target your job posting efforts on the areas with the greatest ROI.
    • Create and deliver an effective, seamless, and positive interview and offer process for candidates.
    • Acclimate new hires and set them up for success.

    Get involved at key moments of the candidate experience to have the biggest impact


    Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and Employer Brand



    Job Postings and a Strong Sourcing Program

    Effective Interviewing

    Onboarding: Setting up New Hires For Success

    Awareness Research Application Screening Interview and Assessment Follow Up Onboarding

    RECRUIT QUALITY STAFF

    Hiring talent is critical to organizational success

    Talent is a priority for the entire organization:

    Respondents rated “recruitment” as the top issue facing organizations today (McLean & Company 2022 HR Trends Report).

    37% of IT departments are outsourcing roles to fill internal skill shortages (Info-Tech Talent Trends 2022 Survey).

    Yet bad hires are alarmingly common:

    Hiring is one of the least successful business processes, with three-quarters of managers reporting that they have made a bad hire (Robert Half, 2021).

    48% of survey respondents stated improving the quality of hires was the top recruiting priority for 2021 (Jobvite, 2021).

    Workshop overview

    Prework

    Day 1

    Day 2

    Day 3

    Day 4

    Post work

    Current Process and Job Descriptions Documented

    Establish the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and Employer Brand

    Develop Job Postings and Build a Strong Sourcing Program

    Effective Interviewing

    Onboarding and Action Planning

    Putting the Action Plan Into Action!

    Activities

    • Recruitment Process Mapped Out and Stakeholders Identified
    • Prepare a JD and JP for Four Priority Jobs
    • Collect Information on Where Your Best Candidates Are Coming From

    1.1 Introduce the Concept of an EVP

    1.2 Brainstorm Unique Benefits of Working at Your Organization

    1.2 Employer Brand Introduction

    2.1 What Makes an Attractive Job Posting

    2.2 Create the Framework for Job Posting

    2.3 Improve the Sourcing Process

    2.4 Review Process for Bias

    3.1 Creating an Interview Process

    3.2 Selecting Interview Questions

    3.3 Avoiding Bias During Interviews

    3.4 Practice Interviews

    4.1 Why Onboarding Matters

    4.2 Acclimatize New Hires and Set Them Up for Success

    4.3 Action Plan

    5.1 Review Outputs and Select Priorities

    5.2 Consult With HR and Senior Management to Get Buy-In

    5.3 Plan to Avoid Relapse Behaviors

    Deliverables

    1. EVP draft completed
    2. Employer brand action plan
    1. Organization-specific job posting framework
    2. Sourcing Plan Template for four priority jobs
    3. Sourcing action plan
    1. Completed Interview Guide Template
    2. Managers practice a panel interview
    1. Onboarding best practices
    2. Action plan

    Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

    The way you position the organization impacts who is likely to apply to posted positions.

    Develop a strong employee value proposition

    What is an employee value proposition?

    And what are the key components?

    The employee value proposition is your opportunity to showcase the unique benefits and opportunities of working at your organization, allowing you to attract a wider pool of candidates.

    AN EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION IS:

    AN EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION IS NOT:

    • An authentic representation of the employee experience
    • Aligned with organizational culture
    • Fundamental to all stages of the employee lifecycle
    • A guide to help investment in programs and policies
    • Short and succinct
    • What the employee can do for you
    • A list of programs and policies
    • An annual project

    THE FOUR KEY COMPONENTS OF AN EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION

    Rewards

    Organizational Elements

    Working Conditions

    Day-to-Day Job Elements

    • Compensation
    • Health Benefits
    • Retirement Benefits
    • Vacation
    • Culture
    • Customer Focus
    • Organization Potential
    • Department Relationships
    • Senior Management Relationships
    • Work/Life Balance
    • Working Environment
    • Employee Empowerment
    • Development
    • Rewards & Recognition
    • Co-Worker Relationships
    • Manager Relationships

    Creating a compelling EVP that presents a picture of your employee experience, with a focus on diversity, will attract a wide pool of diverse candidates to your team. This can lead to many internal and external benefits for your organization.

    How to collect information on your EVP

    Existing Employee Value Proposition: If your organization or IT department has an existing employee value proposition, rather than starting from scratch, we recommend leveraging that and moving to the testing phase to see if the EVP still resonates with staff and external parties.

    Employee Engagement Results: If your organization does an employee engagement survey, review the results to identify the areas in which the IT organization is performing well. Identify and document any key comment themes in the report around why employees enjoy working for the organization or what makes your IT department a great place to work.

    Social Media Sites. Prepare for the good, the bad, and the ugly. Social media websites like Glassdoor and Indeed make it easier for employees to share their experiences at an organization honestly and candidly. While postings on these sites won’t relate exclusively to the IT department, they do invite participants to identify their department in the organization. You can search these to identify any positive things people are saying about working for the organization and potentially opportunities for improvement (which you can use as a starting point in the retention section of this report).

    1.1 Gather feedback

    1. Download the Improve Your IT Recruitment Workbook.
    2. On tab 1.1, brainstorm the top five things you value most about working at the organization. Ask yourself what would fall in each category and identify any key themes. Be sure to take note of any specific quotes you have.
    3. Brainstorm limitations that the organization currently has in each of those areas.

    Download the Recruitment Workbook

    Input

    Output
    • Employee opinions
    • Employee responses to four EVP components
    • Content for EVP

    Materials

    Participants

    • Recruitment Workbook
    • Diverse employees
    • Different departments
    • Different role levels

    1.2 Build key messages

    1. Go to tab 1.2 in your workbook
    2. Identify themes from activity 1.1 that would be considered current strengths of you organization.
    3. Identify themes from activity 1.2 that are aspirational elements of your organization.
    4. Identify up to four key statements to focus on for the EVP, ensuring that your EVP speaks to at least one of the five categories above.
    5. Integrate these into one overall statement.

    Examples below.

    Input

    Output
    • Feedback from focus groups
    • EVP and supporting statements

    Materials

    Participants

    • Workbook handout
    • Pen and paper for documenting responses
    • IT leadership team

    Sample EVPs

    Shopify

    “We’re Shopify. Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone – but we’re not the workplace for everyone. We thrive on change, operate on trust, and leverage the diverse perspectives of people on our team in everything we do. We solve problems at a rapid pace. In short, we get shit done.”

    Bettercloud

    “At Bettercloud, we have a smart, ambitious team dedicated to delighting our customers. Our culture of ownership and transparency empowers our team to achieve goals they didn’t think possible. For all those on board, it’s going to be a challenging and rewarding journey – and we’re just getting started.”

    Ellevest

    “As a team member at Ellevest, you can expect to make a difference through your work, to have a direct impact on the achievement of a very meaningful mission, to significantly advance your career trajectory, and to have room for fun and fulfillment in your daily life. We know that achieving a mission as critical as ours requires incredible talent and teamwork, and team is the most important thing to us.”

    Sources: Built In, 2021; Workology, 2022

    Ensure your EVP resonates with employees and prospects

    Test your EVP with internal and external audiences.

    INTERNAL TEST REVOLVES AROUND THE 3A’s

    EXTERNAL TEST REVOLVES AROUND THE 3C’s

    ALIGNED: The EVP is in line with the organization’s purpose, vision, values, and processes. Ensure policies and programs are aligned with the organization’s EVP.

    CLEAR: The EVP is straightforward, simple, and easy to understand. Without a clear message in the market, even the best intentioned EVPs can be lost in confusion.

    ACCURATE: The EVP is clear and compelling, supported by proof points. It captures the true employee experience, which matches the organization’s communication and message in the market.

    COMPELLING: The EVP emphasizes the value created for employees and is a strong motivator to join this organization. A strong EVP will be effective in drawing in external candidates. The message will resonate with them and attract them to your organization.

    ASPIRATIONAL: The EVP inspires both individuals and the IT organization as a whole. Identify and invest in the areas that are sure to generate the highest returns for employees.

    COMPREHENSIVE: The EVP provides enough information for the potential employee to understand the true employee experience and to self-assess whether they are a good fit for your organization. If the EVP lacks depth, the potential employee may have a hard time understanding the benefits and rewards of working for your organization.

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

    The way you position the organization impacts who is likely to apply to posted positions.

    Market your EVP to potential candidates: Employer Brand

    Employer brand includes how you market the EVP internally and externally – consistency is key

    The employer brand is the perception internal and external stakeholders hold of the organization and exists whether it has been curated or not. Curating the employer brand involves marketing the organization and employee experience. Grounding your employer brand in your EVP enables you to communicate and market an accurate portrayal of your organization and employee experience and make you desirable to both current and potential employees.

    The image contains a picture of several shapes. There is a trapezoid that is labelled EVP, and has a an arrow pointing to the text beside it. There is also an arrowing pointing down from it to another trapezoid that is labelled Employer Brand.

    The unique offering an employer provides to employees in return for their effort, motivating them to join or remain at the organization.

    The perception internal and external stakeholders hold of the organization.

    Alignment between the EVP, employer brand, and corporate brand is the ideal branding package. An in-sync marketing strategy ensures stakeholders perceive and experience the brand the same way, creating brand ambassadors.

    The image contains three circles that are connected. The circles are labelled: EVP, Employer Brand, Corporate Brand.

    Ensure your branding material creates a connection

    How you present your employer brand is just as important as the content. Ideally, you want the viewer to connect with and personalize the material for the message to have staying power. Use Marketing’s expertise to help craft impactful promotional materials to engage and excite the viewer.

    Visuals

    Images are often the first thing viewers notice. Use visuals that connect to your employer brand to engage the viewer’s attention and increase the likelihood that your message will resonate. However, if there are too many visuals this may detract from your content – balance is key!

    Language

    Wordsmithing is often the most difficult aspect of marketing. Your message should be accurate, informative, and engaging. Work with Marketing to ensure your wording is clever and succinct – the more concise, the better.

    Composition

    Integrate visuals and language to complete your marketing package. Ensure that the text and images are balanced to draw in the viewer.

    Case Study: Using culture to drive your talent pool

    This case study is happening in real time. Please check back to learn more as Goddard continues to recruit for the position.

    Recruiting at NASA

    Goddard Space Center is the largest of NASA’s space centers with approximately 11,000 employees. It is currently recruiting for a senior technical role for commercial launches. The position requires consulting and working with external partners and vendors.

    NASA is a highly desirable employer due to its strong culture of inclusivity, belonging, teamwork, learning, and growth. Its culture is anchored by a compelling vision, “For the betterment of Humankind,” and amplified by a strong leadership team that actively lives their mission and vision daily.

    Firsthand lists NASA as #1 on the 50 most prestigious internships for 2022.

    Rural location and no flexible work options add to the complexity of recruiting

    The position is in a rural area of Eastern Shore Virginia with a population of approximately 60,000 people, which translates to a small pool of candidates. Any hire from outside the area will be expected to relocate as the senior technician must be onsite to support launches twice a month. Financial relocation support is not offered and the position is a two-year assignment with the option of extension that could eventually become permanent.

    The image contains a picture of Steve Thornton.

    “Looking for a Talent Unicorn: a qualified, experienced candidate with both leadership skills and deep technical expertise that can grow and learn with emerging technologies.”

    Steve Thornton

    Acting Division Chief, Solutions Division, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA

    Case Study: Using culture to drive your talent pool

    A good brand overcomes challenges.

    Culture takes the lead in NASA's job postings, which attract a high number of candidates. Postings begin with a link to a short video on working at NASA, its history, and how it lives its vision. The video highlights NASA's diversity of perspectives, career development, and learning opportunities.

    NASA's company brand and employer brand are tightly intertwined, providing a consistent view of the organization.

    The employer vision is presented in the best place to reach NASA's ideal candidate: usajobs.gov, the official website of the United States Government and the “go-to” for government job listings. NASA also extends its postings to other generic job sites as well as LinkedIn and professional associations.

    The image contains a picture of Robert Leahy.

    Interview with Robert Leahy

    Chief Information Officer, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA

    2.1 Assess your organization’s employer brand

    1. Go to tab 2.1 in the Improve Your IT Recruitment Workbook.
    2. Put yourself in the shoes of someone on the outside looking in. If they were to look up your organization, what impression would they be given about what is like to work there?
    3. Run a Google search on your organization with key words “jobs,” “culture,” and “working environment” to see what a potential candidate would see when they begin researching your organization.
    4. You can use sites like:

    • Glassdoor
    • Indeed company pages
    • LinkedIn company pages
    • Social media
    • Your own website
  • Identify what your organization is doing well and record that under the “Continue” box in your workbook.
  • Record anything your organization should stop doing under the “Stop” box.
  • Brainstorm some ideas that your organization should think about implementing to improve the employer brand under the “Start” Box.
  • Input Output
    • Existing branding material on the internet
    • A clearer understanding of the current employer brand and how it could be improved
    Materials Participants
    • Workbook handout
    • Senior IT Leaders

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

    The way you position the organization impacts who is likely to apply to posted positions.

    Create engaging job ads to attract talent to the organization

    We have a job description; can I just post that on Indeed?

    A job description is an internal document that includes sections such as general job information, major responsibilities, key relationships, qualifications, and competencies. It communicates job expectations to incumbents and key job data to HR programs.

    A job ad is an externally facing document that advertises a position with the intent of attracting job applicants. It contains key elements from the job description as well as information on the organization and its EVP.

    Write an Effective Job Ad

    • Ensure that your job ad speaks to the audience you are targeting through the language you use.
      • E.g. If you are hiring for a creative role, use creative language and formatting. If you are writing for students, emphasize growth opportunities.
    • Highlight the organization’s EVP.
    • Paint an accurate picture of key aspects of the role but avoid the nitty gritty as it may overwhelm applicants.
    • Link to your organization’s website and social media platforms so applicants can easily find more information.

    A job description informs a job ad, it doesn’t replace it. Don’t be lulled into using a job description as a posting when there’s a time crunch to fill a position. Refer to job postings as job advertisements to reinforce that their purpose is to attract attention and talent.

    An effective job posting contains the following elements:

    Position Title
    • Clearly defined job titles are important for screening applicants as this is one of the first things the candidate will read.
    • Indicating the earnings range that the position pays cuts out time spent on reviewing candidates who may never accept the position and saves them from applying to a job that doesn’t match what they are looking for.
    Company
    • Provide a brief description of the organization including the products or services it offers, the corporate culture, and any training and career development programs.
    Summary Description
    • Describe briefly why the position exists. In other words, what is the position's primary purpose? The statement should include the overall results the job is intended to produce and some of the key means by which the position achieves these results.
    Responsibilities
    • Use bullet points to list the fundamental accountabilities of the position. Candidates want to know what they will be doing on a day-to-day basis.
    • Begin each responsibility or accountability statement with an action word and follow with a brief phrase to describe what is done to accomplish the function.
    Position Characteristics
    • Give examples of key problems and thinking challenges encountered by the position. Describe the type of analysis or creativity required to resolve these problems.
    • Provide examples of final decision-making authority. The examples should reflect the constraints placed on the position by people, policies, and/or procedures.
    Position Requirements
    • List all formal education and certifications required.
    • List all knowledge and experience required.
    • List all personal attributes required.
    Work Conditions
    • List all work conditions that the employee must accommodate. This could include any sensory, physical, or mental requirements of the position or any special conditions of employment, such as hours.
    Process to Apply
    • Include the methods in which the organization wants to receive applications and contact information of who will receive the applications.

    Bottom Line: A truly successful job posting ferrets out those hidden stars that may be over cautious and filters out hundreds of applications from the woefully under qualified.

    The do’s and don’ts of an inclusive job ad

    DON’T overlook the power of words. Avoid phrases like “strong English language skills” as this may deter non-native English speakers from applying and a “clean-shaven” requirement can exclude candidates whose faith requires them to maintain facial hair.

    DON’T post a long requirements list. A study showed that the average jobseeker spends only 49.7 seconds reviewing a listing before deciding it's not a fit.*

    DON’T present a toxic work culture; phrases such as “work hard, play hard” can put off many candidates and play into the “bro- culture” stereotype in tech.

    Position Title: Senior Lorem Ipsum

    Salary Band: $XXX to $XXX

    Diversity is a core value at ACME Inc. We believe that diversity and inclusion is our strength, and we’re passionate about building an environment where all employees are valued and can perform at their best.

    As a … you will …

    Our ideal candidate ….

    Required Education and Experience

    • Bachelor’s degree in …
    • Minimum five (5) years …

    Required Skills

    Preferred Skills

    At ACME Inc. you will find …

    DO promote pay equity by being up front and honest about salary expectations.

    DO emphasize your organization’s commitment to diversity and an inclusive workplace by adding an equity statement.

    DO limit your requirements to “must haves” or at least showcase them first before the “nice-to-haves.”

    DO involve current employees or members of your employee resource groups when creating job descriptions to ensure that they ask for what you really need.

    DO focus on company values and criteria that are important to the job, not just what’s always been done.

    *Source: Ladders, 2013

    Before posting the job ad complete the DEI job posting validation checklist

    Does the job posting highlight your organization’s EVP

    Does the job posting avoid words that might discourage women, people of color, and other members of underrepresented groups from applying?

    Has the position description been carefully reviewed and revised to reflect current and future expectations for the position, rather than expectations informed by the persons who have previously held the job?

    Has the hiring committee eliminated any unnecessary job skills or requirements (college degree, years or type of previous experience, etc.) that might negatively impact recruitment of underrepresented groups?

    Has the hiring committee posted the job in places (job boards, websites, colleges, etc.) where applicants from underrepresented groups will be able to easily view or access it?

    Have members of the hiring committee attended job fairs or other events hosted by underrepresented groups?

    Has the hiring committee asked current employees from underrepresented groups to spread the word about the position?

    Has the hiring committee worked with the marketing team to ensure that people from diverse groups are featured in the organization’s website, publications, and social media?

    es the job description clearly demonstrate the organization’s and leadership’s commitment to DEI?

    *Source: Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    3.1 Review and update your job ads

    1. Download the Job Ad Template.
    2. Look online or ask HR for an example of a current job advertisement you are using.
    • If you don’t have one, you can use a job description as a starting point.
  • Review all the elements of the job ad and make sure they align with the list on the previous slide, adding or changing, as necessary. Your job ad should be no more than two pages long.
  • Using the tools on the previous two slides, review your first draft to ensure the job posting is free of language or elements that will discourage diverse candidates from applying.
  • Review your job advertisement with HR to get feedback or to use as a template going forward.
  • Input Output
    • Existing job ad or job description
    • Updated job ad
    Materials Participants
    • Job ad or job description
    • Job Ad Template
    • Hiring Managers

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

    Focus on key programs and tactics to improve the effectiveness of your sourcing approach.

    Get involved with sourcing to get your job ad seen

    To meet growing expectations, organizations need to change the way they source

    Social Media

    Social media has trained candidates to expect:

    • Organizations to stay in touch and keep track of them.
    • A personalized candidate experience.
    • To understand organizational culture and a day in the life.

    While the focus on the candidate experience is important throughout the talent acquisition process, social media, technology, and values have made it a critical component of sourcing.

    Technology

    Candidates expect to be able to access job ads from all platforms.

    • Today, close to 90% of candidates use a mobile platform to job hunt (SmartRecruiters, 2022).
    • However, only 36% of organizations are optimizing their job postings for mobile. (The Undercover Recruiter, 2021)

    Job ads must be clear, concise, and easily viewed on a mobile device.

    Candidate Values

    Job candidate’s values are changing.

    • There is a growing focus on work/life balance, purpose, innovation, and career development. Organizations need to understand candidate values and highlight how the EVP aligns with these interests.

    Authenticity remains important.

    • Clearly and accurately represent your organization and its culture.

    Focus on key programs and tactics to improve the effectiveness of your sourcing approach

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    Take advantage of your current talent with an internal talent mobility program

    What is it?

    Positioning the right talent in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons, and supporting them appropriately.

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    ITM program benefits:

    1. Retention
    2. Provide opportunities to develop professionally, whether in the current role or through promotions/lateral moves. Keep strong performers and high-potential employees committed to the organization.

    3. Close Skills Gap
    4. Address rapid change, knowledge drain due to retiring Baby Boomers, and frustration associated with time to hire or time to productivity.

    5. Cost/Time Savings
    6. Reduce spend on talent acquisition, severance, time to productivity, and onboarding.

    7. Employee Engagement
    8. Increase motivation and productivity by providing increased growth and development opportunities.

    9. EVP
    10. Align with the organization’s offering and what is important to the employees from a development perspective.

    11. Employee & Leadership Development
    12. Support and develop employees from all levels and job functions.

    Leverage social media to identify and connect with talent

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    What is it? The widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on common efforts, and build relationships.

    Learning to use social media effectively is key to sourcing the right talent.

    • Today, 92% of organizations leverage social media for talent acquisition.
    • 80% of employers find passive candidates through social media – second only to referrals.
    • 86% percent of job seekers used social media for their most recent job search.
    (Ku, 2021)

    Benefits of social media:

    • Provides access to candidates who may not know the organization.
    • Taps extended networks.
    • Facilitates consistent communication with candidates and talent in pipelines.
    • Personalizes the candidate experience.
    • Provides access to extensive data.

    Challenges of social media:

    With the proliferation of social media and use by most organizations, social media platforms have become overcrowded. As a result:

    • Organizations are directly and very apparently competing for talent with competitors.
    • Users are bombarded with information and are tuning out.

    “It is all about how we can get someone’s attention and get them to respond. People are becoming jaded.”

    – Katrina Collier, Social Recruiting Expert, The Searchologist

    Reap the rewards of an employee referral program

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    What is it? Employees recommend qualified candidates. If the referral is hired, the referring employee typically receives some sort of reward.

    Benefits of an employee referral program:

    1. Lower Recruiting Costs
    2. 55% of organizations report that hiring a referral is less expensive that a non-referred candidate (Clutch, 2020).

    3. Decreased time to fill
    4. The average recruiting lifecycle for an employee referral is 29 days, compared with 55 days for a non referral (Betterup, 2022).

    5. Decreased turnover
    6. 46% percent of employees who were referred stay at their organization for a least one year, compared to 33% of career site hires (Betterup, 2022).

    7. Increased quality of hire
    8. High performers are more likely to refer other high performers to an organization (The University of Chicago Press, 2019).

    Avoid the Like Me Bias: Continually evaluate the diversity of candidates sourced from the employee referral program. Unless your workforce is already diverse, referrals can hinder diversity because employees tend to recommend people like themselves.

    Tap into your network of former employees

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    What is it? An alumni referral program is a formalized way to maintain ongoing relationships with former employees of the organization.

    Successful organizations use an alumni program:

    • 98% of the F500 have some sort of Alumni program (LinkedIn, 2019).

    Benefits of an alumni program:

    1. Branding
    • Alumni are regarded as credible sources of information. They can be a valuable resource for disseminating and promoting the employer brand.
  • Source of talent
    • Boomerang employees are doubly valuable as they understand the organization and also have developed skills and industry experience.
      • Recover some of the cost of turnover and cost per hire with a pool of prequalified candidates who will more quickly reach full productivity.
  • Referral potential
    • Developing a robust alumni network provides access to a larger network through referrals.
    • Alumni already know what is required to be successful in the organization so they can refer more suitable candidates.

    Make use of a campus recruiting program

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    What is it? A formalized means of attracting and hiring individuals who are about to graduate from schools, colleges, or universities.

    Almost 70% of companies are looking to employ new college graduates every year (HR Shelf, 2022).

    Campus recruitment benefits:

    • Increases employer brand awareness among talent entering the workforce.
    • Provides the opportunity to interact with large groups of potential candidates at one time.
    • Presents the opportunity to identify and connect with high-quality talent before they graduate and are actively looking for positions.
    • Offers access to a highly diverse audience.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Target schools that align with your culture and needs. Do not just focus on the most prestigious schools: they are likely more costly, have more intense competition, and may not actually provide the right talent.

    Identify opportunities to integrate non-traditional techniques

    Internal Talent Mobility (ITM) Program

    Social Media Program

    Employee Referral Program

    Alumni Program

    Campus Recruiting Program

    Other Sourcing Tactics

    1. Professional industry associations
    • Tap into candidates who have the necessary competencies.

    5. Not-for-profit intermediaries

    • Partner with not-for-profits to tap into candidates in training or mentorship programs.
    • Example:
      • Year Up (General)
      • Bankwork$ (Banking)
      • Youth Build (Construction)
      • iFoster (Grocery)

    American Expresscreated a boot camp for software engineers in partnership with Year Up and Gateway Community College to increase entry-level IT hires.

    Results:

    • Annually hire 80-100 interns from Year Up.
    • Improved conversion rates: 72% of Year Up interns versus 60% of traditional interns.
    • Increased retention: 44 (Year Up) versus 18 months (traditional).
    (HBR, 2016)

    2. Special interest groups

    • Use for niche role sourcing.
    • Find highly specialized talent.
    • Drive diversity (Women in Project Management).

    6. Gamification

    • Attract curiosity and reaffirm innovation at your organization.
    • Communicate the EVP.
    3. Customers
    • Access those engaged with the organization.
    • Add the employer brand to existing messaging.

    PwC (Hungary) created Multiploy, a two-day game that allows students to virtually experience working in accounting or consulting at the organization.

    Results:

    • 78% of students said they wanted to work for PwC.
    • 92% indicated they had a more positive view of the firm.
    • Increase in the number of job applicants.
    (Zielinski, 2015)

    4. Exit interviews

    • Ask exiting employees “where should we recruit someone to replace you?”
    • Leverage their knowledge to glean insight into where to find talent.

    Partner with other organizational functions to build skills and leverage existing knowledge

    Use knowledge that already exists in the organization to improve talent sourcing capabilities.

    Marketing

    HR

    Marketing knows how to:

    • Build attention-grabbing content.
    • Use social media platforms effectively.
    • Effectively promote a brand.
    • Use creative methods to connect with people.

    HR knows how to:

    • Organize recruitment activities.
    • Identify the capabilities of various technologies available to support sourcing.
    • Solve issues that may arise along the way

    To successfully partner with other departments in your organization:

    • Acknowledge that they are busy. Like IT, they have multiple competing priorities.
    • Present your needs and prioritize them. Create a list of what you are looking for and then be willing to just pick your top need. Work with the other department to decide what needs can and cannot be met.
    • Present the business case. Emphasize how partnering is mutually beneficial. For example, illustrate to Marketing that promoting a strong brand with candidates will improve the organization’s overall reputation because often, candidates are customers.
    • Be reasonable and patient. You are asking for help, so be moderate in your expectations and flexible in working with your partner.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Encourage your team to seek out, and learn from, employees in different divisions. Training sessions with the teams may not always be possible but one-on-one chats can be just as effective and may be better received.

    5.1 Review the effectiveness of existing sourcing programs

    1. As a group review the description of each program as defined on previous slides. Ensure that everyone understands the definitions.
    2. In your workbook, look for the cell Internal Talent Mobility under the title; you will find five rows with the following
    • This program is formally structured and documented.
    • This program is consistently applied across the organization.
    • Talent is sourced this way on an ad hoc basis.
    • Our organization currently does not source talent this way.
    • There are metrics in place to assess the effectiveness of this program.
  • Ask everyone in the group if they agree with the statement for each column; once everyone has had a chance to answer each of the questions, discuss any discrepancies which exist.
  • After coming to a consensus, record the answers.
  • Repeat this process for the other four sourcing programs (social media, employee referral program, alumni network program, and campus recruiting program).
  • InputOutput
    • Existing knowledge on sourcing approach
    • Low usage sourcing methods identified for development
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Workbook
    • Hiring Managers

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

    Interviews are the most often used yet poorly executed hiring tool.

    Create a high-quality interview process to improve candidate assessment

    Everyone believes they’re a great interviewer; self-assess your techniques, and “get real” to get better

    If you…

    • Believe everything the candidate says.
    • Ask mostly hypothetical questions: "What would you do in a situation where…"
    • Ask gimmicky questions: "If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?"
    • Ask only traditional interview questions: "What are your top three strengths?”
    • Submit to a first impression bias.
    • Have not defined what you are looking for before the interview.
    • Ignore your gut feeling in an attempt to be objective.
    • Find yourself loving a candidate because they are just like you.
    • Use too few or too many interviewers in the process.
    • Do not ask questions to determine the motivational fit of the candidate.
    • Talk more than the interviewee.
    • Only plan and prepare for the interview immediately before it starts.

    …then stop. Use this research!

    Most interviewers are not effective, resulting in many poor hiring decisions, which is costly and counter-productive

    Most interviewers are not effective…

    • 82% of organizations don’t believe they hire highly talented people (Trost, 2022).
    • Approximately 76% of managers and HR representatives that McLean & Company interviewed agreed that the majority of interviewers are not very effective.
    • 66% of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions (DDI, 2021).

    …because, although everyone knows interviewing is a priority, most don’t make it one.

    • Interviewing is often considered an extra task in addition to an employee’s day-to-day responsibilities, and these other responsibilities take precedence.
    • It takes time to effectively design, prepare for, and conduct an interview.
    • Employees would rather spend this time on tasks they consider to be an immediate priority.

    Even those interviewers who are good at interviewing, may not be good enough.

    • Even a good interviewer can be fooled by a great interviewee.
    • Some interviewees talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. They have great interviewing abilities but not the skills required to be successful in the specific position for which they are interviewing.
    • Even if the interviewer is well trained and prepared to conduct a strong interview, they can get caught up with an interviewee that seems very impressive on the surface, and end up making a bad hire.

    Preparing the Perfect Interview

    Step 5: Define decision rights

    Establish decision-making authority and veto power to mitigate post-interview conflicts over who has final say over a candidate’s status.

    Follow these steps to create a positive interview experience for all involved.

    Step 1: Define the ideal candidate profile; determine the attributes of the ideal candidate and their relative importance

    Define the attributes of the ideal candidate…

    Ideal candidate = Ability to do the job + Motivation to do the job + Fit

    Competencies

    • Education
    • Credentials
    • Technical skills
    • Career path
    • Salary expectations
    • Passion
    • Potential
    • Personality
    • Managerial style/preference

    Experiences

    • Years of service
    • Specific projects
    • Industry

    Data for these come from:

    • Interviews
    • Personality tests
    • Gut instinct or intuition

    Data for these come from:

    • Resumes
    • Interviews
    • Exercises and tests
    • References

    Caution: Evaluating for “organizational or cultural fit” can lead to interviewers falling into the trap of the “like me” bias, and excluding diverse candidates.

    …then determine the importance of the attributes.

    Non-negotiable = absolutely required for the job!

    Usually attributes that are hard to train, such as writing skills, or expensive to acquire after hire, such as higher education or specific technical skills.

    An Asset

    Usually attributes that can be trained, such as computer skills. It’s a bonus if the new hire has it.

    Nice-to-have

    Attributes that aren’t necessary for the job but beneficial. These could help in breaking final decision ties.

    Deal Breakers: Also discuss and decide on any deal breakers that would automatically exclude a candidate.

    The job description is not enough; meet with stakeholders to define and come to a consensus on the ideal candidate profile

    Definition of the Ideal Candidate

    • The Hiring Manager has a plan for the new hire and knows the criteria that will best fulfill that mandate.
    • The Executive team may have specific directives for what the ideal candidate should look like, depending on the level and critical nature of the position.
    • Industry standards, which are defined by regulatory bodies, are available for some positions. Use these to identify skills and abilities needed for the job.
    • Competitor information such as job descriptions and job reviews could provide useful data about a similar role in other organizations.
    • Exit interviews can offer insight into the most challenging aspects of the job and identify skills or abilities needed for success.
    • Current employees who hold the same or a similar position can explain the nuances of the day-to-day job and what attributes are most needed on the team.

    “The hardest work is accurately defining what kind of person is going to best perform this job. What are their virtues? If you’ve all that defined, the rest is not so tough.”

    – VP, Financial Services

    Use a scorecard to document the ideal candidate profile and help you select a superstar

    1. Download the Workbook and go to tab 6.1.
    2. Document the desired attributes for each category of assessment: Competencies, Experiences, Fit, and Motivation. You can find an Attribute Library on the next tab.
    3. Rank each attribute by level of priority: Required, Asset, or Nice-to-Have.
    4. Identify deal breakers that would automatically disqualify a candidate from moving forward.
    InputOutput
    • Job description
    • Stakeholder input
    • Ideal candidate persona
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Workbook
    • Hiring Managers

    To identify questions for screening interviews, use the Screening Interview Template

    A screening interview conducted by phone should have a set of common questions to identify qualified candidates for in-person interviews.

    The Screening Interview Template will help you develop a screening interview by providing:

    • Common screening questions that can be modified based on organizational needs and interview length.
    • Establishing an interview team.
    • A questionnaire format so that the same questions are asked of all candidates and responses can be recorded.

    Once completed, this template will help you or HR staff conduct candidate screening interviews with ease and consistency. Always do screening interviews over the phone or via video to save time and money.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Determine the goal of the screening interview – do you want to evaluate technical skills, communication skills, attitude, etc.? – and create questions based on this goal. If evaluating technical skill, have someone with technical competency conduct the interview.

    The image contains screenshots of the Screening Interview Template.

    Step 2: Choose interview types and techniques that best assess the ideal candidate attributes listed on the position scorecard

    There is no best interview type or technique for assessing candidates, but there could be a wrong one depending on the organization and job opening.

    • Understanding common interviewing techniques and types will help inform your own interviewing strategy and interview development.
    • Each interview technique and type has its own strengths and weakness and can be better suited for a particular organizational environment, type of job, or characteristic being assessed.
    The image contains a diagram to demonstrate the similarities and differences of Interview Technique and Interview Type. There is a Venn Diagram, the right circle is labelled: Interview Technique, and the right is: Interview Type. There is a double sided arrow below that has the following text: Unstructure, Semi-Structured, and Structured.

    Unstructured: A traditional method of interviewing that involves no constraints on the questions asked, no requirements for standardization, and a subjective assessment of the candidate. This format is the most prone to bias.

    Semi-Structured: A blend of structured and unstructured, where the interviewer will ask a small list of similar questions to all candidates along with some questions pertaining to the resume.

    Structured: An interview consisting of a standardized set of job-relevant questions and a scoring guide. The goal is to reduce interviewer bias and to help make an objective and valid decision about the best candidate.

    No matter which interview types or techniques you use, aim for it to be as structured as possible to increase its validity

    The validity of the interview increases as the degree of interview structure increases.

    Components of a highly structured interview include:

    1. Interview questions are derived from a job analysis (they are job related).
    2. Interview questions are standardized (all applicants are asked the same questions).
    3. Prompting, follow-up questioning, probing, and/or elaboration on questions are limited. Try to identify all prompts, follow-ups, and probes beforehand and include them in the interview guide so that all candidates get the same level of prompting and probing.
    4. Interview questions focus on behaviors or work samples rather than opinions or self-evaluations.
    5. Interviewer access to ancillary information (e.g. resumes, letters of reference, test scores, transcripts) is controlled. Sometimes limiting access to these documents can limit interviewer biases.
    6. Questions from the candidate are not allowed until after the interview. This allows the interviewer to stay on track and not go off the protocol.
    7. Each answer is rated during the interview using a rating scale tailored to the question (this is preferable to rating dimensions at the end of the interview and certainly preferable to just making an overall rating or ranking at the end).
    8. Rating scales are “anchored” with behavioral examples to illustrate scale points (e.g. examples of a “1,” “3,” or “5” answer).
    9. Total interview score is obtained by summing across scores for each of the questions.

    The more of these components your interview has, the more structured it is, and the more valid it will be.

    Step 3: Prepare interview questions to assess the attributes you are looking for in a candidate

    The purpose of interviewing is to assess, not just listen. Questions are what help you do this.

    Preparing questions in advance allows you to:

    • Match each question to a position requirement (included in your scorecard) to ensure that you assess all required attributes. Everything assessed should be job relevant!
    • Determine each question’s weighting, if applicable.
    • Give each candidate a chance to speak to all their job-relevant attributes.
    • Keep records should an unselected candidate decide to contest the decision.

    If you don’t prepare in advance:

    • You’ll be distracted thinking about what you are going to ask next and not be fully listening.
    • You likely won’t ask the same questions of all candidates, which impacts the ability to compare across candidates and doesn’t provide a fair process for everyone.
    • You likely won’t ask the questions you need to elicit the information needed to make the right decision.
    • You could ask illegal questions (see Acquire the Right Hires with Effective Interviewing for a list of questions not to ask in an interview).

    Use the Interview Question Planning Guide tab in the Candidate Interview Strategy and Planning Guide to prepare your interview questions.

    Use these tips to draft interview questions:

    • Use job analysis output, in particular the critical incident technique, to develop structured interview questions.
    • Search online or in books for example interview questions for the target position to inform interview question development. Just remember that candidates access these too, so be sure to ask for specific examples, include probing questions, and adapt or modify questions to change them.
    • Situational questions: The situation should be described in sufficient detail to allow an applicant to visualize it accurately and be followed by “what would you do?” Scoring anchors should reflect effective, typical, and ineffective behaviors.
    • Behavioral questions: Should assess a behavioral dimension (e.g. meeting deadlines) and apply to a variety of situations that share the underlying dimension (e.g. at work or school). Scoring anchors should be applicable to a variety of situations and reflect effective, typical, and ineffective behavior.

    Conduct an effective screening interview by listening to non-verbal cues and probing

    Follow these steps to conduct an effective screening interview:

    Introduce yourself and ask if now is a good time to talk. (Before calling, prepare your sales pitch on the organization and the position.)

    You want to catch candidates off guard so that they don’t have time to prepare scripted answers; however, you must be courteous to their schedule.

    Provide an overview of the position, then start asking pre-set questions. Take a lot of notes.

    It is important to provide candidates with as much information as possible about the position – they are deciding whether they are interested in the role as much as you are deciding whether they are suitable.

    Listen to how the questions are answered. Ask follow-up questions when appropriate and especially if the candidate seems to be holding something back.

    If there are long pauses or the candidate’s voice changes, there may be something they aren’t telling you that you should know.

    Be alert to inconsistencies between the resume and answers to the questions and address them.

    It’s important to get to the bottom of issues before the in-person interview. If dates, titles, responsibilities, etc. seem to be inconsistent, ask more questions.

    Ask candidates about their salary expectations.

    It’s important to ensure alignment of the salary expectations early on. If the expectations are much higher than the range, and the candidate doesn’t seem to be open to the lower range, there is no point interviewing them. This would be a waste of everyone’s time.

    Answer the applicant’s questions and conclude the interview.

    Wait until after the interview to rate the applicant.

    Don’t allow yourself to judge throughout the interview, or it could skew questions. Rate the applicant once the interview is complete.

    When you have a shortlist of candidates to invite to an in-person interview, use the Candidate Communication Template to guide you through proper phone and email communications.

    Don’t just prepare top-level interview questions; also prepare probing questions to probe to gain depth and clarity

    Use probing to drill down on what candidates say as much as possible and go beyond textbook answers.

    Question (traditional): “What would you identify as your greatest strength?”

    Answer: Ability to work on a team.

    Top-level interview questions set the stage for probing.

    Your interview script should contain the top two levels of questions in the pyramid and a few probes that you will likely need to ask. You can then drill down further depending on the candidate’s answers.

    Follow-Up Question:

    “Can you outline a particular example when you were able to exercise your teamwork skills to reach a team goal?”

    Probing questions start with asking what, when, who, why, and how, and gain insight into a candidate’s thought process, experiences, and successes.

    Probing Level 1:

    Probe around the what, how, who, when, and where. “How did you accomplish that?”

    How to develop probes? By anticipating the kinds of responses that candidates from different backgrounds or with different levels of experience are likely to give as a response to an interview question. Probes should provide a clear understanding of the situation, the behavior, and the outcome so that the response can be accurately scored. Common probes include:

    • What did you do? What was the outcome?
    • When did this take place (and how long did it take)?
    • Who was involved?
    • Were you leading or being led?
    • How did you accomplish what you did?
    • Why did you take those steps?

    Tailor probes to the candidate’s answers to evoke meaningful and insightful responses.

    Probing Level 2:

    Allow for some creativity.

    “What would you do differently if you were to do it again?”

    Conduct effective interviews and assessments

    Mitigate inherent biases of assessors by integrating formal assessments with objective anchors and clear criteria to create a more inclusive process.

    Consider leveraging behavioral interview questions in your interview to reduce bias.

    • In the past, companies were pushing the boundaries of the conventional interview, using unconventional questions to find top talent, e.g. “what color is your personality?” The logic was that the best people are the ones who don’t necessarily show perfectly on a resume, and they were intent on finding the best.
    • However, many companies have stopped using these questions after extensive statistical analysis revealed there was no correlation between candidates’ ability to answer them and their future performance on the job.
    • Asking behavioral interview questions based on the competency needs of the role is the best way to uncover if the candidates will be able to execute on the job.

    Assessments are created by people that have biases. This often means that assessments can be biased, especially with preferences towards a Western perspective. Even if the same assessments are administered, the questions will be interpreted differently by candidates with varying cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. If assessments do not account for this, it ultimately leads to favoring the answers of certain demographic groups, often ones similar to those who developed the assessment.

    Creating an interview question scorecard

    Attribute you are evaluating

    Probing questions prepared

    Area to take notes

    The image contains a screenshot of an Interview question scorecard.

    Exact question you will ask

    Place to record score

    Anchored scale with definitions of a poor, ok and great answer

    Step 4: Assemble an interview team

    HR and the direct reporting supervisor should always be part of the interview. Make a good impression with a good interview team.

    The must-haves:

    • The Future Manager should always be involved in the process. They should be comfortable with the new hire’s competencies and fit.
    • Human Resources should always be involved in the process – they maintain consistency, legality, and standardization. It’s their job to know the rules and follow them. HR may coordinate and maintain policy standards and/or join in assessing the candidate.
    • There should always be more than just one interviewer, even if it is not at the same time. This helps keep the process objective, allows for different opinions, and gives the interviewee exposure to multiple individuals in the company. But, try to limit the number of panel members to four or less.

    “At the end of the day, it’s the supervisor that has to live with the person, so any decision that does not involve the supervisor is a very flawed process.” – VP, Financial Services

    The nice-to-haves:

    • Future colleagues can offer benefits to both the interviewee and the colleague by:
      • Giving the candidate some insight into what their day-to-day job would be.
      • Relaxing the candidate; allowing for a less formal, less intimidating conversation.
      • Introducing potential teammates for a position that is highly collaborative.
      • Offering the interviewer an excellent professional development opportunity – a chance to present their understanding of what they do.
    • Executives should take part in interviewing for executive hiring, individuals that will report to an executive, or for positions that are extremely important. Executive time is scarce and expensive, so only use it when absolutely necessary.

    Record the interview team details in the Candidate Interview Strategy and Planning Guide template.

    Assign interviewers roles inside and outside the actual interview

    Define Interview Process Roles

    Who Should… Contact candidates to schedule interviews or communicate decisions?

    Who Should… Be responsible for candidate welcomes, walk-outs, and hand-offs between interviews?

    Who Should… Define and communicate each stakeholder’s role?

    Who Should… Chair the preparation and debrief meetings and play the role of the referee when trying to reach a consensus?

    Define Interview Roles

    • Set a role for each interviewer so they know what to focus on and where they fit into the process (e.g. Interviewer A will assess fit). Don’t ad hoc the process and allow everyone to interview based on their own ideas.
    • Consider interviewer qualifications and the impact of the new employee on each interviewer, when deciding the roles of each interviewer (i.e. who will interview for competency and who will interview for fit).
      • For example, managers may be most impacted by technical competencies and should be the interviewer to evaluate the candidate for technical competency.

    “Unless you’ve got roles within the panel really detailed and agreed upon, for example, who is going to take the lead on what area of questions, you end up with a situation where nobody is in charge or accountable for the final interview assessment." – VP, Financial Services

    Info-Tech Insight

    Try a Two Lens Assessment: One interviewer assesses the candidate as a project leader while another assesses them as a people leader for a question such as “Give me an example of when you exercised your leadership skills with a junior team member.”

    Step 5: Set decision rights in stone and communicate them in advance to manage stakeholder expectations and limit conflict

    All interviewers must understand their decision-making authority prior to the interview. Misunderstandings can lead to resentment and conflict.

    It is typical and acceptable that you, as the direct reporting manager, should have veto power, as do some executives.

    Veto Power

    Direct Supervisor or Manager

    Decision Makers: Must Have Consensus

    Other Stakeholders

    Direct Supervisor’s Boss

    Direct Supervisor

    Contributes Opinion

    HR Representative

    Peer

    After the preliminary interview, HR should not be involved in making the decision unless they have a solid understanding of the position.

    Peers can make an unfair assessment due to perceived competition with a candidate. Additionally, if a peer doesn’t want a candidate to be hired and the direct supervisor does hire the candidate, the peer may hold resentment against that candidate and set the team up for conflict.

    The decision should rest on those who will interact with the candidate on a daily basis and who manage the team or department that the candidate will be joining.

    The decisions being made can include whether or not to move a candidate onto the next phase of the hiring process or a final hiring decision. Deciding decision rights in advance defines accountability for an effective interview process.

    Create your interview team, assessments, and objective anchor scale

    1. Download the Behavioral Interview Question Library as a reference.
    2. On tab 9 of your workbook, document all the members of the team and their respective roles in the interview process. Fill in the decision-making authority section to ensure every team member is held accountable to their assigned tasks and understands how their input will be used.
    3. For each required attribute in the Ideal Candidate Scorecard, chose one to two questions from the library that can properly evaluate that attribute.
    4. Copy and paste the questions and probing questions into the Interview Guide Template.
    5. Create an objective anchor scale and clearly define what a poor, ok, and great answer to each question is.

    Download the Behavioral Interview Question Library

    Input Output
    • List of possible team members
    • Ideal Candidate Scorecard
    • Finalized hiring panel
    • Finalized interview and assessment process
    Materials Participants
    • IT Behavioral Interview Question Library
    • Workbook
    • Interview Guide Template
    • IT leadership team
    • IT staff members

    Conduct an effective, professional, and organized in-person interview

    Give candidates a warm, genuine greeting. Introduce them to other interviewers present. Offer a drink. Make small talk.

    “There are some real advantages to creating a comfortable climate for the candidate; the obvious respect for the individual, but people really let their guard down.”

    – HR Director, Financial Services

    Give the candidate an overview of the process, length, and what to expect of the interview. Indicate to the candidate that notes will be taken during the interview.

    If shorter than an hour, you probably aren’t probing enough or even asking the right questions. It also looks bad to candidates if the interview is over quickly.

    Start with the first question in the interview guide and make notes directly on the interview guide (written or typed) for each question.

    Take lots of notes! You think you’ll remember what was said, but you won’t. It also adds transparency and helps with documentation.

    Ask the questions in the order presented for interview consistency. Probe and clarify as needed (see next slide).

    Keep control of the interview by curtailing any irrelevant or long-winded responses.

    After all interview questions are complete, ask candidates if there was anything about their qualifications that was missed that they want to highlight.

    Lets you know they understand the job and gives them the feeling they’ve put everything on the table.

    Ask if the candidate has any questions. Respond to the questions asked.

    Answer candidate questions honestly because fit works both ways. Ensure candidates leave with a better sense of the job, expectations, and organizational culture.

    Review the compensation structure for the position and provide a realistic preview of the job and organization.

    Provide each candidate with a fair chance by maintaining a consistent interview process.

    Tell interviewees what happens next in the process, the expected time frame, and how they will be informed of the outcome. Escort them out and thank them for the interview.

    The subsequent slides provide additional detail on these eight steps to conducting an effective interview.

    Avoid these common biases and mistakes

    Common Biases

    Like-me effect: An often-unconscious preference for, and unfairly positive evaluation of, a candidate based on shared interests, personalities, and experiences, etc.

    Status effect: Overrating candidates based on the prestige of previously held positions, titles, or schools attended.

    Recency bias: Placing greater emphasis on interviews held closer to the decision-making date.

    Contrast effect: Rating candidates relative to those who precede or follow them during the interview process, rather than against previously determined data.

    Solution

    Assess candidates by using existing competency-based criteria.

    Common Mistakes

    Negative tone: Starting the interview on a negative or stressful note may derail an otherwise promising candidate.

    Poor interview management: Letting the candidate digress may leave some questions unanswered and reduce the interview value.

    Reliance of first impressions: Basing decisions on first impressions undermines the objectivity of competency-based selection.

    Failure to ask probing questions: Accepting general answers without asking follow-up questions reduces the evidentiary value of the interview.

    Solution

    Follow the structured interview process you designed and practiced.

    Ask the questions in the order presented in the interview guide, and probe and clarify as needed

    Do...

    Don’t…

    Take control of the interview by politely interrupting to clarify points or keep the interviewee on topic.

    Use probing to drill down on responses and ask for clarification. Ask who, what, when, why, and how.

    Be cognizant of confidentiality issues. Ask for a sample of work from a past position.

    Focus on knowledge or information gaps from previous interviews that need to be addressed in the interview.

    Ensure each member of a panel interview speaks in turn and the lead is given due respect to moderate.

    Be mean when probing. Intimidation actually works against you and is stressful for candidates. When you’re friendly, candidates will actually open up more.

    Interrupt or undermine other panel members. Their comments and questions are just as valid as yours are, and treating others unprofessionally gives a bad impression to the candidate.

    Ask illegal questions. Questions about things like religion, disability, and marital and family status are off limits.

    When listening to candidate responses, watch for tone, body language, and red flags

    Do...

    While listening to responses, also watch out for red and yellow flags.

    Listen to how candidates talk about their previous bosses – you want it to be mainly positive. If their discussion of past bosses reflects a strong sense of self-entitlement or a consistent theme of victimization, this could be a theme in their behavior and make them hard to work with.

    Red Flag

    A concern about something that would keep you from hiring the person.

    Yellow Flag

    A concern that needs to be addressed, but wouldn’t keep you from hiring the person.

    Pay attention to body language and tone. They can tell you a lot about candidate motivation and interest.

    Listen to what candidates want to improve. It’s an opportunity to talk about development and advancement opportunities in the organization.

    Not all candidates have red flags, but it is important to keep them in mind to identify potential issues with the candidate before they are hired.

    Don’t…

    Talk too much! You are there to listen. Candidates should do about 80% of the talking so you can adequately evaluate them. Be friendly, but ensure to spend the time allotted assessing, not chatting.

    If you talk too much, you may end up hiring a weak candidate because you didn’t perceive weaknesses or not hire a strong candidate because you didn’t identify strengths.

    What if you think you sense a red or yellow flag?

    Following the interview, immediately discuss the situation with others involved in the recruitment process or those familiar with the position, such as HR, another hiring manager, or a current employee in the role. They can help evaluate if it’s truly a matter of concern.

    Increase hiring success: Give candidates a positive perception of the organization in the interview

    Great candidates want to work at great organizations.

    When the interviewer makes a positive impression on a candidate and provides a positive impression of the organization it carries forward after they are hired.

    In addition, better candidates can be referred over the course of time due to higher quality networking.

    As much as choosing the right candidate is important to you, make sure the right candidate wants to choose you and work for your organization.

    The image contains a screenshot of a graph to demonstrate the percent of successful hires relates strongly to interviewers giving candidates a positive perception of the organization.

    Interview advice seems like common sense, but it’s often not heeded, resulting in poor interviews

    Don’t…

    Believe everything candidates say. Most candidates embellish and exaggerate to find the answers they think you want. Use probing to drill down to specifics and take them off their game.

    Ask gimmicky questions like “what color is your soul?” Responses to these questions won’t give you any information about the job. Candidates don’t like them either!

    Focus too much on the resume. If the candidate is smart, they’ve tailored it to match the job posting, so of course the person sounds perfect for the job. Read it in advance, highlight specific things you want to ask, then ignore it.

    Oversell the job or organization. Obviously you want to give candidates a positive impression, but don’t go overboard because this could lead to unhappy hires who don’t receive what you sold them. Candidates need to evaluate fit just as much as you.

    Get distracted by a candidate’s qualifications and focus only on their ability to do the job. Just because they are qualified does not mean they have the attitude or personality to fit the job or culture.

    Show emotion at any physical handicap. You can’t discriminate based on physical disability, so protect the organization by not drawing attention to it. Even if you don’t say anything, your facial expression may.

    Bring a bad day or excess baggage into the interview, or be abrupt, rushed, or uninterested in the interview. This is rude behavior and will leave a negative impression with candidates, which could impact your chances of hiring them.

    Submit to first impression bias because you’ll spend the rest of the interview trying to validate your first impression, wasting your time and the candidate’s. Remain as objective as possible and stick to the interview guide to stay focused on the task at hand.

    “To the candidate, if you are meeting person #3 and you’re hearing questions that person #1 and #2 asked, the company doesn’t look too hot or organized.” – President, Recruiting Firm

    Practice behavioral interviews

    1. In groups of at least three:
    • Assign one person to act as the manager conducting the interview, a second person to act as the candidate, and a third to observe.
    • The observer will provide feedback to the manager at the end of the role play based on the information you just learned.
    • Observers – please give feedback on the probing questions and body language.
  • Managers, select an interview question from the list your group put together during the previous exercise. Take a few minutes to think about potential probing questions you could follow up with to dig for more information.
  • Candidates, try to act like a real candidate. Please don’t make it super easy on the managers – but don’t make it impossible either!
  • Once the question has been asked and answered:
    • How did it go?
    • Were you able to get the candidate to speak in specifics rather than generalities? What tips do you have for others?
    • What didn’t go so well? Any surprises?
    • What would you do differently next time?
    • If this was a real hiring situation, would the information you got from just that one question help you make a hiring decision for the role?
  • Now switch roles and select a new interview question to use for this round. Repeat until everyone has had a chance to practice.
  • Input Output
    • Interview questions and scorecard
    • Practice interviews
    Materials Participants
    • IT Behavioral Interview Question Library
    • Workbook
    • Hiring Manager
    • Interview Panel Members

    Download the Behavioral Interview Question Library

    Record best practices, effective questions, and candidate insights for future use and current strategy

    Results and insights gained from evaluations need to be recorded and assessed to gain value from them going forward.

    • To optimize evaluation, all feedback should be forwarded to a central point so that the information can be shared with all stakeholders. HR can serve in this role.
    • Peer evaluations should be shared shortly after the interview. Immediate feedback that represents all the positive and negative responses is instructional for interviewers to consider right away.
    • HR can take a proactive approach to sharing information and analyzing and improving the interview process in order to collaborate with hiring departments for better talent management.
    • Collecting information about effective and ineffective interview questions will guide future interview revision and development efforts.

    Evaluations Can Inform Strategic Planning and Professional Development

    Strategic Planning

    • Survey data can be used to inform strategic planning initiatives in recruiting.
    • Use the information to build a case to the executive team for training, public relations initiatives, or better candidate management systems.

    Professional Development

    • Survey data from all evaluations should be used to inform future professional development initiatives.
    • Interview areas where all team members show weaknesses should be training priorities.
    • Individual weaknesses should be integrated into each professional development plan.

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Develop a Comprehensive Onboarding Plan

    Drive employee engagement and retention with a robust program that acclimates, guides, and develops new hires.

    Onboarding should pick up where candidate experience leaves off

    Do not confuse onboarding with orientation

    Onboarding ≠ Orientation

    Onboarding is more than just orientation. Orientation is typically a few days of completing paperwork, reading manuals, and learning about the company’s history, strategic goals, and culture. By contrast, onboarding is three to twelve months dedicated to welcoming, acclimating, guiding, and developing new employees – with the ideal duration reflecting the time to productivity for the role.

    A traditional orientation approach provides insufficient focus on the organizational identification, socialization, and job clarity that a new hire requires. This is a missed opportunity to build engagement, drive productivity, and increase organizational commitment. This can result in early disengagement and premature departure.

    Effective onboarding positively impacts the organization and bottom line

    Over the long term, effective onboarding has a positive impact on revenue and decreases costs.

    The benefits of onboarding:

    • Save money and frustration
      • Shorten processing time, reduce administrative costs, and improve compliance.
    • Boost revenue
      • Help new employees become productive faster – also reduce the strain on existing employees who would normally be overseeing them or covering a performance shortfall.
    • Drive engagement and reduce turnover
      • Quickly acclimate new hires to your organization’s environment, culture, and values.
    • Reinforce culture and employer brand
      • Ensure that new hires feel a connection to the organization’s culture.

    Onboarding drives new hire engagement from day one

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate the increase in overall engagement in relation to onboarding.

    When building an onboarding program, retain the core aims: acclimate, guide, and develop

    The image contains a picture of a circle with a smaller circle inside it, and a smaller circle inside that one. The smallest circle is labelled Acclimate, the medium sized circle is labelled Guide, and the biggest circle is labelled Develop.

    Help new hires feel connected to the organization by clearly articulating the mission, vision, values, and what the company does. Help them understand the business model, the industry, and who their competitors are. Help them feel connected to their new team members by providing opportunities for socialization and a support network.

    Help put new hires on the path to high performance by clearly outlining their role in the organization and how their performance will be evaluated.

    Help new hires receive the experience and training they require to become high performers by helping them build needed competencies.

    We recommend a three-to-twelve-month onboarding program, with the performance management aspect of onboarding extending out to meet the standard organizational performance management cycle.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The length of the onboarding program should align with the average time to productivity for the role(s). Consider the complexity of the role, the industry, and the level of the new hire when determining program length.

    For example, call center workers who are selling a straight-forward product may only require a three-month onboarding, while senior leaders may require a year-long program.

    Watch for signs that you aren’t effectively acclimating, guiding, and developing new hires

    Our primary and secondary research identified the following as the most commonly stated reasons why employees leave organizations prematurely. These issues will be addressed throughout the next section.

    Acclimate

    Guide

    Develop

    • Onboarding experience is misaligned from the employer’s brand.
    • Socialization and/or integration into the existing culture is left to the employee.
    • Key role expectations or role usefulness is not clearly communicated.
    • Company strategy is unclear.
    • Opportunities for advancement are unclear.
    • Coaching, counseling, and/or support from co-workers and/or management is lacking.
    • The organization fails to demonstrate that it cares about the new employee’s needs.

    “Onboarding is often seen as an entry-level HR function. It needs to rise in importance because it’s the first impression of the organization and can be much more powerful than we sometimes give it credit for. It should be a culture building and branding program.” – Doris Sims, SPHR, The Succession Consultant, and Author, Creative Onboarding Programs

    Use the onboarding tabs in the workbook to evaluate and redesign the onboarding program

    1. On tab 10, brainstorm challenges that face the organization's current onboarding program. Identify if they fall into the "acclimate," "guide," or "develop" category. Next, record the potential impact of this challenge on the overall effectiveness of the onboarding program.
    2. On tab 11, record each existing onboarding activity. Then, identify if that activity will be kept or if it should be retired. Next, document if the activity fell into the "acclimate," "guide," or "develop" category.
    3. On tab 12, document gaps that currently exist in the onboarding program. Modify the timeline along the side of the tab to ensure it reflects the timeline you have identified.
    4. On tab 13, document the activities that will occur in the new onboarding program. This should be a combination of current activities that you want to retain and new activities that will be added to address the gaps noted on tab 12. For each activity, identify if it will fall in the acclimate, guide, or develop section. Add any additional notes. Before moving on, make sure that there are no categories that have no activities (e.g. no guide activities).
    Input Output
    • Existing onboarding activities
    • Determine new onboarding activities
    • Map out onboarding responsibilities
    Materials Participants
    • Workbook
    • Hiring Managers
    • HR

    Review the administrative aspects of onboarding and determine how to address the challenges

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Sample challenges

    Potential solutions

    Some paperwork cannot be completed digitally (e.g. I-9 form in the US).

    Where possible, complete forms with digital signatures (e.g. DocuSign). Where not possible, begin the process earlier and mail required forms to employees to sign and return, or scan and email for the employee to print and return.

    Required compliance training material is not available virtually.

    Seek online training options where possible. Determine the most-critical training needs and prioritize the replication of materials in audio/video format (e.g. recorded lecture) and distribute virtually.

    Employees may not have access to their equipment immediately due to shipping or supply issues.

    Delay employee start dates until you can set them up with the proper equipment and access needed to do their job.

    New hires can’t get answers to their questions about benefits information and setup.

    Schedule a meeting with an HR representative or benefits vendor to explain how benefits will work and how to navigate employee self-service or other tools and resources related to their benefits.

    Info-Tech Insight

    One of the biggest challenges for remote new hires is the inability to casually ask questions or have conversations without feeling like they’re interrupting. Until they have a chance to get settled, providing formal opportunities for questions can help address this.

    Review how company information is shared during onboarding and how to address the challenges

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Sample challenges

    Potential solutions

    Key company information such as organizational history, charts, or the vision, mission, and values cannot be clearly learned by employees on their own.

    Have the new hire’s manager call to walk through the important company information to provide a personal touch and allow the new hire to ask questions and get to know their new manager.

    Keeping new hires up to date on crisis communications is important, but too much information may overwhelm them or cause unnecessary stress.

    Sharing the future of the organization is a critical part of the company information stage of onboarding and the ever-changing nature of the COVID-19 crisis is informing many organizations’ future right now. Be honest but avoid over-sharing plans that may change.

    New hires can’t get answers to their questions about benefits information and setup.

    Schedule a meeting with an HR representative or benefits vendor to explain how benefits will work and how to navigate employee self-service or other tools and resources related to their benefits.

    Review the socialization aspects of onboarding and determine how to address the challenges

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Sample challenges

    Potential solutions

    Team introductions via a team lunch or welcome event are typically done in person.

    Provide managers with a calendar of typical socialization events in the first few weeks of onboarding and provide instructions and ideas for how to schedule replacement events over videoconferencing.

    New hires may not have a point of contact for informal questions or needs if their peers aren’t around them to help.

    If it doesn’t already exist, create a virtual buddy program and provide instructions for managers to select a buddy from the new hire’s team. Explain that their role is to field informal questions about the company, team, and anything else and that they should book weekly meetings with the new hire to stay in touch.

    New hires will not have an opportunity to learn or become a part of the informal decision-making networks at the organization.

    Hiring managers should consider key network connections that new hires will need by going through their own internal network and asking other team members for recommendations.

    New hires will not be able to casually meet people around the office.

    Provide the employee with a list of key contacts for them to reach out to and book informal virtual coffee chats to introduce themselves.

    Adapt the Guide phase of onboarding to a virtual environment

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Sample challenges

    Potential solutions

    Performance management (PM) processes have been paused given the current crisis.

    Communicate to managers that new hires still need to be onboarded to the organization’s performance management process and that goals and feedback need to be introduced and the review process outlined even if it’s not currently happening.

    Goals and expectations differ or have been reprioritized during the crisis.

    Ask managers to explain the current situation at the organization and any temporary changes to goals and expectations as a result of new hires.

    Remote workers often require more-frequent feedback than is mandated in current PM processes.

    Revamp PM processes to include daily or bi-weekly touchpoints for managers to provide feedback and coaching for new hires for at least their first six months.

    Managers will not be able to monitor new hire work as effectively as usual.

    Ensure there is a formal approach for how employees will keep their managers updated on what they're working on and how it's going, for example, daily scrums or task-tracking software.

    For more information on adapting performance management to a virtual environment, see Info-Tech’s Performance Management for Emergency Work-From-Home research.

    Take an inventory of training and development in the onboarding process and select critical activities

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Categorize the different types of formal and informal training in the onboarding process into the following three categories. For departmental and individual training, speak to managers to understand what is required on a department and role basis:

    Organizational

    Departmental

    Individual

    For example:

    • Employee self-service overview
    • Health and safety/compliance training
    • Core competencies

    For example:

    • Software training (e.g. Salesforce)
    • Job shadowing to learn how to work equipment or to learn processes

    For example:

    • Mentoring
    • External courses
    • Support to work toward a certification

    In a crisis, not every training can be translated to a virtual environment in the short term. It’s also important to focus on critical learning activities versus the non-critical. Prioritize the training activities by examining the learning outcomes of each and asking:

    • What organizational training does every employee need to be a productive member of the organization?
    • What departmental or individual training do new hires need to be successful in their role?

    Lower priority or non-critical activities can be used to fill gaps in onboarding schedules or as extra activities to be completed if the new hire finds themselves with unexpected downtime to fill.

    Determine how onboarding training will be delivered virtually

    The image contains tabs, three main large tabs are labelled: Acclimate, Guide, and Develop. There are smaller tabs in between that are in relation to the three main ones.

    Who will facilitate virtual training sessions?

    • For large onboarding cohorts, consider live delivery via web conferencing where possible. This will create a more engaging training program and will allow new hires to interact with and ask questions of the presenter.
    • For individual new hires or small cohorts, have senior leaders or key personnel from across the organization record different trainings that are relevant for their role.
      • For example, training sessions about organizational culture can be delivered by the CEO or other senior leader, while sales training could be delivered by a sales executive.

      If there is a lack of resources, expertise, or time, outsource digital training to a content provider or through your LMS.

    What existing or free tools can be leveraged to immediately support digital training?

    • Laptops and PowerPoint to record training sessions that are typically delivered in-person
    • YouTube/Vimeo to host recorded lecture-format training
    • Company intranet to host links and files needed to complete training
    • Web conferencing software to host live training/orientation sessions (e.g. Webex)
    • LMS to host and track completion of learning content

    Want to learn more?

    Recruit IT Talent

    • Improve candidate experience to hire top IT talent.

    Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

    • Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

    Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

    • Good business, not just good philanthropy.

    Adapt Your Onboarding Process to a Virtual Environment

    • Develop short-term solutions with a long-term outlook to quickly bring in new talent.

    Bibliography

    2021 Recruiter Nation Report. Survey Analysis, Jobvite, 2021. Web.

    “5 Global Stats Shaping Recruiting Trends.” The Undercover Recruiter, 2022. Web.

    Barr, Tavis, Raicho Bojilov, and Lalith Munasinghe. "Referrals and Search Efficiency: Who Learns What and When?" The University of Chicago Press, Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 37, no. 4, Oct. 2019. Web.

    “How to grow your team better, faster with an employee referral program.” Betterup, 10 Jan. 2022. Web.

    “Employee Value Proposition: How 25 Companies Define Their EVP.” Built In, 2021. Web.

    Global Leadership Forecast 2021. Survey Report, DDI World, 2021. Web.

    “Connecting Unemployed Youth with Organizations That Need Talent.” Harvard Business Review, 3 November 2016. Web.

    Ku, Daniel. “Social Recruiting: Everything You Need To Know for 2022.” PostBeyond, 26 November 2021. Web.

    Ladders Staff. “Shedding light on the job search.” Ladders, 20 May 2013. Web.

    Merin. “Campus Recruitment – Meaning, Benefits & Challenges.” HR Shelf, 1 February 2022. Web.

    Mobile Recruiting. Smart Recruiters, 2020. Accessed March 2022.

    Roddy, Seamus. “5 Employee Referral Program Strategies to Hire Top Talent.” Clutch, 22 April 2020. Web.

    Sinclair, James. “What The F*dge: That's Your Stranger Recruiting Budget?” LinkedIn, 11 November 2019. Web.

    “Ten Employer Examples of EVPs.” Workology, 2022. Web

    “The Higher Cost of a Bad Hire.” Robert Half, 15 March 2021. Accessed March 2022.

    Trost, Katy. “Hiring with a 90% Success Rate.” Katy Trost, Medium, 8 August 2022. Web.

    “Using Social Media for Talent Acquisition.” SHRM, 20 Sept. 2017. Web.

    Navigate the Digital ID Ecosystem to Enhance Customer Experience

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}76|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): N/A
    • member rating average dollars saved: N/A
    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: IT Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /it-strategy
    • Amid the pandemic-fueled surge in online services, organizations require secure solutions to safeguard digital interactions. These solutions must be uniform, interoperable, and fortified against security threats.
    • Although the digital identity ecosystem has garnered significant attention and investment, many organizations remain uncertain about its potential for authentication and the authorization required for B2B and B2C transactions, and in turn reducing their cost of operations and transferring their data risks.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Limited / lack of understanding of the global digital ID ecosystem and its varying approaches across countries handicaps businesses in defining the benefits digital ID can bring to customer interactions and overall business management.
    • In addition, key obstacles exist in balancing customer privacy, data security, and regulatory requirements while pursuing excellent end-user experience and high customer adoption.
    • Info-Tech Insight: Focusing on customer touchpoints and transforming them are key to excellent experience and increasing their life-time value (LTV) to them and to your organization. Digital ID is that tool of transformation.

    Impact and Result

    • Digital ID has many dimensions, and its ecosystem's sustainability lies in the key principles it is built on. Understanding the digital identity ecosystem and its responsibilities is crucial to formulating an approach to adopt it. Also, focusing on key success factors drives digital ID adoption.
    • Before embarking on the digital identity adoption journey, it is essential to assess your readiness. It is also necessary to understand the risks and challenges. Specific steps to digital ID adoption can help realize the potential of digital identity and enhance the customers' experience.

    Navigate the Digital ID Ecosystem to Enhance Customer Experience Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Navigate the Digital ID Ecosystem to Enhance Customer Experience Storyboard – Learn how to adopt Digital ID to drive benefits, enhance customer experience, improve efficiency, manage data risks, and uncover new opportunities.

    This research focuses on verified digital identity ecosystems and explores risks, opportunities, and challenges of relying on verified digital IDs and also how adopting digital identity initiatives can improve customer experience and operational efficiency. It covers:

  • Definition and dimensions of digital identity
  • Key responsibilities and principles of digital identity ecosystem
  • Success factors for digital identity adoption
  • Global evolution and unique approaches in Estonia, India, Canada, UK, and Australia
  • Industries that benefit most from digital ID development
  • Key use cases of digital ID
  • Benefits to governments, ID providers, ID consumers, and end users
  • Readiness checklist and ten steps to digital ID adoption
  • Risks and challenges of digital identity adoption
  • Key recommendations to realize potential of digital identity
  • Taxonomy and definitions of terms in the digital identity ecosystem
    • Navigate the Digital ID Ecosystem to Enhance Customer Experience Storyboard
    • Familiarize Yourself With the Digital ID Ecosystem Taxonomy
    • Assess Your Digital ID Adoption Readiness

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Navigate the Digital ID Ecosystem to Enhance Customer Experience

    Beyond the hype: How it can help you become more customer-focused?

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Common Obstacles

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Amid the pandemic-fueled surge of online services, organizations require secure solutions to safeguard digital interactions. These solutions must be uniform, interoperable, and fortified against security threats.

    Although the digital identity ecosystem has garnered significant attention and investment, many organizations remain uncertain about its potential for authentication and authorization required for B2B and B2C transactions.

    They still wonder if digital ID can help reduce cost of operations and transfer data risks.

    Limited or lack of understanding of the global Digital ID ecosystem and its varying approaches across countries handicap businesses in defining the potential benefits Digital ID can bring to customer interactions and overall business management.

    In addition, key obstacles exist in balancing customer privacy (including the right to be forgotten), data security, and regulatory requirements while pursuing desired end-user experience and high customer adoption.

    Digital ID has many dimensions, and its ecosystem's sustainability lies in the key principles it is built on. Understanding the digital identity ecosystem and its responsibilities is crucial to formulate an approach to adopt it. Also, focusing on key success factors drives digital ID adoption.

    Before embarking on the digital identity adoption journey, it is essential to assess your readiness. It is also necessary to understand the risks and challenges. Specific steps to digital ID adoption can help realize the potential of digital identity and enhance the customers' experience.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Focusing on customer touchpoints and transforming them is key to excellent user experience and increasing their lifetime value (LTV) to them and to your organization. Digital ID is that tool of transformation.

    Analyst Perspective

    Manish Jain.

    Manish Jain

    Principal Research Director

    Analyst Profile

    “I just believed. I believed that the technology would change people's lives. I believed putting real identity online - putting technology behind real identity - was the missing link.”

    - Sheryl Sandberg (Brockes, Emma. “Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg: who are you calling bossy?” The Guardian, 5 April 2014)

    Sometimes dismissed as mere marketing gimmicks, digital identity initiatives are anything but. While some argue that any online credential is a "Digital ID," rendering the hype around it pointless, the truth is that a properly built digital ID ecosystem has the power to transform laggard economies into global digital powerhouses. Moreover, digital IDs can help businesses transfer some of their cybersecurity risks and unlock new revenue channels by enabling a foundation for secure and efficient value delivery.

    In addition, digital identity is crucial for digital and financial inclusion, simplifying onboarding processes and opening up new opportunities for previously underserved populations. For example, in India, the Aadhaar digital ID ecosystem brought over 481 million1 people into the formal economy by enabling access to financial services. Similarly, in Indonesia, the e-KIP digital ID program paved the way for 10 million new bank accounts, 94% of which were for women2.

    However, digital identity initiatives also come with valid concerns, such as the risk of a single point of failure and the potential to widen the digital divide.

    This research focuses on the verified digital identity ecosystem, exploring the risks, opportunities, and challenges organizations face relying on these verified digital IDs to know their customers before delivering value. By understanding and adopting digital identity initiatives, organizations can unlock their full potential and provide a seamless customer experience while ensuring operational efficiency.

    1 India Aadhaar PMJDY (https://pmjdy.gov.in/account)
    2 Women’s World Banking, 2020.

    Digital Identity Ecosystem and vital ingredients of adoption

    Digital Identity Ecosystem.

    What is digital identity?

    Definitions may vary, depending on the focus.

    “Digital identity (ID) is a set of attributes that links a physical person with their online interactions. Digital ID refers to one’s online persona - an online footprint. It touches important aspects of one’s everyday life, from financial services to health care and beyond.” - DIACC Canada

    “Digital identity is a digital representation of a person. It enables them to prove who they are during interactions and transactions. They can use it online or in person.” - UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework

    “Digital identity is an electronic representation of an entity (person or other entity such as a business) and it allows people and other entities to be recognized online.” - Australia Trusted Digital Identity Framework

    A digital identity is primarily an electronic form of identity representing an entity uniquely , while abstracting all other identity attributes of the entity. In addition to an electronic form, it may also exist in a physical form (identity certificate), linked through an identifier representing the same entity.

    Digital identity has many dimensions*, and in turn categories

    Trust

    • Verified (Govt. issued IDs)
    • Unverified (Email Id)

    Subject

    • Individual
    • Organization
    • Device
    • Service

    Usability

    • Single-purpose (Disposable)
    • Multi-purpose (Reusable)

    Provider

    • Sovereign Government
    • Provincial Government
    • Local Government
    • Public Organization
    • Private Organization
    • Self

    Jurisdiction

    • Global (Passport)
    • National (DL)
    • State/Provincial (Health Card)
    • Local (Voting Card)
    • Private (Social)

    Form

    • Physical Card
    • Virtual Identifier
    • Online/App Account
    • PKI Keys
    • Tokens

    Governance

    • Sovereign
    • Federated
    • Decentralized
    • Trust Framework -based
    • Self-sovereign

    Expiry

    • Permanent (Lifetime, Years)
    • Temporary (Minutes, Hours)
    • Revocable

    Usage Mode

    • online only
    • offline only
    • Online/offline

    Purpose

    • Authorization (driver’s license, passport, employment)
    • Authentication (birth certificate, social security number)
    • Activity Linking (preferences, habits, and priorities)
    • Historical Record (Resume, educational financial, health history)
    • Social Interactions (Social Media)
    • Machine Connectivity

    Info-Tech Insight

    Digital ID has taken different meanings for different people, serving different purposes in different environments. Based on various aspects of Digital Identification, it can be categorized in several types. However, most of the time when people refer to a form of identification as Digital ID, they refer to a verified id with built-in trust either from the government OR the eco-system.

    * Please refer to Taxonomy for the definition of each of the dimensions

    Understanding a digital identity ecosystem is key to formulating your approach to adopt it

    The image contains a screenshot of a digital identity ecosystem diagram.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Digital identity ecosystems comprise many entities playing different roles, and sometimes more than one. In addition, variations in approach by jurisdictions drive how many active players are in the ecosystem for that jurisdiction.

    For example, in countries like Estonia and India, government plays the role of trust and governance authority as well as ID provider, but didn’t start with any Digital ID wallet. In contrast, in Ukraine, Diia App is primarily a Digital ID Wallet. Similarly, in the US, different states are adopting private Digital ID Wallet providers like Apple.

    Digital ID ecosystem’s sustainability lies in the key principles it is built on

    Social, economic, and legal alignment with target stakeholders
    Transparent governance and operation
    Legally auditable and enforceable
    Robust and Resilient – High availability
    Security – At rest, in progress, and in transit
    Privacy and Control with users
    Omni-channel Convenience – User and Operations
    Minimum data transfer between entities
    Technical interoperability enabled through open standards and protocol
    Scalable and interoperable at policy level
    Cost effective – User and operations
    Inclusive and accessible

    Info-Tech Insight

    A transparent, resilient, and auditable digital ID system must be aligned with socio-economic realities of the target stakeholders. It not only respects their privacy and security of their data by minimizing the data transfer between entities, but also drives desired customer experience by providing an omni-channel, interoperable, scalable, and inclusive ecosystem while still being cost-effective for the collaborators.

    Source: Adapted from Canada PCTF, UK Trust framework, European Commission, Australia TDIF, and others

    Focus on key success factors to drive the digital ID adoption

    Digital ID success factors

    Legislative regulatory framework – Removes uncertainty
    Security & Privacy Assurance- builds trust
    Smooth user experience – Drives preferences
    Transparent ecosystem – Drives inclusivity
    Multi-channel – Drive consistent experience online / offline
    Inter-operability thorough open standards
    Digital literacy – Education and awareness
    Multi-purpose & reusable – Reduce consumer burden
    Collaborative ecosystem –Build network effect

    Source: Adapted from Canada PCTF, UK digital identity & attributes trust framework , European eIDAS, and others

    Info-Tech Insight

    Driving adoption of Digital ID requires affirmative actions from all ecosystem players including governing authorities, identity providers, and identity consumers (relying parties).

    These nine success factors can help drive sustainable adoption of the Digital ID.

    Among many responsibilities the ecosystem players have, identity governance is the key to sustainability

    • Digital identity provision
      • Creating identity attributes
      • Create a reusable identity and attribute service
      • Create a digital identity
      • Assess and manage quality of an identity and attributes
      • Making identity provision inclusive and accessible
    • Digital identity resolution
      • Enabling inclusive access to products and services through digital identity
      • Authenticate and authorize identity subjects before permitting access to their identity and attributes
    • Digital identity governance
      • Manage digital identity and attributes
      • Make Identity service interoperable, and sharable
      • Recover digital identity and attribute accounts
      • Notifying users on accessing identity or making changes on more attributes
      • Report and audit – exclusion, accessibility
      • Retiring an identity or attribute service
      • Respond to complaints and disputes
    • Enterprise risk management and governance
    The image contains a screenshot of a diagram to demonstrate how identity governance is the key to sustainability.
    • Privacy and security
      • Use encryption
      • Privacy compliance framework
      • Consumer Privacy Protection laws (CPPA, GDPR etc.)
      • Acquiring and managing user consents & agreements
      • Prohibited processing of personal data
      • Security controls and governance
    • Information management
      • Record management
      • Archival
      • Disposal (on expiry or to comply with regulations)
      • CIA (confidentiality, integrity, availability)
    • Fraud management
      • Fraud monitoring and reporting
      • Fraud intelligence and analysis
      • Sharing threat indicators
      • Legal, policies and procedures for fraud management
    • Incident response
      • Respond to fraud incidents
      • Respond to a service delivery incident
      • Responding to data breaches
      • Performing and participating in investigation

    Global evolution of digital ID is following the socio-economic aspirations of countries

    The image contains a screenshot of a graph that demonstrates global evolution of digital ID.

    Source: Adapted from the book: Identification Revolution: Can Digital ID be harnessed for Development? (Gelb & Metz), 2018

    Info-Tech Insight

    The world became global a long time ago; however, it sustained economic progress without digital IDs for most of the world's population.

    With the pandemic, when political rhetoric pointed to the demand for localized supply chains, economies became irreversibly digital. In this digital economy, the digital ID ecosystem is the fulcrum of sustainable growth.

    At a time in overlapping jurisdictions, multiple digital IDs can exist. For example, one is issued by a local municipality, one by the province, and another by the national government.

    Global footprint of digital ID is evolving rapidly, but varies in approach

    The image contains a screenshot of a Global footprint of digital ID.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Countries’ approach to the digital ID is rooted in their socio-economic environment and global aspirations.

    Emerging economies with large underserved populations prioritize fast implementation of digital ID through centralized systems.

    Developed economies with smaller populations, low trust in government, and established ID systems prioritize developing trust frameworks to drive decentralized full-scale implementation.

    There is no right way except the one which follows Digital ID principles and aligns with a country’s and its people’s aspirations.

    Estonia's e-identity is the key to its digital agenda 2030

    • Regulatory Body and Operational Governance: Estonian Information System Authority (RIA).
    • Identity Providers: Government of Estonia; Private sector doesn’t issue IDs but can leverage Digital ID ecosystem.
    • Decentralized Approach: Permissioned Blockchain Architecture with built-in data traceability implemented on KSI (Keyless Signature Infrastructure).
    • X-Road – Secure, interoperable open-source data exchange platform between collection point where Data is stored.
    • Digital Identity Form: e-ID
    • Key Use cases:
      • Financial, Telecom: e-KYC, e-Banking
      • Digital Authentication: ID Card, Mobile ID, Smart ID, Digital Signatures
      • E-governance: e-Voting, e-Residency, e-Services Registries, e-Business Register
      • Smart City and mobility: Freight Transportation, Passenger Mobility
      • Healthcare: e-Health Record, e-Prescription, e-Ambulance
    • ID-card
    • Smart ID
    • Mobile ID
    • e-Residency

    Uniqueness

    Estonia pioneered the digital ID implementation with a centralized approach and later transitioned to a decentralized ecosystem driving trust to attract non-citizens into Estonia’s digital economy.

    99% Of Estonian residents have an ID card enabling use of electronic ID

    1.4 B Digital signatures given (2021)

    99% Public Services available as e-Services

    17K+ Productive years saved (five working days/citizen/year saved accessing public services)

    25K E-resident companies contributed more than €32 million in tax

    *Source: https://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/e-estonia-211022_eng.pdf ;

    https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/dashboard

    The image contains a timeline of events from 2001-2020 for Estonia..

    India’s Aadhaar is the foundation of its digital journey through “India stack”

    • Regulatory Accountability and Operational Governance: Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
    • Identity Provider: Govt. of India.
    • Digital Identity Form: Physical and electronic ID Card; Online (Identifier + OTP), and offline (identifier + biometric) usage; mAadhaar App & Web Portal
    • India Stack: a set of open APIs and digital assets to leverage Aadhaar in identity, data, and payments at scale.
    • Key Use cases:
      • Financial, Telecom: eKYC, Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
      • Digital Wallet: Digi Locker
      • Digital Authentication: eSign, and Aadhaar Auth.
      • Public Welfare: Public Distribution of Service, Social Pension, Employment Guarantee
      • Public service access: Enrollment to School, Healthcare

    1.36B People enrolled

    80% Beneficiaries feel Aadhaar has made PDS, employment guarantee and social pensions more reliable

    91.6% Are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with Aadhaar

    14B eKYC transactions done by 218 eKYC authentication agencies (KUA)

    Source: https://uidai.gov.in/aadhaar_dashboard/india.php; https://www.stateofaadhaar.in/

    World Bank Report on Private Sector Impacts from ID

    Uniqueness

    “The Aadhaar digital identity system could reduce onboarding costs for Indian firms from 1,500 rupees to as low as an estimated 10 rupees.”

    -World Bank Report on Private Sector Impacts from ID

    With lack of public trust in private sector, government brought in private sector executives in public ecosystem to lead the largest identity program globally and build the India stack to leverage the power of Digital Identity.

    The image contains a screenshot of India's Aadhaar timeline from 2009-2022.

    Ukraine’s Diia is a resilient act to preserve their identities during threat to their existence

    Regulatory Accountability and Operational Governance: Ministry of Digital Transformation.

    Identity provider: Federated govt. agencies.

    Digital identity form: Diia App & Portal as a digital wallet for all IDs including digital driving license.

    • Key use cases:
      • eGovernance – Issuing license and permits, business registration, vaccine certificates.
      • Public communication: air-raid alerts, notifications, court decisions and fines.
      • Financial, Telecom: KYC compliance, mobile donations.
      • eBusiness: Diia City legal framework for IT industry, Diia Business Portal for small and medium businesses.
      • Digital sharing and authentication: Diia signature and Diia QR.
      • Public service access: Diia Education Portal for digital education and digital skills development, healthcare.

    18.5M People downloaded the Diia app.

    14 Digital IDs provided by other ID providers are available through Diia.

    70 Government services are available through Diia.

    ~1M Private Entrepreneurs used Diia to register their companies.

    1300 Tons of paper estimated to be saved by reducing paper applications for new IDs and replacements.

    Source:

    • Ukraine Govt. Website for Invest and trade
    • Diia Case study prepared for the office of Canadian senator colin deacon.

    Uniqueness

    “One of the reasons for the Diia App's popularity is its focus on user experience. In September 2022, the Diia App simplified 25 public services and digitized 16 documents. The Ministry of Digital Transformation aims to make 100% of all public services available online by 2024.”

    - Vladyslava Aleksenko

    Project Lead—digital Identity, Ukraine

    The image contains a screenshot of the timeline for Diia.

    Canada’s PCTF (Pan Canadian Trust Framework) driving the federated digital identity ecosystem

    • Regulatory Accountability: Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS); Canadian Digital Service (CDS); Office of CIO
    • Standard Setting: Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC)
    • Frameworks:
      • Treasury Board Directive on Identity Management
      • Pan Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF)
      • Voilà Verified Trustmark Program: ISO aligned compliance certification program on PCTF
      • Governing / Certificate Authority: Trustmark Oversight Board (TOB) and DIACC accredited assessor
      • Operational Governance: Federated between identity providers and identity consumers
      • Identity Providers: Public and Private Sector
      • Other entities involved: Digital ID Lab (Voila Verified Auditor); Kuma (Accredited Assessor)
    The image contains a screenshot of PCTF Components.

    82% People supportive of Digital ID.

    2/3 Canadians prefer public-private partnership for Pan-Canadian digital ID framework.

    >40% Canadians prefer completing various tasks and transactions digitally.

    75% Canadians are willing to share personal information for better experience.

    >80% Trust government, healthcare providers, and financial institutions with their personal information.

    Source: DIACC Survey 2021

    Uniqueness

    Although a few provinces in Canada started their Digital ID journey already, federally, Canada lacked an approach.

    Now Canada is developing a federated Digital ID ecosystem driven through the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF) led by a non-profit (DIACC) formed with public and private partnership.

    The image contains a screenshot of Canada's PCTF timeline from 2002-2025.

    Australia’s digital id is pivotal to its vision to become one of the Top-3 digital governments globally by 2025*

    * Australia Digital Government Strategy 2021
    • Regulatory responsibility and standard: Digital Transformation Agency (DTA)’s Digital Identity
    • Operational support and oversight: Service Australia, Interim Oversight Authority (IOA).
    • Accredited identity providers (by 2022): Australian Taxation Office (ATO)’s myGovID, Australia Post’s Digital ID, MasterCard’s ID, OCR Labs App
    • Framework: Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF)
      • Digital Identity Exchange
      • Identity Service Providers and Attribute Verification Service
      • Attribute Service Providers
      • Credential Service Providers
      • Relying Parties
    • Others: States such as NSW, Victoria, and Queensland have their own digital identity programs

    8.6M People using myGovID by Jun-2022

    117 Services accessible through Digital Id System

    The image contains a screenshot diagram of Digital Identity.

    Uniqueness

    Australia started its journey of Digital ID with a centralized Digital ID ecosystem.

    However, now it preparing to transition to a centrally governed Trust framework-based ecosystem expanding to private sector.

    The image contains a screenshot of Australia's Digital id timeline from 2014-2022.

    UK switches gear to the Trust Framework approach to build a public-private digital ID ecosystem

    • Government: Ministry of Digital Infrastructure / Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport
    • Governing Body / Certificate Authority / Operational Governance: TBD
    • Approach: Trust Framework-based UK Digital Identity and attributes trust framework (UKDIATF)
    • Identity providers: Transitioning from “GOV.UK Verify” to a federated digital identity system aligned with “Trust Framework” – enabling both government (“One Login for Government”) and private sector identity providers.
    The image contains a screenshot of the Trust Framework.

    Uniqueness

    UK embarked its Digital ID journey through Gov.UK Verify but decided to scrap it recently.

    It is now preparing to build a trust framework-based federated digital ID ecosystem with roles like schema-owners and orchestration service providers for private sector and drive the collaboration between industry players.

    The image contains a screenshot of UK timeline from 2011-2023.

    Digital ID will transform all industries, though financial services and e-governance will gain most

    Cross Industry

    Financial Services

    Insurance

    E-governance

    Healthcare & Lifesciences

    Travel and Tourism

    E-Commerce

    • Onboarding (customer, employee, patient, etc.)
    • Fraud-prevention (identity theft)
    • Availing restricted services (buying liquor)
    • Secure-sharing of credentials and qualifications (education, experience, gig worker)
    • For businesses, customer 360
    • For businesses, reliable data-driven decision making with lower frequency of ‘astroturfing’ (false identities) and ‘ballot-stuffing’ (duplicate identities)
    • Account opening
    • Asset transfer
    • Payments
    • For businesses, risk management - know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), customer due diligence (CDD)
    • Insurance history
    • Insurance claim
    • Public distribution schemes (PDS)
    • Subsidy payments (direct to consumer)
    • Obtain government benefits (maternity, pension, employment guarantee / insurance payments)
    • Tax filing
    • Issuing credentials (birth certificate, passport)
    • Voting
    • For businesses, availing governments supports
    • For SMB businesses, easier regulatory compliance
    • Digital health
    • Out of state public healthcare
    • Secure access to health and diagnostic records
    • For businesses, data sharing between providers and with payers
    • Travel booking
    • Cross-border travel
    • Car rental
    • Secure peer-to-peer sales
    • Secure peer-to-peer sales

    USE CASE

    Car rental

    INDUSTRY: Travel & Tourism

    Source: Info-Tech Research Group

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    Verifying the driver’s license (DL) is the first step a car rental company takes before handing over the keys.

    While the rental company only need to know the validity of the DL and if it belongs to the presenter, is bears the liability of much more data presented to them through the DL.

    For customers, it is impossible to rent a car if they forget their DL. If the customer has their driver’s license, they compromise their privacy and security as they hand over their license to the representative.

    The process is not only time consuming, it also creates unnecessary risks to both the business and the renter.

    A digital id-based rental process allows the renter to present the digital id online or in person.

    As the customer approaches the car rental they present their digital id on the mobile app, which has already authenticated the presenter though the biometrics or other credentials.

    The customer selects the purpose of the business as “Car Rental”, and only the customer’s name, photo, and validity of the DL appear on the screen for the representative to see (selective disclosures).

    If the car pick-up is online, only this information is shared with the car rental company, which in turn shares the car and key location with the renter.

    A digital identity-based identity verification can ensure a rental company has access to the minimum data it needs to comply with local laws, which in turn reduces its data leak risk.

    It also reduces customer risks linked to forgetting the DL, and data privacy.

    Digital identity also reduces the risk originated from identity fraud leading to stolen cars.

    USE CASE

    e-Governance public distribution service

    INDUSTRY: Government

    Source: Info-Tech Research Group

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    In both emerging and developed economies, public distribution of resources – food, subsidies, or cash – is a critical process through which many people (especially from marginalized sections) survive on.

    They often either don’t have required valid proof of identity or fall prey to low-level corruption when someone defrauds them by claiming the benefit.

    As a result, they either completely miss out on claiming government-provided social benefits OR only receive a part of what they are eligible for.

    A Digital ID based public distribution can help created a Direct Benefit Transfer ecosystem.

    Here beneficiaries register (manually OR automatically from other government records) for the benefits they are eligible for.

    On the specific schedule, they receive their benefit – monetary benefit in their bank accounts, and non-cash benefits, in person from authorized points-of-sales (POS), without any middleman with discretionary decision powers on the distribution.

    India launched its Financial Inclusion Program (Prime Minister's Public Finance Scheme) in 2014.

    The program was linked with India’s Digital Id Aadhaar to smoothen the otherwise bureaucratic and discretionary process for opening a bank account.

    In last eight years, ~481M (Source: PMJDY) beneficiaries have opened a bank account and deposited ~ ₹1.9Trillion (USD$24B), a part of which came as social benefits directly deposited to these accounts from the government of India.

    USE CASE

    Real-estate investment and sale

    INDUSTRY: Asset Management

    Source: Info-Tech Research Group

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    “Impersonators posing as homeowners linked to 32 property fraud cases in Ontario and B.C.” – Global News Canada1

    “The level of fraud in the UK is such that it is now a national security threat” – UK Finance Lobby Group2

    Real estate is the most expensive investment people make in their lives. However, lately it has become a soft target for title fraud. Fraudsters steal the title to one’s home and sell it or apply for a new mortgage against it.

    At the root cause of these fraud are usually identity theft when a fraudster steals someone’s identity and impersonates them as the title owner.

    Digital identity tagged to the home ownership / title record can reduce the identity fraud in title transfer.

    When a person wants to sell their house OR apply for a new mortgage on house, multiple notifications will be triggered to their contact attributes on digital ID – phone, email, postal address, and digital ID Wallet, if applicable.

    The homeowner will be mandated to authorize the transaction on at least two channels they had set as preferred, to ensure that the transaction has the consent of the registered homeowner.

    This process will stop any fraud transactions until at least two modes are compromised.

    Even if two modes are compromised, the real homeowner will receive the notification on offline communication modes, and they can then alert the institution or lawyer to block the transaction.

    It will especially help elderly people, who are more prone to fall prey to identity frauds when somebody uses their IDs to impersonate them.

    1 Global News (https://globalnews.ca/news/9437913/homeowner-impersonators-lined-32-fraud-cases-ontario-bc/)

    2 UK Finance Lobby Group (https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/Half-year-fraud-update-2021-FINAL.pdf)

    Adopting digital ID benefits everybody – governments, id providers, id consumers, and end users

    Governments & identity providers

    (public & private)

    Customers and end users

    (subjects)

    Identity consumer

    (relying parties)

    • Growth in GDP
    • Save costs of providing identity
    • Unlock new revenue source by economic expansion
    • Choice and convenience
    • Control of what data is shared
    • Experience driven by simplicity and data minimalization
    • Reduced cost of availing services
    • Operational efficiency
    • Overall cost efficiency of delivering service and products
    • Reduce risk of potential litigation
    • Reduce risk of fraud
    • Enhanced customer experience leading to increased lifetime value
    • Streamlined storage and access
    • Encourage innovation

    Digital ID will transform all industries, though financial services and e-governance will gain most

    Governments and identity providers (public and private)

    • Growth in GDP by reducing bureaucracy and discretion from the governance processes.
      • As per a McKinsey report, digital ID could unlock the economic value equivalent of 3%-13% of GDP across seven focus countries (Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, China, UK, USA) in 2030.
      • “Estonia saves two percent of GDP by signing things digitally; imagine if it could go global.” - aavi Rõivas, Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia (International Peace Institute)
    • Unlock new revenue source by economic expansion.
      • Estonia earned €32 million in tax revenue from e-resident companies (e-Estonia).
    • Save costs of providing identity in collaboration with 3rd parties and reduce fraud.
      • Canada estimates savings of $482 million for provincial and federal governments, and $4.5 billion for private sector organizations through digital id adoption (2022 Budget Statement).

    Digital ID brings end users choice, convenience, control, and cost-saving, driving overall experience

    Customers and end users (subjects)

    • Choice: Citizens have the choice and convenience to interact safely and conveniently online and offline.
    • Convenience: No compulsion to make physical trips to access service, as end users can identify themselves safely and reliably online, as they do offline.
    • Control: A decentralized, privacy enhancing solution – neither government nor private companies control your digital ID. How and when you use digital ID is entirely up to you.
    • Cost Saving: Save costs of availing service by reducing the offline documentation.
    • Experience: Improved experience while availing service without a need to present multiple documents every time.

    Digital id benefits identity consumers by enhancing multiple dimensions of their value streams

    Identity consumer (relying parties)

    • Operational efficiency: Eliminating unnecessary steps and irrelevant data from the value stream increases overall operational efficiency.
    • Cost efficiency: Helps businesses to reduce overall cost of operations like regulatory requirements.
      • World Bank estimated that the Aadhaar could reduce onboarding costs for Indian firms from ₹1,500/- ($23) to as low as an estimated ₹10/- ($0.15) (*World Bank ID4D)
    • Reduce risk of potential litigation issues: Encourage data minimization.
    • Privacy and security: Businesses can reduce the risk of fraud to organizations and users and can significantly boost the privacy and security of their IT assets.
    • Enhanced customer experience: The decrease in the number of touchpoints and faster turnaround.
    • Streamlined storage and access: Store all available data in a single place, and when required.
    • Encourage innovation: Reduce efforts required in authentication and authorization of users.

    Before embarking on the digital identity adoption journey, assess your readiness

    Legislative coverage

    Does your target jurisdiction have adequate legislative framework to enable uses of digital identities in your industry?

    Trust framework

    If the Digital ID ecosystem in your target jurisdiction is trust framework-based, do you have adequate understanding of it?

    Customer touch-points

    Do you have exact understanding of value stream and customer touch-points where you interact with user identity?

    Relevant identity attributes

    Do you have exact understanding of the identity attributes that your business processes need to deliver customer value?

    Regulatory compliance

    Do you have required systems to ensure your compliance with industry regulations around customer PII and identity?

    Interoperability with IMS

    Is your existing identity management system interoperable with Open-source Digital Identity ecosystem?

    Enterprise governance

    Have you established an integrated enterprise governance framework covering business processes, technical systems, and risk management?

    Communication strategy

    Do have a clear strategy (mode, method, means) to communicate with your target customer and persuade them to adopt digital identity?

    Security operations center

    Do you have security operations center coordinating detection, response, resolution, and communication of potential data breaches?

    Ten steps to adopt to enhance the customer experience

    Considering the complexity of digital identity adoption, and its impact on customer experience, it is vital to assess the ecosystem and adopt an MVP approach before a big-bang launch.

    Diagram to help assess the ecosystem.

    1. Define the use case and identify the customer touchpoint in the value stream which can be improved with a verified digital identity.
    2. Ensure your organization is ready to adopt digital identity (Refer to Digital identity adoption readiness),
    3. Identify an Identity Service Provider (Government, private sector), if there are options.
    4. Understand its technical requirements and assess, to the finer detail, your technical landscape for interoperability.
    5. Set-up a business contract for terms of usages and liabilities.
    6. Create and execute a Minimum Viable Program (MVP) of integration which can be tested with real customers.
    7. Extend MVP to the complete solution and define key success metrics.
    8. Canary-launch with a segment of target customers before a full launch.
    9. Educate customers on the usages and benefits, and adapt your communication plan taking feedback
    10. Monitor and continuously improve the solution based on the feedback from ecosystem partners and end-customers, and regulatory changes.

    Understand and manage the risks and challenges of digital identity adoption

    Digital ID adoption is a major change for everyone in the ecosystem.

    Manage associated risks to avoid the derailing of integration with your business processes and a negative impact on customer experience.

    Manage Risks.

    1. Privacy and security risks – Customer’s sensitive data may get centralized with the identity provider.
    2. Single point of failure while relying a specific IDs; it also increases the impact of identity theft and fraud risk.
    3. Centralization and control risks – Identity provider or identity service broker / orchestrator may control who can participate.
    4. Not universal, interoperability risks – if purpose-specific.
    5. Impact omni-channel experience - Not always available (legal / printable) for offline use.
    6. Exclusion and discrimination risks – Specific data requirements may exclude a group of people.
    7. Scope for misuse and misinterpretation if compromised and not reclaimed in timely manner.
    8. Adoption and usability risks – Subjects / relying parties may not see benefit due to lack of awareness or suspicion.
    9. Liability Agreement gaps between identity provider and identity consumer (relying party).

    Recommendations to help you realize the potential of digital identity into your value streams

    1

    Customer-centricity

    Digital identity initiative should prioritize customer experience when evaluating its fit in the value stream. Adopting it should not sacrifice end-user experience to gain a few brownie points.

    See Info-Tech’s Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization blueprint, to ensure customer remains at the center of your Digital Adoption initiative.

    2

    Privacy and security

    Adopting digital identity reduces data risk by minimizing data transfer between providers and consumers. However, securing identity attributes in value streams still requires strengthening enterprise security systems and processes.

    See Info-Tech’s Assess and Govern Identity Security blueprint for the actions you may take to secure and govern digital identity.

    3

    Inclusion and awareness

    Adopting digital identity may alter customer interaction with an organization. To avoid excluding target customer segments, design digital identity accordingly. Educating and informing customers about the changes can facilitate faster adoption.

    See Info-Tech’s Social Media blueprint and IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics to make inclusion and awareness part of digital adoption

    4

    Quantitative success metrics

    To measure the success of a digital ID adoption program, it's essential to use quantitative metrics that align with business KPIs. Some measurable KPIs may include:

    • Reduction in number of IDs business used to serve 90% of customers
    • Reduction in overall cost of operation
      • Reduction in cost of user authentication
    • Reduction in process cycle time (less time required to complete a task – e.g. KYC)

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues..

    Attributes: An identity attribute is a statement or information about a specific aspect of entity’s identity ,substantiating they are who they claim to be, own, or have.

    Attribute (or Credential) provider: An attribute or credential provider could be an organization which issues the primary attribute or credential to a subject or entity. They are also responsible for identity-attribute binding, credential maintenance, suspension, recovery, and authentication.

    Attribute (or Credential) service provider: An attribute service provider could be an organization which originally vetted user’s credentials and certified a specific attribute of their identity. It could also be a software, such as digital wallet, which can store and share a user’s attribute with a third party once consented by the user. (Source: UK Govt. Trust Framework)

    Attribute binding: This is a process an attribute service providers uses to link the attributes they created to a person or an organization through an identifier. This process makes attributes useful and valuable for other entities using these attributes. For example, when a new employee joins a company, they are given a unique employee number (an identifier), which links the person with their job title and other aspects (attributes) of his job. (Source: UK Govt. Trust Framework)

    Authentication service provider: An organization which is responsible for creating and managing authenticators and their lifecycle (issuance, suspension, recovery, maintenance, revocation, and destruction of authenticators). (Source: DIACC)

    Authenticator: Information or biometric characteristics under the control of an individual that is a specific instance of something the subject has, knows, or does. E.g. private signing keys, user passwords, or biometrics like face, fingerprints. (Source: Canada PCTF)

    Authentication (identity verification): The process of confirming or denying that the identity presented relates to the subject who is making the claim by comparing the credentials presented with the ones presented during identity proofing.

    Authorization: The process of validating if the authenticated entity has permission to access a resource (service or product).

    Biometrics attributes: Human attributes like retina (iris), fingerprint, heartbeat, facial, handprint, thumbprint, voice print.

    Centralized identity: Digital identities which are fully governed by a centralized government entity. It may have enrollment or registration agencies, private or public sector, to issue the identities, and the technical system may still be decentralized to keep data federated.

    Certificate Authority (CA or accredited assessors): An organization or an entity that conducts assessments to validate the framework compliance of identity or attribute providers (such as websites, email addresses, companies, or individual persons) serving other users, and binding them to cryptographic keys through the issuance of electronic documents known as digital certificates.

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues..

    Collective (non-resolvable) attributes: Nationality, domicile, citizenship, immigration status, age group, disability, income group, membership, (outstanding) credit limit, credit score range.

    Contextual identity: A type of identity which establishes an entity’s existence in a specific context – real or virtual. These can be issued by public or private identity providers and are governed by the organizational policies. E.g. employee ID, membership ID, social media ID, machine ID.

    Credentials: A physical or a digital representation of something that establishes an entity’s eligibility to do something for which it is seeking permission, or an association/affiliation with another, generally well-known entity. E.g. Passport, DL, password. In the context of Digital Identity, every identity needs to be attached with a credential to ensure that the subject of the identity can control how and by whom that identity can be used.

    Cryptographic hash function: A hash function is a one-directional mathematical operation performed on a message of any length to get a unique, deterministic, and fixed size numerical string (the hash) which can’t be reverse engineered to get the input data without deploying disproportionate resources. It is the foundation of modern security solutions in DLT / blockchain as they help in verifying the integrity and authenticity of the message.

    Decentralized identity (DID) or self-sovereign identity: This is a way to give back the control of identity to the subject whose identity it is, using an identity wallet in which they collect verified information about themselves from certified issuers (such as the government). By controlling what information is shared from the wallet to requesting third parties (e.g. when registering for a new online service), the user can better manage their privacy, such as only presenting proof that they’re over 18 without needing to reveal their date of birth. Source: (https://www.gsma.com/identity/decentralised-identity)

    Digital identity wallet: A type of digital wallet refers to a secure, trusted software applications (native mobile app, mobile web apps, or Rivas-hosted web applications) based on common standards, allowing a user to store and use their identity attributes, identifiers, and other credentials without loosing or sharing control of them. This is different than Digital Payment Wallets used for financial transactions. (Source: https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/photos/1440x300/2022/feb/eID_WB_presentation_BS.pdf)

    Digital identity: A digital identity is primarily an electronic form of identity representing an entity uniquely , while abstracting all other identity attributes of the entity. In addition to an electronic form, it may also exist in a physical form (identity certificate), linked through an identifier representing the same entity. E.g. Estonia eID , India Aadhar, digital citizenship ID.

    Digital object architecture: DOA is an open architecture for interoperability among various information systems, including ID wallets, identity providers, and consumers. It focuses on digital objects and comprises three core components: the identifier/resolution system, the repository system, and the registry system. There are also two protocols that connect these components. (Source: dona.net)

    Digital signature: A digital signature is an electronic, encrypted stamp of authentication on digital information such as email messages, macros, or electronic documents. A signature confirms that the information originated from the signer and has not been altered. (Source: Microsoft)

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues..

    Entity (or Subject): In the context of identity, an entity is a person, group, object, or a machine whose claims need to be ascertained and identity needs to be established before his request for a service or products can be fulfilled. An entity can also be referred to as a subject whose identity needs to be ascertained before delivering a service.

    Expiry: This is another dimension of an identity and determines the validity of an ID. Most of the identities are longer term, but there can be a few like digital tokens and URLs which can be issued for a few hours or even minutes. There are some which can be revoked after a pre-condition is met.

    Federated identity: Federated identity is an agreement between two organizations about the definition and use of identity attributes and identifiers of a consumer entity requesting a service. If successful, it allows a consumer entity to get authenticated by one organization (identity provider) and then authorized by another organization. E.g. accessing a third-party website using Google credentials.

    Foundational identity: A type of identity which establishes an entity’s existence in the real world. These are generally issued by public sector / government agencies, governed by a legal farmwork within a jurisdiction, and are widely accepted at least in that jurisdiction. E.g. birth certificate, citizenship certificate.

    Governance: This is a dimension of identity that covers the governance model for a digital ID ecosystem. While traditionally it has been under the sovereign government or a federated structure, in recent times, it has been decentralized through DLT technologies or trust-framework based. It can also be self-sovereign, where individuals fully control their data and ID attributes.

    Identifier: A digital identifier is a string of characters that uniquely represents an entity’s identity in a specific context and scope even if one or more identity attributes of the subject change over time. E.g. driver’s license, SSN, SIN, email ID, digital token, user ID, device ID, cookie ID.

    Identity: An identity is an instrument used by an entity to provide the required information about itself to another entity in order to avail a service, access a resource, or exercise a privilege. An identity formed by 1-n identity attributes and a unique identifier.

    Identity and access management (IAM): IAM is a set of frameworks, technologies, and processes to enable the creation, maintenance, and use of digital identity, ensuring that the right people gain access to the right materials and records at the right time. (Source: https://iam.harvard.edu/)

    Identity consumer (Relying party): An organization, or an entity relying on identity provider to mitigate IT risks around knowing its customers before delivering the end-user value (product/service) without deteriorating end-user experience. E.g. Canada Revenue Agency using SecureKey service and relying on Banking institutions to authenticate users; Telecom service providers in India relying on Aadhaar identity system to authenticate the customer's identity.

    Identity form: A dimension of identity that defines its forms depending on the scope it wants to serve. It can be a physical card for offline uses, a virtual identifier like a number, or an app/account with multiple identity attributes. Cryptographic keys and tokens can also be forms of identity.

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues...

    Identity infrastructure provider: Organizations involved in creating and maintaining technological infrastructure required to manage the lifecycle of digital identities, attributes, and credentials. They implement functions like security, privacy, resiliency, and user experience as specified in the digital identity policy and trust framework.

    Identity proofing: A process of asserting the identification of a subject at a useful identity assurance level when the subject provides evidence to a credential service provider (CSP), reliably identifying themselves. (Source: NIST Special Publication 800-63A)

    Identity provider (Attestation authority): An organization or an entity validating the foundation or contextual claims of a subject and establishing identifier(s) for a subject. E.g. DMV (US) and MTA (Canada) issuing drivers’ licenses; Google / Facebook issuing authentication tokens for their users logging in on other websites.

    Identity validation: The process of confirming or denying the accuracy of identity information of a subject as established by an authorized party. It doesn’t ensure that the presenter is using their own identity.

    Identity verification (Authentication): The process of confirming or denying that the identity presented relates to the subject who is making the claim by comparing the credentials presented with the ones presented during identity proofing.

    Internationalized resource identifier (IRI): IRIs are equivalent to URIs except that IRIs also allow non-ascii characters in the address space, while URIs only allow us-ascii encoding. (Source: w3.org)

    Jurisdiction: A dimension of identity that covers the physical area or virtual space where an identity is legally acceptable for the purpose defined under law. It can be global, like it is for passport, or it can be local within a municipality for specific services. For unverified digital IDs, it can be the social network.

    Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Multi-factor authentication is a layered approach to securing digital assets (data and applications), where a system requires a user to present a combination of two or more credentials to verify a user’s identity for login. These factors can be a combination of (i) something you know like a password/PIN; (ii) something you have like a token on mobile device; and (iii) something you are like a biometric. (Adapted from https://www.cisa.gov/publication/multi-factor-authentication-mfa)

    Oauth (Open authorization): OAuth is a standard authorization protocol and used for access delegation. It allows internet users to access websites by using credentials managed by a third-party authorization server / Identity Provider. It is designed for HTTP and allows access tokens to be issued by an authorization server to third-party websites. E.g. Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn use Oauth to delegate access.

    OpenID: OpenID is a Web Authentication Protocol and implements reliance authentication mechanism. It facilitates the functioning of federated identity by allowing a user to use an existing account (e.g. Google, Facebook, Yahoo) to sign into third-party websites without needing to create new credentials. (Source: https://openid.net/).

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues...

    Personally identifiable information (PII): PII is a set of attributes which can be used, through direct or indirect means, to infer the real-world identity of the individual whose information is input. E.g. National ID (SSN/SIN/Aadhar) DL, name, date of birth, age, address, age, identifier, university credentials, health condition, email, domain name, website URI (web resolvable) , phone number, credit card number, username/password, public key / private key. (Source: https://www.dol.gov)

    Predicates: The mathematical or logical operations such as equality or greater than on attributes (e.g. prove your salary is greater than x or your age is greater than y) to prove a claim without sharing the actual values.

    Purpose: This dimension of a digital id defines for what purpose digital id can be used. It can be one or many of these – authentication, authorization, activity linking, historical record keeping, social interactions, and machine connectivity for IoT use cases.

    Reliance authentication: Relying on a third-party authentication before providing a service. It is a method followed in a federated entity system.

    Risk-based authentication: A mechanism to protect against account compromise or identity theft. It correlates an authentication request with transitional facts like requester’s location, past frequency of login, etc. to reduce the risk of potential fraud.

    Scheme in trust framework: A specific set of rules (standard and custom) around the use of digital identities and attributes as agreed by one or more organizations. It is useful when those organizations have similar products, services, business processes. (Source: UK Govt. Trust Framework). E.g. Many credit unions agree on how they will use the identity in loan origination and servicing.

    Selective disclosure (Assertion): A way to present one’s identity by sharing only a limited amount information that is critical to make an authentication / authorization decision. E.g. when presenting your credentials, you could share something proving you are 18 years or above, but not share your name, exact age, address, etc.

    Trust: A dimension of an identity, which essentially is a belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of that identity. While in the physical world all acceptable form of identities come with a verified trust, in online domain, it can be unverified. Also, where an identity is only acceptable as per the contract between two entities, but not widely.

    Trust framework: The trust framework is a set of rules that different organizations agree to follow to deliver one or more of their services. This includes legislation, standards, guidance, and the rules in this document. By following these rules, all services and organizations using the trust framework can describe digital identities and attributes they’ve created in a consistent way. This should make it easier for organizations and users to complete interactions and transactions or share information with other trust framework participants. (Source: UK Govt. Trust Framework)

    Taxonomy – Digital ID ecosystem

    (Alphabetical order)

    Continues...

    Uniform resource identifier (URI): A universal name in registered name spaces and addresses referring to registered protocols or name spaces.

    Uniform resource locator (URL): A type of URI which expresses an address which maps onto an access algorithm using network protocols. (Source: https://www.w3.org/)

    Uniform resource name (URN): A type of URI that includes a name within a given namespace but may not be accessible on the internet.

    Usability: A dimension of identity that defines how many times it can be used. While most of the identities are multi-use, a few digital identities are in token form and can be used only once to authenticate oneself.

    Usage mode: A dimension of identity that defines the service mode in which a digital ID can be used. While all digital IDs are made for online usage, many can also be used in offline interactions.

    Verifiable credentials: This W3C standard specification provides a standard way to express credentials on the Web in a way that is cryptographically secure, privacy-respecting, and machine-verifiable. (Source: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/)

    X.509 Certificates: X.509 certificates are standard digital documents that represent an entity providing a service to another entity. They're issued by a certification authority (CA), subordinate CA, or registration authority. These certificates play an important role in ascertaining the validity of an identity provider and in turn the identities issued by it. (Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub/reference-x509-certificates)

    Zero-knowledge proofs: A method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that something is true, without revealing any information apart from the fact that this specific statement is true. (Source: 1989 SIAM Paper)

    Zero-trust security: A cybersecurity paradigm focused on resource protection and the premise that trust is never granted implicitly but must be continually evaluated. It evaluates each access request as if it is a fraud attempt, and grants access only if it passes the authentication and authorization test. (Source: Adapted from NIST, SP 800-207: Zero Trust Architecture, 2020)

    Related Info-Tech Research

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    Leverage an iterative and repeatable process to apply zero trust to your organization.

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    Strong identity security and governance are the keys to the zero-trust future.

    Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization
    Innovation needs design thinking to ensure customer remains at the center of everything the organization does.

    Social Media
    Leveraging Social Media to connect with your customers and educate them to drive the value proposition of your efforts.

    IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics
    Equip your teams to create an inclusive environment and mobilize inclusion efforts across the organization.


    Research Contributors and Experts

    David Wallace

    David Wallace
    Executive Counselor

    Erik Avakian

    Erik Avakian
    Technical Counselor, Data Architecture and Governance

    Matthew Bourne

    Matthew Bourne
    Managing Partner, Public Sector Global Services

    Mike Tweedie

    Mike Tweedie
    Practice Lead, CIO Research Development

    Aaron Shum

    Aaron Shum
    Vice President, Security & Privacy

    Works Cited

    India Aadhaar PMJDY (https://pmjdy.gov.in/account)
    Theis, S., Rusconi, G., Panggabean, E., Kelly, S. (2020). Delivering on the Potential of Digitized G2P: Driving Women’s Financial Inclusion and Empowerment through Indonesia’s Program Keluarga Harapan. Women’s World Banking.
    DIACC Canada (https://diacc.ca/the-diacc/)
    UK digital identity & attributes trust framework alpha v2 (0.2) - GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-attributes-trust-framework-updated-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-alpha-version-2)
    Australia Trusted Digital Identity Framework (https://www.digitalidentity.gov.au/tdif#changes)
    eIDAS (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eidas-regulation)
    Europe Digital Wallet – POTENTIAL (https://www.digital-identity-wallet.eu/)
    Canada PCTF (https://diacc.ca/trust-framework/)
    Identification Revolution: Can Digital ID be harnessed for Development? (Gelb & Metz), 2018
    e-Estonia website (https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/)
    Aadhaar Dashboard (https://uidai.gov.in/)
    DIACC Website (https://diacc.ca/the-diacc/)
    Australia Digital ID website (https://www.digitalidentity.gov.au/tdif#changes)
    UK Policy paper - digital identity & attributes trust framework (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-attributes-trust-framework-updated-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-alpha-version-2)
    Ukraine Govt. website (https://ukraine.ua/invest-trade/digitalization/)
    Singapore SingPass Website (https://www.tech.gov.sg/products-and-services/singpass/)
    Norway BankID Website (https://www.bankid.no/en/private/about-us/)
    Brazil National ID Card website (https://www.gov.br/casacivil/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2022/julho/nova-carteira-de-identidade-nacional-modelo-unico-a-partir-de-agosto)
    Indonesia Coverage in Professional Security Magazine (https://www.professionalsecurity.co.uk/products/id-cards/indonesian-cards/)
    Philippine ID System (PhilSys) website (https://www.philsys.gov.ph/)
    China coverage on eGovReview (https://www.egovreview.com/article/news/559/china-announces-plans-national-digital-ids)
    Thales Group Website - DHS’s Automated Biometric Identification System IDENT (https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/digital-identity-and-security/government/customer-cases/ident-automated-biometric-identification-system)
    FranceConnect (https://franceconnect.gouv.fr/)
    Germany: Office for authorization cert. (https://www.personalausweisportal.de/Webs/PA/DE/startseite/startseite-node.html)
    Italian Digital Services Authority (https://www.spid.gov.it/en/)
    Monacco Mconnect (https://mconnect.gouv.mc/en)
    Estonia eID (https://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/e-estonia-211022_eng.pdf)
    E-Residency Dashboard (https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/dashboard)
    Unique ID authority of India (https://uidai.gov.in/aadhaar_dashboard/india.php)
    State of Aadhaar (https://www.stateofaadhaar.in/)
    World Bank (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/219201522848336907/pdf/Private-Sector-Economic-Impacts-from-Identification-Systems.pdf)
    WorldBank - ID4D 2022 Annual Report (https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099437402012317995/idu00fd54093061a70475b0a3b50dd7e6cdfe147)
    Ukraine Govt. Website for Invest and trade (https://ukraine.ua/invest-trade/digitalization/)
    Diia Case study prepared for the office of Canadian senator colin deacon (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63851cbda1515c69b8a9a2b9/t/6398f63a9d78ae73d2fd5725/1670968891441/2022-case-study-report-diia-mobile-application.pdf)
    Canadian Digital Identity Research (https://diacc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/DIACC-2021-Research-Report-ENG.pdf)
    Voilà Verified Trustmark (https://diacc.ca/voila-verified/)
    Digital Identity, 06A Federation Onboarding Guidance paper, March 2022 (https://www.digitalidentity.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-04/TDIF%2006A%20Federation%20Onboarding%20Guidance%20-%20Release%204.6%20%28Doc%20Version%201.2%29.pdf)
    UK digital identity & attributes trust framework alpha v2 (0.2) - GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-attributes-trust-framework-updated-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-alpha-version-2)
    A United Nations Estimate of KYC/AML (https://www.imf.org/Publications/fandd/issues/2018/12/imf-anti-money-laundering-and-economic-stability-straight)
    India Aadhaar PMJDY (https://pmjdy.gov.in/account)
    Global News (https://globalnews.ca/news/9437913/homeowner-impersonators-lined-32-fraud-cases-ontario-bc/)
    UK Finance Lobby Group (https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/Half-year-fraud-update-2021-FINAL.pdf) McKinsey Digital ID report ( https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/digital-identification-a-key-to-inclusive-growth) International Peace Institute ( https://www.ipinst.org/2016/05/information-technology-and-governance-estonia#7)
    E-Estonia Report (https://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/e-estonia-211022_eng.pdf)
    2022 Budget Statement (https://diacc.ca/2022/04/07/2022-budget-statement/)
    World Bank ID4D - Private Sector Economic Impacts from Identification Systems 2018 (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/219201522848336907/Private-Sector-Economic-Impacts-from-Identification-Systems.pdf)
    DIACC Canada (https://diacc.ca/the-diacc/)
    UK digital identity & attributes trust framework alpha v2 (0.2) - GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-attributes-trust-framework-updated-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-alpha-version-2)
    https://www.gsma.com/identity/decentralised-identity
    https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/photos/1440x300/2022/feb/eID_WB_presentation_BS.pdf
    Microsoft Digital signatures and certificates (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/digital-signatures-and-certificates-8186cd15-e7ac-4a16-8597-22bd163e8e96)
    https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/photos/1440x300/2022/feb/eID_WB_presentation_BS.pdf
    https://www.dona.net/digitalobjectarchitecture
    IAM (https://iam.harvard.edu/)
    NIST Special Publication 800-63A (https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63a.html)
    https://www.cisa.gov/publication/multi-factor-authentication-mfa
    https://openid.net/
    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (https://www.dol.gov/)
    UK govt. trust framework (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-attributes-trust-framework-updated-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-alpha-version-2)
    https://www.w3.org/
    Verifiable Credentials Data Model v1.1 (https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/)
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub/reference-x509-certificates

    Structure the Role of the DBA

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    • Parent Category Name: Business Intelligence Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /business-intelligence-strategy
    • The traditional role of Database Administrators (DBAs) is shifting due to a variety of changes such as cloud databases, increased automation, close relations with development, and the need for more integration with the business at large. All this means that organizations will have to adapt to integrate a new type of DBA into IT.
    • Organizations often have difficulty establishing a refined and effective DBA structure based on repeatable and well-grounded processes.
    • The relationship between DBAs and the rest of IT (especially development) can often be problematic due to a lack of mutual co-operation and clear communication.
    • There is often confusion in organizations as how to approach staffing DBAs.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • An organization’s relative focus on operations or development is essential in determining many DBA related decisions. This focus can determine what kinds of DBAs to hire, what staffing ratios to use, the viability of outsourcing, and the appropriate reporting structure for DBAs.
    • Utilizing technological strategies such as database automation, effective auditing, and database consolidation to bolster the DBA team helps make efficient use of DBA staff and can turn a reactive environment into a proactive one.
    • Ensuring refined and regularly assessed processes are in place for change and incident management is essential for maintaining effective and structured database administration.

    Impact and Result

    • Right-size, support, and structure your DBA team for increased cost effectiveness and optimal productivity.
    • Develop a superior level of co-operation between DBAs and the rest of IT as well as the business at large.
    • Build an environment in which DBAs will be motivated and flourish.

    Structure the Role of the DBA Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand how Database Administrators are evolving

    Develop an effective structure for managing and supporting Database Administrators.

    • Storyboard: Structure the Role of the DBA

    2. Create the right Database Administrator roles to meet organizational needs

    Build a team that is relevant to the focus of the organization.

    • System Database Administrator
    • Application Database Administrator
    [infographic]

    2021 IT Talent Trend Report

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    • Parent Category Name: Lead
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    • In March 2020, many organizations were forced to switch to a virtual working world. IT enabled organizations to be successful while working from home. Ultimately, this shift changed the way that we all work, and in turn, the way IT leaders manage talent.
    • Many organizations are considering long-term remote work (Kelly, 2020).
    • Change is starting but is lagging.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Increase focus on employee experience to navigate new challenges.
    • A good employee experience is what is best for the IT department.

    Impact and Result

    • The data shows IT is changing in the area of talent management.
    • IT has a large role in enabling organizations to work from home, especially from a technological and logistics perspective. There is evidence to show that they are now expanding their role to better support employees when working from home.
    • Survey respondents identified efforts already underway for IT to improve employee experience and subsequently, IT effectiveness.

    2021 IT Talent Trend Report Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should focus on the employee experience and get an overview of what successful IT leaders are doing differently heading into 2021 – the five new talent management trends.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. DEI: A top talent objective

    The focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives spans the entire organization beyond just HR. Learn which DEI efforts are underway with IT.

    • 2021 IT Talent Trend Report – Trend 1: DEI: A Top Talent Objective

    2. Remote work is here to stay

    Forced work-from-home demonstrated to organizations that employees can be productive while working away from the physical office. Learn more about how remote work is changing work.

    • 2021 IT Talent Trend Report – Trend 2: Remote Work Is Here to Stay

    3. A greater emphasis on wellbeing

    When the pandemic hit, organizations were significantly concerned about how employees were doing. Learn more about wellbeing.

    • 2021 IT Talent Trend Report – Trend 3: A Greater Emphasis on Wellbeing

    4. A shift in skills priorities

    Upskilling and finding sought after skills were challenging before the pandemic. How has it changed since? Learn more about skills priorities.

    • 2021 IT Talent Trend Report – Trend 4: A Shift in Skills Priorities

    5. Uncertainty unlocks performance

    The pandemic and remote work has affected performance. Learn about how uncertainty has impacted performance management.

    • 2021 IT Talent Trend Report – Trend 5: Uncertainty Unlocks Performance
    [infographic]

    Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide

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    • Parent Category Name: Customer Relationship Management
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    • Customer relationship management (CRM) suites are an indispensable part of a holistic strategy for managing end-to-end customer interactions.
    • After defining an approach to CRM, selection and implementation of the right CRM suite is a critical step in delivering concrete business value for marketing, sales, and customer service.
    • Despite the importance of CRM selection and implementation, many organizations struggle to define an approach to picking the right vendor and rolling out the solution in an effective and cost-efficient manner.
    • IT often finds itself in the unenviable position of taking the fall for CRM platforms that don't deliver on the promise of the CRM strategy.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • IT needs to be a trusted partner in CRM selection and implementation, but the business also needs to own the requirements and be involved from the beginning.
    • CRM requirements dictate the components of the target CRM architecture, such as deployment model, feature focus, and customization level. Savvy application directors recognize the points in the project where the CRM architecture model necessitates deviations from a "canned" roll-out plan.
    • CRM selection is a multi-step process that involves mapping target capabilities for marketing, sales, and customer service, assigning requirements across functional categories, determining the architecture model to prioritize criteria, and developing a comprehensive RFP that can be scored in a weighted fashion.
    • Companies that succeed with CRM implementation create a detailed roadmap that outlines milestones for configuration, security, points of implementation, data migration, training, and ongoing application maintenance.

    Impact and Result

    • A CRM platform that effectively meets the needs of marketing, sales, and customer service and delivers value.
    • Reduced costs during CRM selection.
    • Reduced implementation costs and time frame.
    • Faster time to results after implementation.

    Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide – Speed up the process to build your business case and select your CRM solution.

    This blueprint will help you build a business case for selecting the right CRM platform, defining key requirements, and conducting a thorough analysis and scan of the ever-evolving CRM market space.

    • Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide — Phases 1-3

    2. CRM Business Case Template – Document the key drivers for selecting a new CRM platform.

    Having a sound business case is essential for succeeding with a CRM. This template will allow you to document key drivers and impact, in line with the CRM Platform Selection Guide blueprint.

    • CRM Business Case Template

    3. CRM Request for Proposal Template

    Create your own request for proposal (RFP) for your customer relationship management (CRM) solution procurement process by customizing the RFP template created by Info-Tech.

    • CRM Request for Proposal Template

    4. CRM Suite Evaluation and RFP Scoring Tool

    The CRM market has many strong contenders and differentiation may be difficult. Instead of relying solely on reputation, organizations can use this RFP tool to record and objectively compare vendors according to their specific requirements.

    • CRM Suite Evaluation and RFP Scoring Tool

    5. CRM Vendor Demo Script

    Use this template to support your business's evaluation of vendors and their solutions. Provide vendors with scenarios that prompt them to display not only their solution's capabilities, but also how the tool will support your organization's particular needs.

    • CRM Vendor Demo Script

    6. CRM Use Case Fit Assessment Tool

    Use this tool to help build a CRM strategy for the organization based on the specific use case that matches your organizational needs.

    • CRM Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide

    Speed up the process to build your business case and select your CRM solution.

    Table of Contents

    1. Analyst Perspective
    2. Executive Summary
    3. Blueprint Overview
    4. Executive Brief
    5. Phase 1: Understand CRM Functionality
    6. Phase 2: Build the Business Case and Elicit CRM requirements
    7. Phase 3: Discover the CRM Marketspace and Prepare for Implementation
    8. Conclusion

    Analyst Perspective

    A strong CRM platform is paramount to succeeding with customer engagement.

    Modern CRM platforms are the workhorses that provide functional capabilities and data curation for customer experience management. The market for CRM platforms has seen an explosion of growth over the last five years, as organizations look to mature their ability to deliver strong capabilities across marketing, sales, and customer service.

    IT needs to be a trusted partner in CRM selection and implementation, but the business also needs to own the requirements and be involved from the get-go.

    CRM selection must be a multistep process that involves defining target capabilities for marketing, sales, and customer service, prioritizing requirements across functional categories, determining the architecture model for the CRM environment, and developing a comprehensive RFP that can be scored in a weighted fashion.

    To succeed with CRM implementation, create a detailed roadmap that outlines milestones for configuration, security, points of implementation, data migration, training, and ongoing application maintenance.

    Photo of Ben Dickie, Research Lead, Customer Experience Strategy, Info-Tech Research Group. Ben Dickie
    Research Lead, Customer Experience Strategy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suites are an indispensable part of a holistic strategy for managing end-to-end customer interactions. Selecting the right platform that aligns with your requirements is a significant undertaking.

    After defining an approach to CRM, selection and implementation of the right CRM suite is a critical step in delivering concrete business value for marketing, sales, and customer service.
    Common Obstacles

    Despite the importance of CRM selection and implementation, many organizations struggle to define an approach to picking the right vendor and rolling out the solution in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

    The CRM market is rapidly evolving and changing, making it tricky to stay on top of the space.

    IT often finds itself in the unenviable position of taking the fall for CRM platforms that don’t deliver on the promise of the CRM strategy.
    Info-Tech’s Approach

    CRM platform selection must be driven by your overall customer experience management strategy: link your CRM selection to your organization’s CXM framework.

    Determine if you need a CRM platform that skews toward marketing, sales, or customer service; leverage use cases to help guide selection.

    Ensure strong points of integration between CRM and other software such as MMS. A CRM should not live in isolation; it must provide a 360-degree view.

    Info-Tech Insight

    IT must work in lockstep with its counterparts in marketing, sales, and customer service to define a unified vision for the CRM platform.

    Info-Tech’s methodology for selecting the right CRM platform

    1. Understand CRM Features 2. Build the Business Case & Elicit CRM Requirements 3. Discover the CRM Market Space & Prepare for Implementation
    Phase Steps
    1. Define CRM platforms
    2. Classify table stakes & differentiating capabilities
    3. Explore CRM trends
    1. Build the business case
    2. Streamline requirements elicitation for CRM
    3. Construct the RFP
    1. Discover key players in the CRM landscape
    2. Engage the shortlist & select finalist
    3. Prepare for implementation
    Phase Outcomes
    • Consensus on scope of CRM and key CRM capabilities
    • CRM selection business case
    • Top-level use cases and requirements
    • Completed CRM RFP
    • CRM market analysis
    • Shortlisted vendor
    • Implementation considerations

    Guided Implementation

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    The CRM purchase process should be broken into segments:

    1. CRM vendor shortlisting with this buyer’s guide
    2. Structured approach to selection
    3. Contract review

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    Call #1: Understand what a CRM platform is and the “art of the possible” for sales, marketing, and customer service. Call #2: Build the business case to select a CRM.

    Call #3: Define your key CRM requirements.

    Call #4: Build procurement items such as an RFP.
    Call #5: Evaluate the CRM solution landscape and shortlist viable options.

    Call #6: Review implementation considerations.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    INFO~TECH RESEARCH GROUP

    Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide

    Speed up the process to build your business case and select your CRM solution.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Info-Tech Research Group Inc. is a global leader in providing IT research and advice. Info-Tech’s products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.
    © 1997-2022 Info-Tech Research Group Inc.

    What exactly is a CRM platform?

    Our Definition: A customer relationship management (CRM) platform (or suite) is a core enterprise application that provides a broad feature set for supporting customer interaction processes, typically across marketing, sales and customer service. These suites supplant more basic applications for customer interaction management (such as the contact management module of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform or office productivity suite).

    A customer relationship management suite provides many key capabilities, including but not limited to:

    • Account management
    • Order history tracking
    • Pipeline management
    • Case management
    • Campaign management
    • Reports and analytics
    • Customer journey execution

    A CRM suite provides a host of native capabilities, but many organizations elect to tightly integrate their CRM solution with other parts of their customer experience ecosystem to provide a 360-degree view of their customers.

    Stock image of a finger touching a screen showing a stock chart.

    Info-Tech Insight

    CRM feature sets are rapidly evolving. Focus on the social component of sales, marketing, and service management features, as well as collaboration, to get the best fit for your requirements. Moreover, consider investing in best-of-breed social media management platforms (SMMPs) and internal collaboration tools to ensure sufficient functionality.

    Build a cohesive CRM selection approach that aligns business goals with CRM capabilities.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Customers expect to interact with organizations through the channels of their choice. Now more than ever, you must enable your organization to provide tailored customer experiences.

    Customer expectations are on the rise: meet them!

    A CRM platform is a crucial system for enabling good customer experiences.

    CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS EVOLVING

    1. Thoughtfulness is in
        Connect with customers on a personal level
    2. Service over products
        The experience is more important than the product
    3. Culture is now number one
        Culture is the most overlooked piece of customer experience strategy
    4. Engineering and service finally join forces
        Companies are combining their technology and service efforts to create strong feedback loops
    5. The B2B world is inefficiently served
        B2B needs to step up with more tools and a greater emphasis placed on customer experience

    (Source: Forbes, 2019)

    Identifying organizational objectives of high priority will assist in breaking down business needs and CRM objectives. This exercise will better align the CRM systems with the overall corporate strategy and achieve buy-in from key stakeholders.

    A strong CRM platform supports a range of organizational objectives for customer engagement.

    Increase Revenue Enable lead scoring Deploy sales collateral management tools Improve average cost per lead via a marketing automation tool
    Enhance Market Share Enhance targeting effectiveness with a CRM Increase social media presence via an SMMP Architect customer intelligence analysis
    Improve Customer Satisfaction Reduce time-to-resolution via better routing Increase accessibility to customer service with live chat Improve first contact resolution with customer KB
    Increase Customer Retention Use a loyalty management application Improve channel options for existing customers Use customer analytics to drive targeted offers
    Create Customer-Centric Culture Ensure strong training and user adoption programs Use CRM to provide 360-degree view of all customer interactions Incorporate the voice of the customer into product development

    Succeeding with CRM selection and implementation has a positive effect on driving revenues and decreasing costs

    There are three buckets of metrics and KPIs where CRM will drive improvements

    The metrics of a smooth CRM selection and implementation process include:

    • Better alignment of CRM functionality to business needs.
    • Better functionality coverage of the selected platform.
    • Decreased licensing costs via better vendor negotiation.
    • Improved end-user satisfaction with the deployed solution.
    • Fewer errors and rework during implementation.
    • Reduced total implementation costs.
    • Reduced total implementation time.

    A successful CRM deployment drives revenue

    • Increased customer acquisition due to enhanced accuracy of segmentation and targeting, superior lead qualification, and pipeline management.
    • Increased customer satisfaction and retention due to targeted campaigns (e.g. customer-specific deals), quicker service incident resolution, and longitudinal relationship management.
    • Increased revenue per customer due to comprehensive lifecycle management tools, social engagement, and targeted upselling of related products and services (enabled by better reporting/analytics).

    A successful CRM deployment decreases cost

    • Deduplication of effort across business domains as marketing, sales, and service now have a common repository of customer information and interaction tools.
    • Increased sales and service agent efficiency due to their focus on selling and resolution, rather than administrative tasks and overhead.
    • Reduced cost-to-sell and cost-to-serve due to automation of activities that were manually intensive.
    • Reduced cost of accurate data due to embedded reporting and analytics functionality.

    CRM platforms sit at the core of a well-rounded customer engagement ecosystem

    At the center is 'Customer Relationship Management Platform' surrounded by 'Web Experience Management Platform', 'E-Commerce & Point-of-Sale Solutions', 'Social Media Management Platform', 'Customer Intelligence Platform', 'Customer Service Management Tools', and 'Marketing Management Suite'.

    Customer Experience Management (CXM) Portfolio

    Customer relationship management platforms are increasingly expansive in functional scope and foundational to an organization’s customer engagement strategy. Indeed, CRMs form the centerpiece for a comprehensive CXM system, alongside tools such as customer intelligence platforms and adjacent point solutions for sales, marketing, and customer service.

    Review Info-Tech’s CXM blueprint below to build a complete, end-to-end customer interaction solution portfolio that encompasses CRM alongside other critical components. The CXM blueprint also allows you to develop strategic requirements for CRM based on customer personas and external market analysis.

    Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management

    Sample of the 'Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management' blueprint. Design an end-to-end technology strategy to drive sales revenue, enhance marketing effectiveness, and create compelling experiences for your customers.

    View the blueprint

    Considering a CRM switch? Switching software vendors drives high satisfaction

    Eighty percent of organizations are more satisfied after changing their software vendor.

    • Most organizations see not only a positive change in satisfaction with their new vendor, but also a substantial change in satisfaction.
    • What matters is making sure your organization is well-positioned to make a switch.
    • When it comes to switching software vendors, the grass really can be greener on the other side.

    Over half of organizations are 60%+ more satisfied after changing their vendor.

    (Source: Info-Tech Research Group, "Switching Software Vendors Overwhelmingly Drives Increased Satisfaction", 2020.)

    IT is critical to the success of your CRM selection and rollout

    Today’s shared digital landscape of the CIO and CMO

    Info-Tech Insight

    Technology is the key enabler of building strong customer experiences: IT must stand shoulder to shoulder with the business to develop a technology framework for customer relationship management.

    CIO

    IT Operations

    Service Delivery and Management

    IT Support

    IT Systems and Application

    IT Strategy and Governance

    Cybersecurity
    Collaboration and Partnership

    Digital Strategy = Transformation
    Business Goals | Innovation | Leadership | Rationalization

    Customer Experience
    Architecture | Design | Omnichannel Delivery | Management

    Insight (Market Facing)
    Analytics | Business Intelligence | Machine Learning | AI

    Marketing Integration + Operating Model
    Apps | Channels | Experiences | Data | Command Center

    Master Data
    Customer | Audience | Industry | Digital Marketing Assets
    CMO

    PEO Media

    Brand Management

    Campaign Management

    Marketing Tech

    Marketing Ops

    Privacy, Trust, and Regulatory Requirements

    (Source: ZDNet, 2020)

    CRM by the numbers

    1/3

    Statistical analysis of CRM projects indicates failures vary from 18% to 69%. Taking an average of those analyst reports, about one-third of CRM projects are considered a failure. (Source: CIO Magazine, 2017)

    92%

    92% of organizations report that CRM use is important for accomplishing revenue objectives. (Source: Hall, 2020)

    40%

    In 2019, 40% of executives name customer experience the top priority for their digital transformation. (Source: CRM Magazine, 2019)

    Case Study

    Align strategy and technology to meet consumer demand.
    INDUSTRY
    Entertainment
    SOURCE
    Forbes, 2017
    Challenge

    Beginning as a mail-out service, Netflix offered subscribers a catalog of videos to select from and have mailed to them directly. Customers no longer had to go to a retail store to rent a video. However, the lack of immediacy of direct mail as the distribution channel resulted in slow adoption.

    Blockbuster was the industry leader in video retail but was lagging in its response to industry, consumer, and technology trends around customer experience.

    Solution

    In response to the increasing presence of tech-savvy consumers on the internet, Netflix invested in developing its online platform as its primary distribution channel. The benefit of doing so was two-fold: passive brand advertising (by being present on the internet) and meeting customer demands for immediacy and convenience. Netflix also recognized the rising demand for personalized service and created an unprecedented, tailored customer experience.

    Results

    Netflix’s disruptive innovation is built on the foundation of great customer experience management. Netflix is now a $28-billion company, which is tenfold what Blockbuster was worth.

    Netflix used disruptive technologies to innovatively build a customer experience that put it ahead of the long-time video rental industry leader, Blockbuster.

    CRM Buyer’s Guide

    Phase 1

    Understand CRM Features

    Phase 1

    1.1 Define CRM platforms

    1.2 Classify table stakes & differentiating capabilities

    1.3 Explore CRM trends

    Phase 2

    2.1 Build the business case

    2.2 Streamline requirements elicitation for CRM

    2.3 Construct the RFP

    Phase 3

    3.1 Discover key players in the CRM landscape

    3.2 Engage the shortlist & select finalist

    3.3 Prepare for implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Set a level of understanding of CRM technology.
    • Define which CRM features are table stakes (standard) and which are differentiating.
    • Identify the “Art of the Possible” in a modern CRM from a sales, marketing, and service lens.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • Applications manager
    • Project manager
    • Sales executive
    • Marketing executive
    • Customer service executive

    Understand CRM table stakes features

    Organizations can expect nearly all CRM vendors to provide the following functionality.

    Lead Management Pipeline Management Contact Management Campaign Management Customer Service Management
    • Tracks and captures a lead’s information, automatically building a profile. Leads are then qualified through contact scoring models. Assigning leads to sales is typically automated.
    • Enables oversight over future sales. Includes revenue forecasting based on past/present trends, tracking sales velocity, and identifying ineffective sales processes.
    • Tracks and stores customer data, including demography, account and billing history, social media, and contact information. Typically, records and fields can be customized.
    • Provides integrated omnichannel campaign functionality and data analysis of customer intelligence. Data insights can be used to drive new and effective marketing campaigns.
    • Provides integrated omnichannel customer experiences to provide convenient service. Includes case and ticket management, automated escalation rules, and third-party integrations.

    Identify differentiating CRM features

    While not always “must-have” functionality, these features may be the final dealbreaker when deciding between two CRM vendors.

    Image of clustered screens with various network and business icons surounding them.
    • Workflow Automation
      Automate repetitive tasks by creating workflows that trigger actions or send follow-up reminders for next steps.
    • Advanced Analytics and Reporting
      Provides customized dashboard visualizations, detailed reporting, AI-driven virtual assistants, data extraction & analysis, and ML forecasting.
    • Customizations and Open APIs
      Broad range of available customizations (e.g. for dashboards and fields), alongside ease of integration (e.g. via plugins or APIs).
    • Document Management
      Out-of-the-box centralized content repository for storing, uploading, and sharing documents.
    • Mobile Support
      Ability to support mobile devices, OSes, and platforms with a native application or HTML-based web-access.
    • Project and Task Management
      Native project and task management functionality, enhancing cross-team organization and communication.
    • Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ)
      Create and send quotes or proposals to prospective and current customers.

    Features aren’t everything – be wary of common CRM selection pitfalls

    You can have all the right features, but systemic problems will lead to poor CRM implementation. Dig out these root causes first to ensure a successful CRM selection.

    50% of organizations believe the quality of their CRM data is “very poor” or “neutral.”

    Without addressing data governance issues, CRMs will only be as good as your data.

    Source: (Validity 2020)
    27% of organizations report that bad data costs them 10% or more in lost revenue annually.
    42% rate the trust that users have in their data as “high” or “very high.”
    54% believe that sales forecasts are accurate or very accurate.
    69% attribute poor CRM governance to missing or incomplete data, followed by duplicate data, incorrect data, and expired data. Other data issues include siloed data or disparate systems.
    73% believe that they do not have a 360-degree view of their customers.

    Ensure you understand the “art of the possible” in the CRM landscape

    Knowing what is possible will help funnel which features are most suitable for your organization – having all the bells and whistles does not always equal strong ROI.

    Holistically examine the potential of any CRM solution through three main lenses: Stock image of a person working with dashboards.

    Sales

    Identify sales opportunities through recording customers’ interactions, generating leads, nurturing contacts, and forecasting revenues.
    Stock image of people experiencing digital ideas.

    Marketing

    Analyze customer interactions to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, drive customer loyalty, and use customer data for targeted campaigns.
    Stock image of a customer service representative.

    Customer Service

    Improve and optimize customer engagement and retention, leveraging customer data to provide round-the-clock omnichannel experiences.

    Art of the possible: Sales

    Stock image of a person working with dashboards.

    TRACK PROSPECT INTERACTIONS

    Want to engage with a prospect but don’t know what to lead with? CRM solutions can track and analyze many of the interactions a prospect has with your organization, including with fellow staff, their clickthrough rate on marketing material, and what services they are downloading on your website. This information can then auto-generate tasks to begin lead generation.

    COORDINATE LEAD SCORING

    Information captured from a prospect is generated into contact cards; missing data (such as name and company) can be auto-captured by the CRM via crawling sites such as LinkedIn. The CRM then centralizes and scores (according to inputted business rules) a lead’s potential, ensuring sales teams coordinate and keep a track of the lead’s journey without wrongful interference.

    AI-DRIVEN REVENUE FORECASTING

    Generate accurate forecasting reports using AI-driven “virtual assistants” within the CRM platform. These assistants are personal data scientists, quickly noting discrepancies, opportunities, and what-if scenarios – tasks that might take weeks to do manually. This pulled data is then auto-forecasted, with the ability to flexibly adjust to real-time data.

    Art of the possible: Marketing

    Stock image of people experiencing digital ideas.

    DRIVE LOYALTY

    Data captured and analyzed in the CRM from customer interactions builds profiles and a deeper understanding of customers’ interests. With this data, marketing teams can deliver personalized promotions and customer service to enhance loyalty – from sending a discount on a product the customer was browsing on the website, to providing notifications about delivery statuses.

    AUTOMATE WORKFLOWS

    Building customer profiles, learning spending habits, and charting a customer’s journey for upselling or cross-selling can be automated through workflows, saving hours of manual work. These workflows can immediately respond to customer enquiries or deliver offers to the customer’s preferred channel based on their prior usage.

    TARGETED CAMPAIGNING

    Information attained through a CRM platform directly informs any marketing strategy: identifying customer segments, spending habits, building a better product based on customer feedback, and identifying high-spending customers. With any new product or offering, it is straightforward for marketing teams to understand where to target their next campaign for highest impact.

    Art of the possible: Customer service

    Stock image of a customer service representative.

    OMNICHANNEL SUPPORT

    Rapidly changing demographics and modes of communications require an evolution toward omnichannel engagement. Many customers now expect to communicate with contact centers not just by voice, but via social media. Agents need customer information synced across each channel they use, meeting the customer’s needs where they are.

    INTELLIGENT SELF-SERVICE PORTALS

    Customers want their issues resolved as quickly as possible. Machine-learning self-service options deliver personalized customer experiences, which also reduce both agent call volume and support costs for the organization.

    LEVERAGING ANALYTICS

    The future of customer service is tied up with analytics. This not only entails AI-driven capabilities that fetch the agent relevant information, skills-based routing, and using biometric data (e.g. speech) for security. It also feeds operations leaders’ need for easy access to real insights about how their customers and agents are doing.

    Best-of-Breed Point Solutions

    Full CRM Suite

    Blue smiley face. Benefits
    • Features may be more advanced for specific functional areas and a higher degree of customization may be possible.
    • If a potential delay in real-time customer data transfer is acceptable, best-of-breeds provide a similar level of functionality to suites for a lower price.
    • Best-of-breeds allow value to be realized faster than suites, as they are easier and faster to implement and configure.
    • Rip and replace is easier, and vendor updates are relatively quick to market.
    Benefits
    • Everyone in the organization works from the same set of customer data.
    • There is a “lowest common denominator” for agent learning as consistent user interfaces lower learning curves and increase efficiency in usage.
    • There is a broader range of functionality using modules.
    • Integration between functional areas will be strong and the organization will be in a better position to enable version upgrades without risking invalidation of an integration point between separate systems.
    Green smiley face.
    Purple frowny face. Challenges
    • Best-of-breeds typically cover less breadth of functionality than suites.
    • There is a lack of uniformity in user experience across best-of-breeds.
    • Data integrity risks are higher.
    • Variable infrastructure may be implemented due to multiple disparate systems, which adds to architecture complexity and increased maintenance.
    • There is potential for redundant functionality across multiple best-of-breeds.
    Challenges
    • Suites exhibit significantly higher costs compared to point solutions.
    • Suite module functionality may not have the same depth as point solutions.
    • Due to high configuration availability and larger-scale implementation requirements, the time to deploy is longer than point solutions.
    Orange frowny face.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Even if a suite is missing a potential module, the proliferation of app extensions, integrations, and services could provide a solution. Salesforce’s AppExchange, for instance, offers a plethora of options to extend its CRM solution – from telephony integration, to gamification.

    CRM Buyer’s Guide

    Phase 2

    Build the Business Case & Elicit CRM Requirements

    Phase 1

    1.1 Define CRM platforms

    1.2 Classify table stakes & differentiating capabilities

    1.3 Explore CRM trends

    Phase 2

    2.1 Build the business case

    2.2 Streamline requirements elicitation for CRM

    2.3 Construct the RFP

    Phase 3

    3.1 Discover key players in the CRM landscape

    3.2 Engage the shortlist & select finalist

    3.3 Prepare for implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify goals, objectives, challenges, and costs to inform the business case for a new CRM platform.
    • Elicit and prioritize key requirements for your platform.
    • Port the requirements into Info-Tech’s CRM RFP Template.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • Applications manager
    • Project manager
    • Sales executive
    • Marketing executive
    • Customer service executive

    Right-size the CRM selection team to ensure you get the right information but are still able to move ahead quickly

    Full-Time Resourcing: At least one of these five team members must be allocated to the selection initiative as a full-time resource.

    A silhouetted figure.

    IT Leader

    A silhouetted figure.

    Technical Lead

    A silhouetted figure.

    Business Analyst/
    Project Manager

    A silhouetted figure.

    Business Lead

    A silhouetted figure.

    Process Expert(s)

    This team member is an IT director or CIO who will provide sponsorship and oversight from the IT perspective. This team member will focus on application security, integration, and enterprise architecture. This team member elicits business needs and translates them into technology requirements. This team member will provide sponsorship from the business needs perspective. Typically, a CMO or SVP of sales. These team members are the sales, marketing, and service process owners who will help steer the CRM requirements and direction.

    Info-Tech Insight

    It is critical for the selection team to determine who has decision rights. Organizational culture will play the largest role in dictating which team member holds the final say for selection decisions. For more information on stakeholder management and involvement, see this guide.

    Be prepared to define what issues you are trying to address and why a new CRM is the right approach

    Identify the current state and review the background of what you’ve done leading up to this point, goals you’ve been asked to meet, and challenges in solving known problems to help to set the stage for why your proposed solution is needed. If your process improvements have taken you as far as you can go without improved workflows or data, specify where the gaps are.
    Arrows with icons related to the text on the right merging into one arrow. Alignment

    Alignment to strategic goals is always important, but that is especially true with CRM because customer relationship management platforms are at the intersection of your organization and your customers. What are the strategic marketing, sales and customer service goals that you want to realize (in whole or in part) by improving your CRM ecosystem?

    Impact to your business

    Identify areas where your customers may be impacted by poor experiences due to inadequate or aging technology. What’s the impact on customer retention? On revenue?

    Impact to your organization

    Define how internal stakeholders within the organization are impacted by a sub-optimal CRM experience – what are their frustrations and pain points? How do issues with your current CRM environment prevent teams in sales, marketing, or service from doing their jobs?

    Impact to your department

    Describe the challenges within IT of using disparate systems, workarounds, poor data and reporting, lack of automation, etc., and the effect these challenges have on IT’s goals.

    Align the CRM strategy with the corporate strategy

    Corporate Strategy Unified Strategy CRM Strategy
    Spectrum spanning all columns.
    Your corporate strategy:
    • Conveys the current state of the organization and the path it wants to take.
    • Identifies future goals and business aspirations.
    • Communicates the initiatives that are critical for getting the organization from its current state to the future state.
    • The CRM strategy and the rationale for deploying a new CRM can be and should be linked, with metrics, to the corporate strategy and ultimate business objectives (such as improving customer acquisition, entering new segments, or improving customer lifetime value).
    Your CRM strategy:
    • Communicates the organization’s budget and spending on CRM.
    • Identifies IT initiatives that will support the business and key CRM objectives.
    • Outlines staffing and resourcing for CRM initiatives.
    CRM projects are more successful when the management team understands the strategic importance and the criticality of alignment. Time needs to be spent upfront aligning business strategies with CRM capabilities. Effective alignment between sales, marketing, customer service, operations, IT, and the business should happen daily. Alignment doesn’t just need to occur at the executive level, but also at each level of the organization.

    2.1 Create your list of goals and milestones for CRM

    1-3 hours

    Input: Corporate strategy, Target key performance indicators, End-user satisfaction results (if applicable)

    Output: Prioritized list of goals with milestones that can be met with a new or improved CRM solution

    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, CRM Business Case Template

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales or service SMEs

    1. Review strategic goals to identify alignment to your CRM selection project. For example, digital transformation may be enhanced or enabled with a CRM solution that supports better outreach to key customer segments through improved campaign management.
    2. Next, brainstorm tactical goals with your colleagues.
    3. Identify specific goals the organization has set for the business that may be supported by improved customer prospecting, customer service, or analytics functionality through a better CRM solution.
    4. Identify specific goals your organization will be able to make possible with a new or improved CRM solution.
    5. Prioritize this list and lead with the most important goal that can be reached at the one-year, six-month, and three-month milestones.
    6. Document in the goals section of your business case.

    Download the CRM Business Case Template and record the outputs of this exercise in the strategic business goals, business drivers, and technical drivers slides.

    Identify what challenges exist with the current environment

    Ensure you are identifying issues at a high level, so as not to drown in detail, but still paint the right picture. Identify technical issues that are impacting customer experience or business goals. Typical complaints for CRM solutions that are old or have been outgrown include:

    1.

    Lack of a flexible, configurable customer data model that supports complex relationships between accounts and contacts.

    2.

    Lack of a flexible, configurable customer data model that supports complex relationships between accounts and contacts.

    3.

    Lack of meaningful reports and useable dashboards, or difficulty in surfacing them.

    4.

    Poor change enablement resulting in business interruptions.

    5.

    Inability to effectively automate routine sales, marketing, or service tasks at scale via a workflow tool.

    6.

    Lack of proper service management features, such as service knowledge management.

    7.

    Inability to ingest customer data at scale (for example, no ability to automatically log e-mails or calls).

    8.

    Major technical deficiencies and outages – the incumbent CRM platform goes down, causing business disruption.

    9.

    The platform itself doesn’t exist in the current state – everything is done in Microsoft Excel!

    Separate business issues from technical issues, but highlight where they’re connected and where technical issues are causing business issues or preventing business goals from being reached.

    Before switching vendors, evaluate your existing CRM to see if it’s being underutilized or could use an upgrade

    The cost of switching vendors can be challenging, but it will depend entirely on the quality of data and whether it makes sense to keep it.
    • Achieving success when switching vendors first requires reflection. We need to ask why we are dissatisfied with our incumbent software.
    • If the product is old and inflexible, the answer may be obvious, but don’t be afraid to include your incumbent in your evaluation if your issues might be solved with an upgrade.
    • Look at your use-case requirements to see where you want to take the CRM solution and compare them to your incumbent’s roadmap. If they don’t match, switching vendors may be the only solution. If your roadmaps align, see if you’re fully leveraging the solution or will be able to start working through process improvements.
    Pie graph with a 20% slice. Pie graph with a 25% slice.

    20%

    Small/Medium Enterprises

    25%

    Large Enterprises
    only occasionally or rarely/never use their software (Source: Software Reviews, 2020; N = 45,027)
    Fully leveraging your current software now will have two benefits:
    1. It may turn out that poor leveraging of your incumbent software was the problem all along; switching vendors won’t solve the problem by itself. As the data to the right shows, a fifth of small/medium enterprises and a quarter of large enterprises do not fully leverage their incumbent software.
    2. If you still decide to switch, you’ll be in a good negotiating position. If vendors can see you are engaged and fully leveraging your software, they will be less complacent during negotiations to win you over.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Switching vendors won’t improve poor internal processes. To be fully successful and meet the goals of the business case, new software implementations must be accompanied by process review and improvement.

    2.2 Create your list of challenges as they relate to your goals and their impacts

    1-2 hours

    Input: Goals lists, Target key performance indicators, End-user satisfaction results (if applicable)

    Output: Prioritized list of challenges preventing or hindering customer experiences

    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, CRM Business Case Template

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales, or service SMEs

    1. Brainstorm with your colleagues to discuss your challenges with CRM today from an application and process lens.
    2. Identify how these challenges are impacting your ability to meet the goals and identify any that are creating customer-facing issues.
    3. Group together like areas and arrange in order of most impactful. Identify which of these issues will be most relevant to the business case for a new CRM platform.
    4. Document in the current-state section of your business case.
    5. Discuss and determine if the incumbent solution can meet your needs or if you’ll need to replace it with a different product.

    Download the CRM Business Case Template and document the outputs of this exercise in the current-state section of your business case.

    Determine costs of the solution

    Ensure the business case includes both internal and external costs related to the new CRM platform, allocating costs of project managers to improve accuracy of overall costs and level of success.

    CRM solutions include application costs and costs to design processes, install, and configure. These start-up costs can be a significant factor in whether the initial purchase is feasible.

    CRM Vendor Costs

    • Application licensing
    • Implementation and configuration
    • Professional services
    • Maintenance and support
    • Training
    • 3rd Party add-ons
    • Data transformation
    • Integration
    When thinking about vendor costs, also consider the matching internal cost associated with the vendor activity (e.g. data cleansing, internal support).

    Internal Costs

    • Project management
    • Business readiness
    • Change management
    • Resourcing (user groups, design/consulting, testing)
    • Training
    • Auditors (if regulatory requirements need vetting)
    Project management is a critical success factor at all stages of an enterprise application initiative from planning to post-implementation. Ensuring that costs for such critical areas are accurately represented will contribute to success.

    Download the blueprint Improve Your Statements of Work to Hold Your Vendors Accountable to define requirements for installation and configuration.

    Bring in the right resources to guarantee success. Work with the PMO or project manager to get help with creating the SOW.

    60% of IT projects are NOT finished “mostly or always” on time (Wellingtone, 2018).

    55% of IT personnel feel that the business objectives of their software projects are clear to them (Geneca, 2017).

    Document costs and expected benefits of the new CRM

    The business case should account for the timing of both expenditures and benefits. It is naïve to expect straight-line benefit realization or a big-bang cash outflow related to the solution implementation. Proper recognition and articulation of ramp-up time will make your business case more convincing.

    Make sure your timelines are realistic for benefits realization, as these will be your project milestones and your metrics for success.

    Example:
    Q1-Q2 Q3-Q6 Q6 Onwards

    Benefits at 25%

    At the early stages of an implementation, users are still learning the new system and go-live issues are being addressed. Most of the projected process improvements are likely to be low, zero, or even negative.

    Benefits at 75%

    Gradually, as processes become more familiar, an organization can expect to move closer to realizing the forecasted benefits or at least be in a position to recognize a positive trend toward their realization.

    Benefits at 100%

    In an ideal world, all projected benefits are realized at 100% or higher. This can be considered the stage where processes have been mastered, the system is operating smoothly, and change has been broadly adopted. In reality, benefits are often overestimated.

    Costs at 50%

    As with benefits, some costs may not kick in until later in the process or when the application is fully operational. In the early phases of implementation, factor in the cost of overlapping technology where you’ll need to run redundant systems and transition any data.

    Costs at 100%

    Costs are realized quicker than benefits as implementation activities are actioned, licensing and maintenance costs are introduced, and resourcing is deployed to support vendor activities internally. Costs that were not live in the early stages are an operational reality at this stage.

    Costs at 100%+

    Costs can be expected to remain relatively static past a certain point, if estimates accurately represented all costs. In many instances, costs can exceed original estimates in the business case, where costs were either underestimated, understated, or missed.

    2.3 Document your costs and expected benefits

    1-2 hours

    Input: Quotes with payment schedule, Budget

    Output: Estimated payment schedule and cost breakdown

    Materials: Spreadsheet or whiteboard, CRM Business Case Template

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales, or service SMEs

    1. Estimate costs for the CRM solution. If you’re working with a vendor, provide the initial requirements to quote; otherwise, estimate as closely as you’re able.
    2. Calculate the five-year total cost for the solution to ensure the long-term budget is calculated.
    3. Break down costs for licenses, implementation, training, internal support, and hardware or hosting fees.
    4. Determine a reasonable breakdown of costs for the first year.
    5. Identify where residual costs of the old system may factor in if there are remaining contract obligations during the technology transition.
    6. Create a list of benefits expected to be realized within the same timeline.

    Sample of the table on the previous slide.

    Download the CRM Business Case Template and document the outputs of this exercise in the current-state section of your business case.

    Identify risks and dependencies to mitigate barriers to success as you look to roll out a CRM suite

    A risk assessment will be helpful to better understand what risks need to be mitigated to make the project a success and what risks are pending should the solution not be approved or be delayed.

    Risk Criteria Relevant Questions
    Timeline Uncertainty
    • How much risk is associated with the timeline of the CRM project?
    • Is this timeline realistic and can you reach some value in the first year?
    Success of Similar Projects
    • Have we undertaken previous projects that are similar?
    • Were those successful?
    • Did we note any future steps for improvement?
    Certainty of Forecasts
    • Where have the numbers originated?
    • How comfortable are the sponsors with the revenue and cost forecasts?
    Chance of Cost Overruns
    • How likely is the project to have cost overruns?
    • How much process and design work needs to be done prior to implementation?
    Resource Availability
    • Is this a priority project?
    • How likely are resourcing issues from a technical and business perspective?
    • Do we have the right resources?
    Change During Delivery
    • How volatile is the area in which the project is being implemented?
    • Are changes in the environment likely?
    • How complex are planned integrations?

    2.4 Identify risks to the success of the solution rollout and mitigation plan

    1-2 hours

    Input: List of goals and challenges, Target key performance indicators

    Output: Prioritized list of challenges preventing or hindering improvements for the IT teams

    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, CRM Business Case Template

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales, or service SMEs

    1. Brainstorm with your colleagues to discuss potential roadblocks and risks that could impact the success of the CRM project.
    2. Identify how these risks could impact your project.
    3. Document the ones that are most likely to occur and derail the project.
    4. Discuss potential solutions to mitigate risks.

    Download the CRM Business Case Template and document the outputs of this exercise in the risk and dependency section of your business case. If the risk assessment needs to be more complex, complete the Risk Indicator Analysis in Info-Tech’s Business Case Workbook.

    Start requirements gathering by identifying your most important use cases across sales, marketing, and service

    Add to your business case by identifying which top-level use cases will meet your goals.

    Examples of target use cases for a CRM project include:

    • Enhance sales acquisition capabilities (i.e. via pipeline management)
    • Enhance customer upsell and cross-sell capabilities
    • Improve customer segmentation and targeting capabilities for multi-channel marketing campaigns
    • Strengthen customer care capabilities to improve customer satisfaction and retention (i.e. via improved case management and service knowledge management)
    • Create actionable insights via enhanced reporting and analytics

    Info-Tech Insight

    Lead with the most important benefit and consider the timeline. Can you reach that goal and report success to your stakeholders within the first year? As you look toward that one-year goal, you can consider secondary benefits, some of which may be opportunities to bring early value in the solution.

    Benefits of a successful deployment of use cases will include:
    • Improved customer satisfaction
    • Improved operational efficiencies
    • Reduced customer turnover
    • Increased platform uptime
    • License or regulatory compliance
    • Positioned for growth

    Typically, we see business benefits in this order of importance. Lead with the outcome that is most important to your stakeholders.

    • Net income increases
    • Revenue generators
    • Cost reductions
    • Improved customer service

    Consider perspectives of each stakeholder to ensure functionality needs are met and high satisfaction results

    Best of breed vs. “good enough” is an important discussion and will feed your success.

    Costs can be high when customizing an ill-fitting module or creating workarounds to solve business problems, including loss of functionality, productivity, and credibility.

    • Start with use cases to drive the initial discussion, then determine which features are mandatory and which are nice-to-haves. Mandatory features will help determine high success for critical functionality and identify where “good enough” is an acceptable state.
    • Consider the implications to implementation and all use cases of buying an all-in-one solution, integration of multiple best-of-breed solutions, or customizing features that were not built into a solution.
    • Be prepared to shelve a use case for this solution and look to alternatives for integration where mandatory features cannot meet highly specialized needs that are outside of traditional CRM solutions.

    Pros and Cons

    Build vs. Buy

    Multi-Source Best of Breed

    Flexibility
    vs.
    architectural complexity

    Vendor Add-Ons & Integrations

    Lower support costs
    vs.
    configuration

    Multi-source Custom

    Flexibility
    vs.
    high skills requirements

    Single Source

    Lower support costs
    vs.
    configuration

    2.5 Define use cases and high-level features for meeting business and technical goals

    1-2 hours

    Input: List of goals and challenges

    Output: Use cases to be used for determining requirements

    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, CRM Business Case Template

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales, or service SMEs

    1. Identify the key customer engagement use cases that will support your overall goals as defined in the previous section.
    2. The following slide has examples of use case domains that will be enhanced from a CRM platform.
    3. Define high-level goals you wish to achieve in the first year and longer term. If you have more specific KPIs to add, and it is a requirement for your organization’s documentation, add them to this section.
    4. Take note of where processes will need to be improved to benefit from these use-case solutions – the tools are only as good as the process behind them.

    Download the CRM Business Case Template and document the outputs from this exercise in the current-state section of your business case.

    Understand the dominant use-case scenarios across organizations to narrow the list of potential CRM solutions

    Sales
    Enablement

    • Generate leads through multiple channels.
    • Rapidly sort, score, and prioritize leads based on multiple criteria.
    • Create in-depth sales forecasts segmented by multiple criteria (territory, representative, etc.).

    Marketing
    Management

    • Manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels (web, social, email, etc.).
    • Aggregate and analyze customer data to generate market intelligence.
    • Build and deploy customer-facing portals.

    Customer Service
    Management

    • Generate tickets, and triage customer service requests through multiple channels.
    • Track customer service interactions with cases.
    • There is a need to integrate customer records with contact center infrastructure.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Use your understanding of the CRM use case to accelerate the vendor shortlisting process. Since the CRM use case has a direct impact on the prioritization of a platform’s features and capabilities, you can rapidly eliminate vendors from contention or designate superfluous modules as out-of-scope.

    2.5.1 Use Info-Tech’s CRM Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool to align your CRM requirements to the vendor use cases

    30 min

    Input: Understanding of business objectives for CRM project, Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool

    Output: Use-case suitability

    Materials: Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool

    Participants: Core project team, Project managers

    1. Use the Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool to understand how your unique business requirements map into which CRM use case.
    2. This tool will assess your answers and determine your relative fit against the use-case scenarios.
    3. Fit will be assessed as “Weak,” “Moderate,” or “Strong.”
      1. Consider the common pitfalls, which were mentioned earlier, that can cause IT projects to fail. Plan and take clear steps to avoid or mitigate these concerns.
      2. Note: These use-case scenarios are not mutually exclusive, meaning your organization can align with one or more scenarios based on your answers. If your organization shows close alignment to multiple scenarios, consider focusing on finding a more robust solution and concentrate your review on vendors that performed strongly in those scenarios or meet the critical requirements for each.

    Download the CRM Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool

    Once you’ve identified the top-level use cases a CRM must support, elicit, and prioritize granular platform requirements.

    Understanding business needs through requirements gathering is the key to defining everything about what is being purchased, yet it is an area where people often make critical mistakes.

    Info-Tech Insight

    To avoid creating makeshift solutions, an organization needs to gather requirements with the desired future state in mind.

    Risks of poorly scoped requirements

    • Fail to be comprehensive and miss certain areas of scope
    • Focus on how the solution should work instead of what it must accomplish
    • Have multiple levels of detail within the requirements, which are inconsistent and confusing
    • Drill all the way down into system-level detail
    • Add unnecessary constraints based on what is done today rather than focusing on what is needed for tomorrow
    • Omit constraints or preferences that buyers think are “obvious”

    Best practices

    • Get a clear understanding of what the system needs to do and what it is expected to produce
    • Test against the principle of MECE – requirements should be “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive”
    • Explicitly state the obvious and assume nothing
    • Investigate what is sold on the market and how it is sold. Use language that is consistent with that of the market and focus on key differentiators – not table stakes
    • Contain the appropriate level of detail – the level should be suitable for procurement and sufficient for differentiating vendors

    Prioritize requirements to assist with vendor selection: focus on priority requirements linked to differentiated capabilities

    Prioritization is the process of ranking each requirement based on its importance to project success. Hold a meeting for the domain SMEs, implementation SMEs, project managers, and project sponsors to prioritize the requirements list. At the conclusion of the meeting, each requirement should be assigned a priority level. The implementation SMEs will use these priority levels to ensure efforts are targeted toward the proper requirements and to plan features available on each release. Use the MoSCoW Model of Prioritization to effectively order requirements.


    Pyramid of the MoSCoW Model.
    The MoSCoW model was introduced by Dai Clegg of Oracle UK in 1994.

    The MoSCoW Model of Prioritization

    Requirements must be implemented for the solution to be considered successful.

    Requirements that are high priority should be included in the solution if possible.

    Requirements are desirable but not necessary and could be included if resources are available.

    Requirements won’t be in the next release, but will be considered for the future releases.

    Base your prioritization on the right set of criteria

    Effective Prioritization Criteria

    Criteria

    Description

    Regulatory & Legal Compliance These requirements will be considered mandatory.
    Policy Compliance Unless an internal policy can be altered or an exception can be made, these requirements will be considered mandatory.
    Business Value Significance Give a higher priority to high-value requirements.
    Business Risk Any requirement with the potential to jeopardize the entire project should be given a high priority and implemented early.
    Likelihood of Success Especially in “proof of concept” projects, it is recommended that requirements have good odds.
    Implementation Complexity Give a higher priority to low implementation difficulty requirements.
    Alignment With Strategy Give a higher priority to requirements that enable the corporate strategy.
    Urgency Prioritize requirements based on time sensitivity.
    Dependencies A requirement on its own may be low priority, but if it supports a high-priority requirement, then its priority must match it.

    2.6 Identify requirements to support your use cases

    1-2 hours

    Input: List of goals and challenges

    Output: Use cases to be used for determining requirements

    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Vendor Evaluation Workbook

    Participants: CIO, Application managers, CMO/SVP sales, Marketing, sales, or service SMEs

    1. Work with the team to identify which features will be most important to support your use cases. Keep in mind there will be some features that will require more effort to implement fully. Add that into your project plan.
    2. Use the features lists on the following slides as a guide to get started on requirements.
    3. Prioritize your requirements list into mandatory features and nice-to-have features (or use the MoSCoW model from the previous slides). This will help you to eliminate vendors who don’t meet bare minimums and to score remaining vendors.
    4. Use this same list to guide your vendor demos.

    Our Improve Requirements Gathering blueprint provides a deep dive into the process of eliciting, analyzing, and validating requirements if you need to go deeper into effective techniques.

    CRM features

    Table stakes vs. differentiating

    What is a table stakes/standard feature?

    • Certain features are standard for all CRM tools, but that doesn’t mean they are all equal.
    • The existence of features doesn’t guarantee their quality or functionality to the standards you need. Never assume that “Yes” in a features list means you don’t need to ask for a demo.
    • If Table Stakes are all you need from your CRM solution, the only true differentiator for the organization is price. Otherwise, dig deeper to find the best price to value for your needs.

    What is a differentiating/additional feature?

    • Differentiating features take two forms:
      • Some CRM platforms offer differentiating features that are vertical specific.
      • Other CRM platforms offer differentiating features that are considered cutting edge. These cutting-edge features may become table stakes over time.

    Table stakes features for CRM

    Account Management Flexible account database that stores customer information, account history, and billing information. Additional functionality includes: contact deduplication, advanced field management, document linking, and embedded maps.
    Interaction Logging and Order History Ability to view all interactions that have occurred between sales teams and the customer, including purchase order history.
    Basic Pipeline Management View of all opportunities organized by their current stage in the sales process.
    Basic Case Management The ability to create and manage cases (for customer service or order fulfilment) and associate them with designated accounts or contacts.
    Basic Campaign Management Basic multi-channel campaign management (i.e. ability to execute outbound email campaigns). Budget tracking and campaign dashboards.
    Reports and Analytics In-depth reports on CRM data with dashboards and analytics for a variety of audiences.
    Mobile Support Mobile access across multiple devices (tablets, smartphones and/or wearables) with access to CRM data and dashboards.

    Additional features for CRM

    Customer Information Management Customizable records with detailed demographic information and the ability to created nested accounts (accounts with associated sub-accounts or contact records).
    Advanced Case Management Ability to track detailed interactions with members or constituents through a case view.
    Employee Collaboration Capabilities for employee-to-employee collaboration, team selling, and activity streams.
    Customer Collaboration Capabilities for outbound customer collaboration (i.e. the ability to create customer portals).
    Lead Generation Capabilities for generating qualified leads from multiple channels.
    Lead Nurturing/Lead Scoring The ability to evaluate lead warmth using multiple customer-defined criteria.
    Pipeline and Deal Management Managing deals through cases, providing quotes, and tracking client deliverables.

    Additional features for CRM (Continued)

    Marketing Campaign Management Managing outbound marketing campaigns via multiple channels (email, phone, social, mobile).
    Customer Intelligence Tools for in-depth customer insight generation and segmentation, predictive analytics, and contextual analytics.
    Multi-Channel Support Capabilities for supporting customer interactions across multiple channels (email, phone, social, mobile, IoT, etc.).
    Customer Service Workflow Management Capabilities for customer service resolution, including ticketing and service management.
    Knowledge Management Tools for capturing and sharing CRM-related knowledge, especially for customer service.
    Customer Journey Mapping Visual workflow builder with automated trigger points and business rules engine.
    Document Management The ability to curate assets and attachments and add them to account or contact records.
    Configure, Price, Quote The ability to create sales quotes/proposals from predefined price lists and rules.

    2.7 Put it all together – port your requirements into a robust RFP template that you can take to market!

    1-2 hours
    1. Once you’ve captured and prioritized your requirements – and received sign-off on them from key stakeholders – it’s time to bake them into a procurement vehicle of your choice.
    2. For complex enterprise systems like a CRM platform, Info-Tech recommends that this should take the form of a structured RFP document.
    3. Use our CRM RFP Template and associated CRM RFP Scoring Tool to jump-start the process.
    4. The next step will be conducting a market scan to identify contenders, and issuing the RFP to a shortlist of viable vendors for further evaluation.

    Need additional guidance on running an effective RFP process? Our Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes with a Robust RFP Process has everything you need to ace the creation, administration and assessment of RFPs!

    Samples of the CRM Request for Proposal Template and CRM Suite Evaluation and RFP Scoring Tool.

    Download the CRM Request for Proposal Template

    Download the CRM Suite Evaluation and RFP Scoring Tool

    Identify whether vertical-specific CRM platforms are a best fit

    In mature vendor landscapes (like CRM) vendors begin to differentiate themselves by offering vertical-specific platforms, modules, or feature sets. These feature sets accelerate the implantation, decrease the platform’s learning curve, and drive user adoption. The three use cases below cover the most common industry-specific offerings:

    Public Sector

    • Constituent management and communication.
    • Constituent portal deployment for self-service.
    • Segment constituents based on geography, needs and preferences.

    Education

    • Top-level view into the student journey from prospect to enrolment.
    • Track student interactions with services across the institution.
    • Unify communications across different departments.

    Financial Services

    • Determine customer proclivity for new services.
    • Develop self-service banking portals.
    • Track longitudinal customer relationships from first account to retirement management.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Vertical-specific solutions require less legwork to do upfront but could cost you more in the long run. Interoperability and vendor viability must be carefully examined. Smaller players targeting niche industries often have limited integration ecosystems and less funding to keep pace with feature innovation.

    Rein-in ballooning scope for CRM selection projects

    Stretching the CRM beyond its core capabilities is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Educate stakeholders about the limits of CRM technology.

    Common pitfalls for CRM selection

    • Tangential capabilities may require separate solutions. It is common for stakeholders to list features such as “content management” as part of the new CRM platform. While content management goes hand in hand with the CRM’s ability to manage customer interactions, document management is best handled by a standalone platform.

    Keeping stakeholders engaged and in line

    • Ballooning scope leads to stakeholder dissatisfaction. Appeasing stakeholders by over-customizing the platform will lead to integration and headaches down the road.
    • Make sure stakeholders feel heard. Do not turn down ideas in the midst of an elicitation session. Once the requirements-gathering sessions are completed, the project team has the opportunity to mark requirements as “out of scope” and communicate the reasoning behind the decision.
    • Educate stakeholders on the core functionality of CRM. Many stakeholders do not know the best-fit use cases for CRM platforms. Help end users understand what CRM is good at and where additional technologies will be needed.
    Stock image of a man leaping with a balloon.

    CRM Buyer’s Guide

    Phase 3

    Discover the CRM Market Space & Prepare for Implementation

    Phase 1

    1.1 Define CRM platforms

    1.2 Classify table stakes & differentiating capabilities

    1.3 Explore CRM trends

    Phase 2

    2.1 Build the business case

    2.2 Streamline requirements elicitation for CRM

    2.3 Construct the RFP

    Phase 3

    3.1 Discover key players in the CRM landscape

    3.2 Engage the shortlist & select finalist

    3.3 Prepare for implementation

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Dive into the key players of the CRM vendor landscape.
    • Understand best practices for building a vendor shortlist.
    • Understand key implementation considerations for CRM.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • Applications manager
    • Project manager
    • Sales executive
    • Marketing executive
    • Customer service executive

    Consolidating the Vendor Shortlist Up-Front Reduces Downstream Effort

    Put the “short” back in shortlist!

    • Radically reduce effort by narrowing the field of potential vendors earlier in the selection process. Too many organizations don’t funnel their vendor shortlist until nearing the end of the selection process. The result is wasted time and effort evaluating options that are patently not a good fit.
    • Leverage external data (such as SoftwareReviews) and expert opinion to consolidate your shortlist into a smaller number of viable vendors before the investigative interview stage and eliminate time spent evaluating dozens of RFP responses.
    • Having fewer RFP responses to evaluate means you will have more time to do greater due diligence.
    Stock image of river rapids.

    Review your use cases to start your shortlist

    Your Info-Tech analysts can help you narrow down the list of vendors that will meet your requirements.

    Next steps will include:
    1. Reviewing your requirements
    2. Checking out SoftwareReviews
    3. Shortlisting your vendors
    4. Conducting demos and detailed proposal reviews
    5. Selecting and contracting with a finalist!
    Image of a person presenting a dashboard of the steps on the left.

    Get to know the key players in the CRM landscape

    The proceeding slides provide a top-level overview of the popular players you will encounter in the CRM shortlisting process.

    Logos of the key players in the CRM landscape (Salesforce, Microsoft, Oracle, HubSpot, etc).

    Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

    SoftwareReviews

    Sample of SoftwareReviews' Data Quadrant Report. Title page of SoftwareReviews' Data Quadrant Report. The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions.

    Vendors are ranked by their Composite Score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.

    Sample of SoftwareReviews' Emotional Footprint. Title page of SoftwareReviews' Emotional Footprint. The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.

    Vendors are ranked by their Customer Experience (CX) Score, which combines the overall Emotional Footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

    Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

    SoftwareReviews

    Icon of a person.


    Fact-based reviews of business software from IT professionals.

    Icon of a magnifying glass over a chart.


    Top-tier data quality backed by a rigorous quality assurance process.

    CLICK HERE to ACCESS

    Comprehensive software reviews to make better IT decisions

    We collect and analyze the most detailed reviews on enterprise software from real users to give you an unprecedented view into the product and vendor before you buy.

    Icon of a tablet.


    Product and category reports with state-of-the-art data visualization.

    Icon of a phone.


    User-experience insight that reveals the intangibles of working with a vendor.

    SoftwareReviews is powered by Info-Tech

    Technology coverage is a priority for Info-Tech, and SoftwareReviews provides the most comprehensive unbiased data on today’s technology. Combined with the insights of our expert analysts, our members receive unparalleled support in their buying journey.

    Logo for Salesforce.
    Est. 1999 | CA, USA | NYSE: CRM

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account. Link for their LinkedIn profile. Link for their website.
    Sales Cloud Enterprise allows you to be more efficient, more productive, more everything than ever before as it allows you to close more deals, accelerate productivity, get more leads, and make more insightful decisions.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:
    • Breadth of features
    • Quality of features
    • Sales management functionality
    Areas to Improve:
    • Cost of service
    • Ease of implementation
    • Telephony and contact center management
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.0
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.3
    CX SCORE
    +77
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    83%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 600
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a Salesforce screen. Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Salesforce from our members for CRM? 'Very Frequently'.
    History of Salesforce in a vertical timeline.
    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for Salesforce.

    “Salesforce is the pre-eminent vendor in the CRM marketplace and is a force to be reckoned with in terms of the breadth and depth of its capabilities. The company was an early disruptor in the category, placing a strong emphasis from the get-go on a SaaS delivery model and strong end-user experience. This allowed them to rapidly gain market share at the expense of more complacent enterprise application vendors. A series of savvy acquisitions over the years has allowed Salesforce to augment their core Sales and Service Clouds with a wide variety of other solutions, from e-commerce to marketing automation to CPQ. Salesforce is a great fit for any organization looking to partner with a market leader with excellent functional breadth, strong interoperability, and a compelling technology and partner ecosystem. All of this comes at a price, however – Salesforce prices at a premium, and our members routinely opine that Salesforce’s commercial teams are overly aggressive – sometimes pushing solutions without a clear link to underpinning business requirements.”

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    Sales Cloud Essentials Sales Cloud Professional Sales Cloud Enterprise Sales Cloud Ultimate
    • Starts at $25*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small businesses after basic functionality
    • Starts at $75*
    • Per user/mo
    • Mid-market target
    • Starts at $150*
    • Per user/mo
    • Enterprise target
    • Starts at $300*
    • Per user/mo
    • Strong upmarket feature additions
    Logo for Microsoft.


    Est. 1975 | WA, USA | NYSE: MSFT

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Dynamics 365 Sales is an adaptive selling solution that helps your sales team navigate the realities of modern selling. At the center of the solution is an adaptive, intelligent system – prebuilt and ready to go – that actively monitors myriad signals and distills them into actionable insights.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Business value created
    • Analytics and reporting
    • Lead management

    Areas to Improve:

    • Quote, contract, and proposals
    • Vendor support
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.1
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.3
    CX SCORE
    +84
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    82%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 198
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a Microsoft screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Microsoft Dynamics from our Members? 'Very Frequently'.

    History of Microsoft in a vertical timeline.

    *Pricing correct as of June 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for Microsoft.
    “”

    “Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a strong and compelling player in the CRM arena. While Microsoft is no stranger to the CRM space, their offerings here have seen steady and marked improvement over the last five years. Good functional breadth paired with a modern user interface and best-in-class Microsoft stack compatibility ensures that we consistently see them on our members’ shortlists, particularly when our members are looking to roll out CRM capabilities alongside other components of the Dynamics ecosystem (such as Finance, Operations, and HR). Today, Microsoft segments the offering into discrete modules for sales, service, marketing, commerce, and CDP. While Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a strong option, it’s occasionally mired by concerns that the pace of innovation and investment lags Salesforce (its nearest competitor). Additionally, the marketing module of the product is softer than some of its competitors, and Microsoft themselves points organizations with complex marketing requirements to a strategic partnership that they have with Adobe.”

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    D365 Sales Professional D365 Sales Enterprise D365 Sales Premium
    • Starts at $65*
    • Per user/mo
    • Midmarket focus
    • Starts at $95*
    • Per user/mo
    • Enterprise focus
    • Starts at $135*
    • Per user/mo
    • Enterprise focus with customer intelligence
    Logo for Oracle.


    Est. 1977 | CA, USA | NYSE: ORCL

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Oracle Engagement Cloud (CX Sales) provides a set of capabilities to help sales leaders transition smoothly from sales planning and execution through customer onboarding, account management, and support services.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Quality of features
    • Activity and workflow management
    • Analytics and reporting

    Areas to Improve:

    • Marketing management
    • Product strategy & rate of improvement
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    7.8
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    7.9
    CX SCORE
    +77
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    78%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 140
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of an Oracle screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Oracle from our members for CRM? 'Frequently'.

    History of Oracle in a vertical timeline.

    Logo for Oracle.

    “Oracle is long-term juggernaut of the enterprise applications space. Their CRM portfolio is diverse – rather than a single stack, there are multiple Oracle solutions (many made by acquisition) that support CRM capabilities – everything from Siebel to JD Edwards to NetSuite to Oracle CX applications. The latter constitute Oracle’s most modern stab at CRM and are where the bulk of feature innovation and product development is occurring within their portfolio. While historically seen as lagging behind other competitors like Salesforce and Microsoft, Oracle has made excellent strides in improving their user experience (via their Redwoods design paradigm) and building new functional capabilities within their CRM products. Indeed, SoftwareReviews shows Oracle performing well in our most recent peer-driven reports. Nonetheless, we most commonly see Oracle as a pricier ecosystem play that’s often subordinate to a heavy Oracle footprint for ERP. Many of our members also express displeasure with Oracle as a vendor and highlight their heavy-handed “threat of audit” approach. ”

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    Oracle CX Sales - Pricing Opaque:

    “Request a Demo”

    Logo for SAP.


    Est. 1972 | Germany | NYSE: SAP

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    SAP is the third-largest independent software manufacturer in the world, with a presence in over 120 countries. Having been in the industry for over 40 years, SAP is perhaps best known for its ERP application, SAP ERP.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Ease of data integration

    Areas to Improve:

    • Lead management
    • Marketing management
    • Collaboration
    • Usability & intuitiveness
    • Analytics & reporting
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    7.4
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    7.8
    CX SCORE
    +74
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    75%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 108
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a SAP screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about SAP from our members for CRM? 'Occasionally'.

    History of SAP in a vertical timeline.

    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for SAP.

    “SAP is another mainstay of the enterprise applications market. While they have a sound breadth of capabilities in the CRM and customer experience space, SAP consistently underperforms in many of our relevant peer-driven SoftwareReviews reports for CRM and adjacent areas. CRM seems decidedly a secondary focus for SAP, behind their more compelling play in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space. Indeed, most instances where we see SAP in our clients’ shortlists, it’s as an ecosystem play within a broader SAP strategy. If you’re blue on the ERP side, looking to SAP’s capabilities on the CRM front makes logical sense and can help contain costs. If you’re approaching a CRM selection from a greenfield lens and with no legacy vendor baggage for SAP elsewhere, experience suggests you’ll be better served by a vendor that places a higher degree of primacy on the CRM aspect of their portfolio.”

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    SAP CRM - Pricing Opaque:

    “Request a Demo”

    Logo for pipedrive.


    Est. 2010 | NY, USA | Private

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Pipedrive brings together the tools and data, the platform focuses sales professionals on fundamentals to advance deals through their pipelines. Pipedrive's goal is to make sales success inevitable - for salespeople and teams.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Sales Management
    • Account & Contact Management
    • Lead Management
    • Usability & Intuitiveness
    • Ease of Implementation

    Areas to Improve:

    • Customer Service Management
    • Marketing Management
    • Product Strategy & Rate of Improvement
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.3
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.4
    CX SCORE
    +85
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    85%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 262
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a Pipedrive screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Pipedrive from our members for CRM? 'Occasionally'.

    History of Pipedrive in a vertical timeline.

    *Pricing correct as of June 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for Pipedrive.

    “A relatively new offering, Pipedrive has seen explosive growth over the last five years. They’re a vendor that has gone from near-obscurity to popping up frequently on our members’ shortlists. Pipedrive’s secret sauce has been a relentless focus on high-velocity sales enablement. Their focus on pipeline management, lead assessment and routing, and a good single pane of glass for sales reps has driven significant traction for the vendor when sales enablement is the driving rationale behind rolling out a new CRM platform. Bang for your buck is also strong with Pipedrive, with the vendor having a value-driven licensing and implementation model.

    Pipedrive is not without some shortcomings. It’s laser-focus on sales enablement is at the expense of deep capabilities for marketing and service management, and its profile lends itself better to SMBs and lower midmarket than it does large organizations looking for enterprise-grade CRM.”

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    Essential Advanced Professional Enterprise
    • Starts at $12.50*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small businesses after basic functionality
    • Starts at $24.90*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small/mid-sized businesses
    • Starts at $49.90*
    • Per user/mo
    • Lower mid-market focus
    • Starts at $99*
    • Per user/mo
    • Enterprise focus
    Logo for SugarCRM.


    Est. 2004 | CA, USA | Private

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Produces Sugar, a SaaS-based customer relationship management application. SugarCRM is backed by Accel-KKR.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Ease of customization
    • Product strategy and rate of improvement
    • Ease of IT administration

    Areas to Improve:

    • Marketing management
    • Analytics and reporting
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.4
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.8
    CX SCORE
    +92
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    84%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 97
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a SugarCRM screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about SugarCRM from our members for CRM? 'Frequently'.
    History of SugarCRM in a vertical timeline.
    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for SugarCRM.

    “SugarCRM offers reliable baseline capabilities at a lower price point than other large CRM vendors. While SugarCRM does not offer all the bells and whistles that an Enterprise Salesforce plan might, SugarCRM is known for providing excellent vendor support. If your organization is only after standard features, SugarCRM will be a good vendor to shortlist.

    However, ensure you have the time and labor power to effectively implement and train on SugarCRM’s solutions. SugarCRM does not score highly for user-friendly experiences, with complaints centering on outdated and unintuitive interfaces. Setting up customized modules takes time to navigate, and SugarCRM does not provide a wide range of native integrations with other applications. To effectively determine whether SugarCRM does offer a feasible solution, it is recommended that organizations know exactly what kinds of integrations and modules they need.”

    Thomas Randall
    Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Sugar Professional Sugar Serve Sugar Sell Sugar Enterprise Sugar Market
    • Starts at $52*
    • Per user/mo
    • Min. 3 users
    • Small businesses
    • Starts at $80*
    • Per user/mo
    • Min. 3 users
    • Focused on customer service
    • Starts at $80*
    • Per user/mo
    • Min. 3 users
    • Focused on sales automation
    • Starts at $80*
    • Per user/mo
    • Min. 3 users
    • On-premises, mid-sized businesses
    • Starts at $1000*
    • Priced per month
    • Min. 10k contacts
    • Large enterprise
    Logo for .


    Est. 2006 | MA, USA | HUBS (NYSE)

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Develops software for inbound customer service, marketing, and sales. Software includes CRM, SMM, lead gen, SEO, and web analytics.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Breadth of features
    • Product strategy and rate of improvement
    • Ease of customization

    Areas to Improve:

    • Ease of data integration
    • Customer service management
    • Telephony and call center management
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.3
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.4
    CX SCORE
    +84
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    86%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 97
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a HubSpot screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about HubSpot from our members for CRM? 'Frequently'.

    History of HubSpot in a vertical timeline.

    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for HubSpot.

    “ HubSpot is best suited for small to mid-sized organizations that need a range of CRM tools to enable growth across sales, marketing campaigns, and customer service. Indeed, HubSpot offers a content management solution that offers a central storage location for all customer and marketing data. Moreover, HubSpot offers plenty of freemium tools for users to familiarize themselves with the software before buying. However, though HubSpot is geared toward growing businesses, smaller organizations may not see high ROI until they begin to scale. The “Starter” and “Professional” plans’ pricing is often cited by small organizations as a barrier to commitment, and the freemium tools are not a sustainable solution. If organizations can take advantage of discount behaviors from HubSpot (e.g. a startup discount), HubSpot will be a viable long-term solution. ”

    Thomas Randall
    Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Starter Professional Enterprise
    • Starts at $50*
    • Per month
    • Min. 2 users
    • Small businesses
    • Starts at $500*
    • Per month
    • Min. 5 users
    • Small/mid-sized businesses
    • Starts at $1200*
    • Billed yearly
    • Min. 10 users
    • Mid-sized/small enterprise
    Logo for Zoho.


    Est. 1996 | India | Private

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Zoho Corporation offers a cloud software suite, providing a full operating system for CRM, alongside apps for finance, productivity, HR, legal, and more.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Business value created
    • Breadth of features
    • Collaboration capabilities

    Areas to Improve:

    • Usability and intuitiveness
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    8.7
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    8.9
    CX SCORE
    +92
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    85%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 152
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a Zoho screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Zoho from our members for CRM? 'Occasionally'.

    History of Zoho in a vertical timeline.

    *
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for Zoho.

    “Zoho has a long list of software solutions for businesses to run end to end. As one of Zoho’s earliest software releases, though, ZohoCRM remains a flagship product. ZohoCRM’s pricing is incredibly competitive for mid/large enterprises, offering high business value for its robust feature sets. For those organizations that already utilize Zoho solutions (such as its productivity suite), ZohoCRM will be a natural extension.

    However, small/mid-sized businesses may wonder how much ROI they can get from ZohoCRM, when much of the functionality expected from a CRM (such as workflow automation) cannot be found until one jumps to the “Enterprise” plan. Given the “Enterprise” plan’s pricing is on par with other CRM vendors, there may not be much in a smaller organization’s eyes that truly distinguishes ZohoCRM unless they are already invested Zoho users.”

    Thomas Randall
    Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Standard Professional Enterprise Ultimate
    • Starts at $20*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small businesses after basic functionality
    • Starts at $35*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small/mid-sized businesses
    • Adds inventory management
    • Starts at $50*
    • Per user/mo
    • Mid-sized/small enterprise
    • Adds Zia AI
    • Starts at $65*
    • Per user/mo
    • Enterprise
    • Bundles Zoho Analytics
    Logo for Zendesk.


    Est. 2009 | CA, USA | ZEN (NYSE)

    bio

    Link for their Twitter account.Link for their LinkedIn profile.Link for their website.
    Software developer for customer service. Founded in Copenhagen but moved to San Francisco after $6 million Series B funding from Charles River Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise CRM Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Quality of features
    • Breadth of features
    • Vendor support

    Areas to Improve:

    • Business value created
    • Ease of customization
    • Usability and intuitiveness
    Logo gif for SoftwareReviews.
    7.8
    COMPOSITE SCORE
    7.9
    CX SCORE
    +80
    EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT
    72%
    LIKELINESS TO RECOMMEND
    DOWNLOAD REPORT 50
    REVIEWS
    Vendor scores are driven by real-world practitioner reviews via SoftwareReviews. Composite, CX, EF and NPS scores pulled from live data as of June 2022. Rankings and ”strengths” and ”areas to improve” pulled from January 2022 Category Report.
    Sample of a Zendesk screen.Vendor Pulse rating. How often do we hear about Zendesk from our members for CRM? 'Rarely'.

    History of Zendesk in a vertical timeline.

    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts
    See pricing on vendor’s website for latest information.
    Logo for Zendesk.

    “Zendesk’s initial growth was grounded in word-of-mouth advertising, owing to the popularity of its help desk solution’s design and functionality. Zendesk Sell has followed suit, receiving strong feedback for the breadth and quality of its features. Organizations that have already reaped the benefits of Zendesk’s customer service suite will find Zendesk Sell a straightforward fit for their sales teams.

    However, it is important to note that Zendesk Sell is predominantly focused on sales. Other key components of a CRM, such as marketing, are less fleshed out. Organizations should ensure they verify what requirements they have for a CRM before choosing Zendesk Sell – if sales process requirements (such as forecasting, call analytics, and so on) are but one part of what the organization needs, Zendesk Sell may not offer the highest ROI for the pricing offered.”

    Thomas Randall
    Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Sell Team Sell Professional Sell Enterprise
    • Starts at $19*
    • Per user/mo
    • Max. 3 users
    • Small businesses
    • Basic functionality
    • Starts at $49*
    • Per user/mo
    • Small/mid-sized businesses
    • Advanced analytics
    • Starts at $99*
    • Per user/mo
    • Mid-sized/small enterprise
    • Task automation

    Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

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    Top-tier data quality backed by a rigorous quality assurance process.
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    Comprehensive software reviews to make better IT decisions

    We collect and analyze the most detailed reviews on enterprise software from real users to give you an unprecedented view into the product and vendor before you buy.

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    Product and category reports with state-of-the-art data visualization.
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    User-experience insight that reveals the intangibles of working with a vendor.

    SoftwareReviews is powered by Info-Tech

    Technology coverage is a priority for Info-Tech, and SoftwareReviews provides the most comprehensive unbiased data on today’s technology. Combined with the insights of our expert analysts, our members receive unparalleled support in their buying journey.

    Conduct a day of rapid-fire vendor demos

    Zoom in on high-value use cases and answers to targeted questions

    Make sure the solution will work for your business

    Give each vendor 90 to 120 minutes to give a rapid-fire presentation. We suggest the following structure:

    • 30 minutes: company introduction and vision
    • 60 minutes: walk-through of two or three high-value demo scenarios
    • 30 minutes: targeted Q&A from the business stakeholders and procurement team
    To ensure a consistent evaluation, vendors should be asked analogous questions, and a tabulation of answers should be conducted.
    How to challenge the vendors in the investigative interview
    • Change the visualization/presentation.
    • Change the underlying data.
    • Add additional data sets to the artifacts.
    • Collaboration capabilities.
    • Perform an investigation in terms of finding BI objects and identifying previous changes, and examine the audit trail.
    Rapid-fire vendor investigative interview

    Invite vendors to come onsite (or join you via video conference) to demonstrate the product and to answer questions. Use a highly targeted demo script to help identify how a vendor’s solution will fit your organization’s particular business capability needs.

    Graphic of an alarm clock.
    To kick-start scripting your demo scenarios, leverage our CRM Demo Script Template.

    A vendor scoring model provides a clear anchor point for your evaluation of CRM vendors based on a variety of inputs

    A vendor scoring model is a systematic method for effectively assessing competing vendors. A weighted-average scoring model is an approach that strikes a strong balance between rigor and evaluation speed.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Even the best scoring model will still involve some “art” rather than science – scoring categories such as vendor viability always entails a degree of subjective interpretation.

    How do I build a scoring model?

    • Start by shortlisting the key criteria you will use to evaluate your vendors. Functional capabilities should always be a critical category, but you’ll also want to look at criteria such as affordability, architectural fit, and vendor viability.
    • Depending on the complexity of the project, you may break down some criteria into sub-categories to assist with evaluation (for example, breaking down functional capabilities into constituent use cases so you can score each one).
    • Once you’ve developed the key criteria for your project, the next step is weighting each criterion. Your weightings should reflect the priorities for the project at hand. For example, some projects may put more emphasis on affordability, others on vendor partnership.
    • Using the information collected in the subsequent phases of this blueprint, score each criterion from 1-100, then multiply by the weighting factor. Add up the weighted scores to arrive at the aggregate evaluation score for each vendor on your shortlist.

    What are some of the best practices?

    • While the criteria for each project may vary, it’s helpful to have an inventory of repeatable criteria that can be used across application selection projects. The next slide contains an example that you can add or subtract from.
    • Don’t go overboard on the number of criteria: five to 10 weighted criteria should be the norm for most projects. The more criteria (and sub-criteria) you must score against, the longer it will take to conduct your evaluation. Always remember, link the level of rigor to the size and complexity of your project! It’s possible to create a convoluted scoring model that takes significant time to fill out but yields little additional value.
    • Creation of the scoring model should be a consensus-driven activity among IT, procurement, and the key business stakeholders – it should not be built in isolation. Everyone should agree on the fundamental criteria and weights that are employed.
    • Consider using not just the outputs of investigative interviews and RFP responses to score vendors, but also third-party review services like SoftwareReviews.

    Define how you’ll score CRM proposals and demos

    Define key CRM selection criteria for your organization – this should be informed by the following goals, use cases, and requirements covered in the blueprint.

    Criteria

    Description

    Functional CapabilitiesHow well does the vendor align with the top-priority functional requirements identified in your accelerated needs assessment? What is the vendor’s functional breadth and depth?
    AffordabilityHow affordable is this vendor? Consider a three-to-five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) that encompasses not just licensing costs, but also implementation, integration, training, and ongoing support costs.
    Architectural FitHow well does this vendor align with our direction from an enterprise architecture perspective? How interoperable is the solution with existing applications in our technology stack? Does the solution meet our deployment model preferences?
    ExtensibilityHow easy is it to augment the base solution with native or third-party add-ons as our business needs may evolve?
    ScalabilityHow easy is it to expand the solution to support increased user, data, and/or customer volumes? Are there any capacity constraints of the solution?
    Vendor ViabilityHow viable is this vendor? Are they an established player with a proven track record, or a new and untested entrant to the market? What is the financial health of the vendor? How committed are they to the particular solution category?
    Vendor VisionDoes the vendor have a cogent and realistic product roadmap? Are they making sensible investments that align with your organization’s internal direction?
    Emotional FootprintHow well does the vendor’s organizational culture and team dynamics align to yours?
    Third-Party Assessments and/or ReferencesHow well-received is the vendor by unbiased, third-party sources like SoftwareReviews? For larger projects, how well does the vendor perform in reference checks (and how closely do those references mirror your own situation)?

    Decision Point: Select the Finalist

    After reviewing all vendor responses to your RFP, conducting vendor demos, and running a pilot project (if applicable), the time has arrived to select your finalist.

    All core selection team members should hold a session to score each shortlisted vendor against the criteria enumerated on the previous slide – based on an in-depth review of proposals, the demo sessions, and any pilots or technical assessments.

    The vendor that scores the highest in aggregate is your finalist.

    Congratulations – you are now ready to proceed to final negotiation and inking a contract. This blueprint provides a detailed approach on the mechanics of a major vendor negotiation.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s research to plan and execute your CRM implementation

    Use Info-Tech Research Group’s three phase implementation process to guide your own planning.
    The three phases of software implementation: 'Assess', 'Prepare', 'Govern & Course Correct'. Sample of the 'Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation' blueprint.

    Establish and execute an end-to-end, agile framework to succeed with the implementation of a major enterprise application.

    Visit this link

    Prepare for implementation: establish a clear resourcing plan

    Organizations rarely have sufficient internal staffing to resource a CRM project on their own. Consider the options for closing the gap in internal resource availability.

    The most common project resourcing structures for enterprise projects are:
    Your own staff +
    1. Management consultant
    2. Vendor consultant
    3. System integrator
    Info-Tech Insight

    When contemplating a resourcing structure, consider:

    • Availability of in-house implementation competencies and resources.
    • Timeline and constraints.
    • Integration environment complexity.

    Consider the following:

    Internal vs. External Roles and Responsibilities

    Clearly delineate between internal and external team responsibilities and accountabilities, and communicate this to your technology partner up front.

    Internal vs. External Accountabilities

    Accountability is different than responsibility. Your vendor or SI partner may be responsible for completing certain tasks, but be careful not to outsource accountability for the implementation – ultimately, the internal team will be accountable.

    Partner Implementation Methodologies

    Often vendors and/or SIs will have their own preferred implementation methodology. Consider the use of your partner's implementation methodology; however, you know what will work for your organization.

    Establish team composition

    1 – 2 hours

    Input: Skills assessment, Stakeholder analysis, Vendor partner selection

    Output: Team composition

    Materials: Sticky notes, Whiteboard, Markers

    Participants: Project team

    Use Info-Tech’s Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation to establish your team composition. Within that blueprint:

    1. Assess the skills necessary for an implementation. Inventory the competencies required for the implementation project team. Map your internal resources to each competency as applicable.
    2. Select your internal implementation team. Determine who needs to be involved closely with the implementation. Key stakeholders should also be considered as members of your implementation team.
    3. Identify the number of external consultants/support required for implementation. Consider your in-house skills, timeline considerations, integration environment complexity, and cost constraints as you make your team composition plan. Be sure to dedicate an internal resource to managing the vendor and partner relationships.
    4. Document the roles and responsibilities, accountabilities, and other expectations of your team as they relate to each step of the implementation.

    Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation

    Sample of the 'Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation' blueprint.Follow our iterative methodology with a task list focused on the business must-have functionality to achieve rapid execution and to allow staff to return to their daily work sooner.

    Visit this link

    Ensure your implementation team has a high degree of trust and communication

    If external partners are needed, dedicate an internal resource to managing the vendor and partner relationships.

    Communication

    Teams must have some type of communication strategy. This can be broken into:
    • Regularity: Having a set time each day to communicate progress and a set day to conduct retrospectives.
    • Ceremonies: Injecting awards and continually emphasizing delivery of value can encourage relationship-building and constructive motivation.
    • Escalation: Voicing any concerns and having someone responsible for addressing those concerns.

    Proximity

    Distributed teams create complexity as communication can break down. This can be mitigated by:
    • Location: Placing teams in proximity can close the barrier of geographical distance and time zone differences.
    • Inclusion: Making a deliberate attempt to pull remote team members into discussions and ceremonies.
    • Communication tools: Having the right technology (e.g. video conference) can help bring teams closer together virtually.

    Trust

    Members should trust other members are contributing to the project and completing their required tasks on time. Trust can be developed and maintained by:
    • Accountability: Having frequent quality reviews and feedback sessions. As work becomes more transparent, people become more accountable.
    • Role clarity: Having a clear definition of what everyone’s role is.

    Plan for your implementation of CRM based on deployment model

    Place your CRM application into your IT landscape by configuring and adjusting the tool based on your specific deployment method.

    Icon of a housing development.
    On-Premises

    1. Identify custom features and configuration items
    2. Train developers and IT staff on new software investment
    3. Install software
    4. Configure software
    5. Test installation and configuration
    6. Test functionality

    Icon of a cloud upload.
    SaaS-based

    1. Train developers and IT staff on new software investment
    2. Set up connectivity
    3. Identify VPN or internal solution
    4. Check firewalls
    5. Validate bandwidth regulations

    Integration is a top IT challenge and critical to the success of the CRM suite

    CRM suites are most effective when they are integrated with ERP and MarTech solutions.

    Data interchange between the CRM solution and other data sources is necessary

    Formulate a comprehensive map of the systems, hardware, and software with which the CRM solution must be able to integrate. Customer data needs to constantly be synchronized: without this, you lose out on one of the primary benefits of CRM. These connections must be bidirectional for maximum value (i.e. marketing data to the CRM, customer data to MMS).
    Specialized projects that include an intricate prospect or customer list and complex rules may need to be built by IT The more custom fields you have in your CRM suite and point solutions, the more schema mapping you will have to do. Include this information in the RFP to receive guidance from vendors on the ease with which integration can be achieved.

    Pay attention to legacy apps and databases

    If you have legacy CRM, POS, or customer contact software, more custom code will be required. Many vendors claim that custom integration can be performed for most systems, but custom comes at a cost. Don’t just ask if they can integrate; ask how long it will take and for references from organizations which have been successful in this.
    When assessing the current application portfolio that supports CRM, the tendency will be to focus on the applications under the CRM umbrella, relating mostly to marketing, sales, and customer service. Be sure to include systems that act as inputs to, or benefit due to outputs from, the CRM or similar applications.

    CRM data flow

    Example of a CRM data flow.

    Be sure to include enterprise applications that are not included in the CRM application portfolio. Popular systems to consider for POIs include billing, directory services, content management, and collaboration tools.

    Sample CRM integration map

    Sample of a CRM integration map.

    Scenario: Failure to address CRM data integration will cost you in the long run

    A company spent $15 million implementing a new CRM system in the cloud and decided NOT to spend an additional $1.5 million to do a proper cloud DI tool procurement. The mounting costs followed.

    Cost Element – Custom Data Integration

    $

    2 FTEs for double entry of sales order data $ 100,000/year
    One-time migration of product data to CRM $ 240,000 otc
    Product data maintenance $ 60,000/year
    Customer data synchronization interface build $ 60,000 otc
    Customer data interface maintenance $ 10,000/year
    Data quality issues $ 100,000/year
    New SaaS integration built in year 3 $ 300,000 otc
    New SaaS integration maintenance $ 150,000/year

    Cost Element – Data Integration Tool

    $

    DI strategy and platform implementation $1,500,000 otc
    DI tool maintenance $ 15,000/year
    New SaaS integration point in year 3 $ 300,000 otc
    Thumbs down color coded red to the adjacent chart. Custom integration is costing this organization $300,000/year for one SaaS solution.
    Thumbs up color coded blue to the adjacent chart.

    The proposed integration solution would have paid for itself in 3-4 years and saved exponential costs in the long run.

    Proactively address data quality in the CRM during implementation

    Data quality is a make-or-break issue in a CRM platform; garbage in is garbage out.
    • CRM suites are one of the leading offenders for generating poor-quality data. As such, it’s important to have a plan in place for structuring your data architecture in such a way the poor data quality is minimized from the get-go.
    • Having a plan for data quality should precede data migration efforts; some types of poor data quality can be mitigated prior to migration.
    • There are five main types of poor-quality data found in CRM platforms.
      • Duplicate data: Duplicate records can be a major issue. Leverage dedicated deduplication tools to eliminate them.
      • Stale data: Out-of-date customer information can reduce the usefulness of the platform. Use automated social listening tools to help keep data fresh.
      • Incomplete data: Records with missing info limit platform value. Specify data validation parameters to mandate that all fields are filled in.
      • Invalid and conflicting data: These can create cascading errors. Establishing conflict resolution rules in ETL tools for data integration can lessen issues.
    Info-Tech Insight

    If you have a complex POI environment, appoint data stewards for each major domain and procure a deduplication tool. As the complexity of CRM system-to-system integrations increases, so will the chance that data quality errors will crop up – for example, bidirectional POI with other sources of customer information dramatically increase the chances of conflicting/duplicate data.

    Profile data, eliminate dead weight, and enforce standards to protect data

    Identify and eliminate dead weight

    Poor data can originate in the firm’s CRM system. Custom queries, stored procedures, or profiling tools can be used to assess the key problem areas.

    Loose rules in the CRM system may lead to records of no significant value in the database. Those rules need to be fixed, but if changes are made before the data is fixed, users could encounter database or application errors, which will reduce user confidence in the system.

    • Conduct a data flow analysis: map the path that data takes through the organization.
    • Use a mass cleanup to identify and destroy dead weight data. Merge duplicates either manually or with the aid of software tools. Delete incomplete data, taking care to reassign related data.
    • COTS packages typically allow power users to merge records without creating orphaned records in related tables, but custom-built applications typically require IT expertise.

    Create and enforce standards and policies

    Now that the data has been cleaned, it’s important to protect the system from relapsing.

    Work with business users to find out what types of data require validation and which fields should have changes audited. Whenever possible, implement drop-down lists to standardize values and make programming changes to ensure that truncation ceases.

    • Truncated data is usually caused by mismatches in data structures during either one-time data loads or ongoing data integrations.
    • Don’t go overboard on assigning required fields; users will just put key data in note fields.
    • Discourage the use of unstructured note fields: the data is effectively lost except if it gets subpoenaed.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Data quality concerns proliferate with the customization level of your platform. The more extensive the custom integration points and module/database extensions that you have made, the more you will need to have a plan in place for managing data quality from a reactive and proactive standpoint.

    Create a formal communication process throughout the CRM implementation

    Establish a comprehensive communication process around the CRM enterprise roll-out to ensure that end users stay informed.

    The CRM kick-off meeting(s) should encompass: 'The high-level application overview', 'Target business-user requirements', 'Target quality of service (QoS) metrics', 'Other IT department needs', 'Tangible business benefits of application', 'Special consideration needs'. The overall objective for interdepartmental CRM kick-off meetings is to confirm that all parties agree on certain key points and understand platform rationale and functionality.

    The kick-off process will significantly improve internal communications by inviting all affected internal IT groups, including business units, to work together to address significant issues before the application process is formally activated.

    Department groups or designated trainers should take the lead and implement a process for:

    • Scheduling CRM platform roll-out/kick-off meetings.
    • Soliciting preliminary input from the attending groups to develop further training plans.
    • Establishing communication paths and the key communication agents from each department who are responsible for keeping lines open moving forward.

    Ensure requirements are met with robust user acceptance testing

    User acceptance testing (UAT) is a test procedure that helps to ensure end-user requirements are met. Test cases can reveal bugs before the suite is implemented.

    Five Secrets of UAT Success

    Bracket with colors corresponding the adjacent list items.

    1

    Create the plan With the information collected from requirements gathering, create the plan. Make sure this information is added to the main project plan documentation.

    2

    Set the agenda The time allotted will vary depending on the functionality being tested. Ensure that the test schedule allows for the resolution of issues and discussion.

    3

    Determine who will participate Work with the relevant stakeholders to identify the people who can best contribute to system testing. Look for experienced power users who have been involved in earlier decision making about the system.

    4

    Highlight acceptance criteria Together with the UAT group, pinpoint the criteria to determine system acceptability. Refer back to requirements specified in use cases in the initial requirements-gathering stages of the project.

    5

    Collect end user feedback Weaknesses in resolution workflow design, technical architecture, and existing customer service processes can be highlighted and improved on with ongoing surveys and targeted interviews.

    Calculate post-deployment metrics to assess measurable value of the project

    Track the post-deployment results from the project and compare the metrics to the current state and target state.

    CRM Selection and Implementation Metrics
    Description Formula Current or Estimated Target Post-Deployment
    End-User Satisfaction # of Satisfied Users
    # of End Users
    70% 90% 85%
    Percentage Over/Under Estimated Budget Amount Spent - 100%
    Budget
    5% 0% 2%
    Percentage Over/Under Estimated Timeline Project Length - 100%
    Estimated Timeline
    10% -5% -10%

    CRM Strategy Metrics
    Description Formula Current or Estimated Target Post-Deployment
    Number of Leads Generated (per month) # of Leads Generated 150 200 250
    Average Time to Resolution (in minutes) Time Spent on Resolution
    # of Resolutions
    30 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes
    Cost per Interaction by Campaign Total Campaign Spending
    # of Customer Interactions
    $17.00 $12.00 $12.00

    Select the Right CRM Platform

    CRM technology is critical to facilitate an organization’s relationships with customers, service users, employees, and suppliers. Having a structured approach to building a business case, defining key requirements, and engaging with the right shortlist of vendors to pick the best finalist is crucial.

    This selection guide allows organizations to execute a structured methodology for picking a CRM that aligns with their needs. This includes:
    • Alignment and prioritization of key business and technology drivers for a CRM selection business case.
    • Identification of key use cases and requirements for CRM.
    • Construction of a robust CRM RFP.
    • A strong market scan of key players.
    • A survey of crucial implementation considerations.
    This formal CRM selection initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify sales and marketing automation priorities, and allow for the rollout of a platform that’s highly likely to satisfy all stakeholder needs.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com
    1-888-670-8889

    Insight summary

    Stakeholder satisfaction is critical to your success

    Choosing a solution for a single use case and then expanding it to cover other purposes can be a way to quickly gain approvals and then make effective use of dollars spent. However, this can also be a nightmare if the product is not fit for purpose and requires significant customization effort for future use cases. Identify use cases early, engage stakeholders to define success, and recognize where you need to find balance between a single off-the-shelf CRM platform and adjacent MarTech or sales enablement systems.

    Build a business case

    An effective business case isn’t a single-purpose document for obtaining funding. It can also be used to drive your approach to product selection, requirements gathering, and ultimately evaluating stakeholder and user satisfaction.

    Use your business case to define use cases and milestones as well as success.

    Balance process with technology

    A new solution with old processes will result in incremental increased value. Evaluate existing processes and identify opportunities to improve and remove workarounds. Then define requirements.

    You may find that the tools you have would be adequate with an upgrade and tool optimization. If not, this exercise will prepare you to select the right solution for your current and future needs.

    Drive toward early value

    Lead with the most important benefit and consider the timeline. Most stakeholders will lose interest if they don’t realize benefits within the fist year. Can you reach your goal and report success within that timeline?

    Identify secondary, incremental customer engagement improvements that can be made as you work toward the overall goal to be achieved at the one-year milestone.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Stock image of an office worker. Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management
    • Any CRM project needs to be guided by the broader strategy around customer engagement. This blueprint explores how to create a strong technology enablement approach for CXM using voice of the customer analysis.
    Stock image of a target with arrows. Improve Requirements Gathering
    • 70% of projects that fail do so because of poor requirements. If you need to double-click on best practices for eliciting, analyzing, and validating requirements as you build up your CRM picklist and RFP, this blueprint will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to hit the ground running.
    Stock image of a pen on paper. Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes with a Robust RFP Process
    • Managing a complex RFP process for an enterprise application like a CRM platform can be a challenging undertaking. This blueprint zooms into how to build, run, administer, and evaluate RFP responses effectively.

    Bibliography

    “Doomed From the Start? Why a Majority of Business and IT Teams Anticipate Their Software Development Projects Will Fail.” Geneca, 25 Jan. 2017. Web.

    Hall, Kerrie. “The State of CRM Data Management 2020.” Validity. 27 April 2020. Web.

    Hinchcliffe, Dion. “The Evolving Role of the CIO and CMO in Customer Experience.” ZDNet, 22 Jan. 2020. Web.

    Klie, L. “CRM Still Faces Challenges, Most Speakers Agree: CRM Systems Have Been Around for Decades, but Interoperability and Data Siloes Still Have to Be Overcome.” CRM Magazine, vol. 23, no. 5, 2019, pp. 13-14.

    Markman, Jon. "Netflix Knows What You Want... Before You Do." Forbes. 9 Jun. 2017. Web.

    Morgan, Blake. “50 Stats That Prove The Value Of Customer Experience.” Forbes, 24 Sept. 2019. Web.

    Taber, David. “What to Do When Your CRM Project Fails.” CIO Magazine, 18 Sept. 2017. Web.

    “The State of Project Management Annual Survey 2018.” Wellingtone, 2018. Web.

    “The History of Microsoft Dynamics.” Eswelt. 2021. Accessed 8 June 2022.

    “Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships.” Harvard Business Review. 1 July 2014. Accessed 30 Mar. 2016.

    Design Data-as-a-Service

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}129|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.5/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $1,007 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 31 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Data Management
    • Parent Category Link: /data-management
    • Lack of a consistent approach in accessing internal and external data within the organization and sharing data with third parties.
    • Data consumed by most organizations lacks proper data quality, data certification, standards tractability, and lineage.
    • Organizations are looking for guidance in terms of readily accessible data from others and data that can be shared with others or monetized.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Despite data being everywhere, most organizations struggle to find accurate, trustworthy, and meaningful data when required.
    • Connecting to data should be as easy as connecting to the internet. This is achievable if all organizations start participating in the data marketplace ecosystem by leveraging a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) framework.

    Impact and Result

    • Data marketplaces facilitate data sharing between the data producer and the data consumer. The data product must be carefully designed to truly benefit in today’s connected data ecosystem.
    • Follow Info-Tech’s step-by-step approach to establish your DaaS framework:
      1. Understand Data Ecosystem
      2. Design Data Products
      3. Establish DaaS framework

    Design Data-as-a-Service Research & Tools

    Start here – Read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should design Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand data ecosystem

    Provide clear benefits of adopting the DaaS framework and solid rationale for moving towards a more connected data ecosystem and avoiding data silos.

    • Design Data-as-a-Service – Phase 1: Understand Data Ecosystem

    2. Design data product

    Leverage design thinking methodology and templates to document your most important data products.

    • Design Data-as-a-Service – Phase 2: Design Data Product

    3. Establish a DaaS framework

    Capture internal and external data sources critical to data products success for the organization and document an end-to-end DaaS framework.

    • Design Data-as-a-Service – Phase 3: Establish a DaaS Framework
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Design Data-as-a-Service

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Data Marketplace and DaaS Explained

    The Purpose

    The purpose of this module is to provide a clear understanding of the key concepts such as data marketplace, data sharing, and data products.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    This module will provide clear benefits of adopting the DaaS framework and solid rationale for moving towards a more connected data ecosystem and avoiding data silos.

    Activities

    1.1 Review the business context

    1.2 Understand the data ecosystem

    1.3 Draft products ideas and use cases

    1.4 Capture data product metrics

    Outputs

    Data product ideas

    Data sharing use cases

    Data product metrics

    2 Design Data Product

    The Purpose

    The purpose of this module is to leverage design thinking methodology and templates to document the most important data products.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Data products design that incorporates end-to-end customer journey and stakeholder map.

    Activities

    2.1 Create a stakeholder map

    2.2 Establish a persona

    2.3 Data consumer journey map

    2.4 Document data product design

    Outputs

    Data product design

    3 Assess Data Sources

    The Purpose

    The purpose of this module is to capture internal and external data sources critical to data product success.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Break down silos by integrating internal and external data sources

    Activities

    3.1 Review the conceptual data model

    3.2 Map internal and external data sources

    3.3 Document data sources

    Outputs

    Internal and external data sources relationship map

    4 Establish a DaaS Framework

    The Purpose

    The purpose of this module is to document end-to-end DaaS framework.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    End-to-end framework that breaks down silos and enables data product that can be exchanged for long-term success.

    Activities

    4.1 Design target state DaaS framework

    4.2 Document DaaS framework

    4.3 Assess the gaps between current and target environments

    4.4 Brainstorm initiatives to develop DaaS capabilities

    Outputs

    Target DaaS framework

    DaaS initiative

    Get the Most Out of Workday

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}239|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 10.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: 20 Average Days Saved
    • member rating average days saved: After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.
    • Parent Category Name: Optimization
    • Parent Category Link: /optimization
    • Your Workday systems are critical to supporting the organization’s business processes.They are expensive. Direct benefits and ROI can be hard to measure.
    • Workday application portfolios are often behemoths to support. With complex integration points and unique business processes, stabilization is the norm.
    • Application optimization is essential to staying competitive and productive in today’s digital environment.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Continuous assessment and optimization of your Workday enterprise resource planning (ERP) is critical to the success of your organization.

    Impact and Result

    • Build an ongoing optimization team to conduct application improvements.
    • Assess your Workday application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.
    • Validate Workday capabilities, user satisfaction, processes, issues around data, integrations, and vendor management to build out an optimization strategy
    • Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

    Get the Most Out of Workday Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Get the Most Out of Workday – A guide to help the business leverages to accomplish its goals.

    Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a core tool that the business leverages to accomplish its goals. Take a proactive approach to optimize your enterprise applications. Strategically re-align business goals, identify business application capabilities, complete a process assessment, evaluate user satisfaction, measure module satisfaction, and vendor relations to create an optimization plan that will drive a cohesive technology strategy that delivers results.

    • Get the Most Out of Workday – Phases 1-4

    2. Get the Most Out of Workday Workbook – A tool to document and assist with this project.

    The Get the Most out of Workday Workbook serves as the holding document for the different elements of the Get the Most out Workday blueprint. Use each assigned tab to input the relevant information for the process of optimizing Workday.

    • Get the Most Out of Workday Workbook

    3. Workday Application Inventory Tool – A tool to define applications and capabilities around ERP.

    Use this tool provide Info-Tech with information surrounding your ERP application(s). This inventory will be used to create a custom Application Portfolio Assessment (APA) for your ERP. The template includes demographics, application inventory, departments to be surveyed and data quality inclusion.

    • Workday Application Inventory Tool

    Infographic

    Workshop: Get the Most Out of Workday

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Define Your Workday Application Vision

    The Purpose

    Define your workday application vision.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Set the foundation for optimizing Workday by building a cross-functional team, aligning with organizational strategy, inventorying current system state, defining your timeframe, and exploring current costs.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify stakeholders and build your optimization team.

    1.2 Build an ERP strategy model.

    1.3 Inventory current system state.

    1.4 Define optimization timeframe.

    1.5 Understand Workday costs.

    Outputs

    Workday optimization team

    Workday business model

    Workday optimization goals

    System inventory and data flow

    Application and business capabilities list

    Workday optimization timeline

    2 Map Current-State Capabilities

    The Purpose

    Map current-state capabilities.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Measure the state of your current Workday system to understand where it is not performing well.

    Activities

    2.1 Assess Workday capabilities.

    2.2 Review your satisfaction with the vendor/product and willingness for change.

    Outputs

    Workday capability gap analysis

    Workday user satisfaction (application portfolio assessment)

    Workday SoftwareReviews survey results

    Workday current costs

    3 Assess Workday

    The Purpose

    Assess Workday.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Explore underperforming areas to:

    Uncover where user satisfaction is lacking and possible root causes.

    Identify process and workflows that are creating issues for end users and identify improvement options.

    Understand where data issues are occurring and explore how you can improve these.

    Identify integration points and explore if there are any areas of improvement.

    Investigate your relationship with the vendor and product, including that relative to others.

    Identify any areas for cost optimization (optional).

    Activities

    3.1 Prioritize optimization opportunities.

    3.2 Discover optimization initiatives.

    Outputs

    Product and vendor satisfaction opportunities

    Capability and feature optimization opportunities

    Process optimization opportunities

    Integration optimization opportunities

    Data optimization opportunities

    Workday cost-saving opportunities

    4 Build the Optimization Roadmap

    The Purpose

    Build the optimization roadmap.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding where you need to improve is the first step, now understand where to focus your optimization efforts, build out next steps and put a timeframe in place.

    Activities

    4.1 Build your optimization roadmap.

    Outputs

    Workday optimization roadmap

    Further reading

    Get the Most Out of Workday

    In today’s connected world, the continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst Perspective

    Focus optimization on organizational value delivery.

    HR, finance, and planning systems are the core foundation of enterprise resource systems (ERP) systems. These are core tools that the business leverages to accomplish its goals. An ERP that is doing its job well is invisible to the business. The challenges come when the tool is no longer invisible. It has become a source of friction in the functioning of the business.

    Workday is expensive, benefits can be difficult to quantify, and optimization can be difficult to navigate. Over time, technology evolves, organizational goals change, and the health of these systems is often not monitored. This is complicated in today’s digital landscape with multiple integration points, siloed data, and competing priorities.

    Too often organizations jump into selecting replacement systems without understanding the health of their systems. We can do better than this.

    IT leaders need to take a proactive approach to continually monitor and optimize their enterprise applications. Strategically realign business goals, identify business application capabilities, complete a process assessment, evaluate user satisfaction, measure module satisfaction, and improve vendor relations to create an optimization plan that will drive a cohesive technology strategy that delivers results.

    Lisa Highfield

    Research Director, Enterprise Applications

    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Your Workday systems are critical to supporting the organization’s business processes. They are expensive. Direct benefits and ROI can be hard to measure.

    Workday application portfolios are often behemoths to support. With complex integration points and unique business processes, stabilization is the norm.

    Application optimization is essential to staying competitive and productive in today’s digital environment.

    Common Obstacles

    Balancing optimization with stabilization is one of the most difficult decisions for Workday application leaders.

    Competing priorities and often unclear enterprise application strategies make it difficult to make decisions about what, how, and when to optimize.

    Enterprise applications involve large numbers of processes, users, and evolving vendor roadmaps.

    Teams do not have a framework to illustrate, communicate, and justify the optimization effort in the language your stakeholders understand.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    In today’s changing world, it is imperative to evaluate your applications for optimization and to look for opportunities to capitalize on rapidly expanding technologies, integrated data, and employee solutions that meet the needs of your organization.

    Assess your Workday applications and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.

    Validate capabilities, user satisfaction, and issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an overall roadmap and optimization strategy.

    Pull this all together to prioritize optimization efforts and develop a concrete roadmap.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Workday is investing heavily in expanding and deepening its finance and expanded product offerings, but we cannot stand still on our optimization efforts. Understand your product(s), processes, user satisfaction, integration points, and the availability of data to business decision makers. Examine these areas to develop a personalized Workday optimization roadmap that fits the needs of your organization. Incorporate these methodologies into an ongoing optimization strategy aimed at enabling the business, increasing productivity, and reducing costs.

    The image shows a graphic titled Get the Most Out of Your ERP. The centre of the graphic shows circular gears labelled with text such as Processes; User Satisfaction; Integrations; Data; and Vendor Relations. There is also text surrounding the central gears in concentric circles, and on either side, there are sets of arrows titled Service-centric capabilities and Product-centric capabilities.

    Insight summary

    Continuous assessment and optimization of your Workday ERP is critical to the success of your organization.

    • Applications and the environments in which they live are constantly evolving.
    • This blueprint provides business and application managers with a method to complete a health assessment of their Workday systems to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
    • Put optimization practices into effect by:
      • Aligning and prioritizing key business and technology drivers.
      • Identifying ERP process classification and performing a gap analysis.
      • Measuring user satisfaction across key departments.
      • Evaluating vendor relations.
      • Understanding how data plays into the mix.
      • Pulling it all together into an optimization roadmap.

    Workday enterprise resource planning (ERP) facilitates the flow of information across business units. It allows for the seamless integration of data across financial and people systems to create a holistic view of the enterprise to support decision making.

    In many organizations, Workday is considered the core people systems and is becoming more widely adopted for finance and a full ERP system.

    ERP systems are considered the lifeblood of organizations. Problems with this key operational system will have a dramatic impact on the ability of the enterprise to survive and grow.

    ERP implementation should not be a one-and-done exercise. There needs to be ongoing optimization to enable business processes and optimal organizational results.

    Workday enterprise resource planning (ERP)

    Workday

    • Finance
    • Human Resources Management
    • Talent and Performance
    • Payroll and Workforce Management
    • Employee Experience
    • Student Information Systems
    • Professional Services Automation
    • Analytics and Reporting
    • Spend Management
    • Enterprise Planning

    What is Workday?

    Workday has many modules that work together to facilitate the flow of information across the business. Workday’s unique data platform allows for seamless integration of systems and creates a holistic view of the enterprise to support decision making.

    In many organizations, the ERP system is considered the lifeblood of the enterprise. Problems with this key operational system will have a dramatic impact on the ability of the enterprise to survive and grow.

    Workday operates in many industry verticals and performs well in service organizations.

    An ERP system:

    • Automates processes, reducing the amount of manual, routine work.
    • Integrates with core modules, eliminating the fragmentation of systems.
    • Centralizes information for reporting from multiple parts of the value chain to a single point.

    Workday Fast Facts

    Product Description

    • Workday offers HR, Finance, planning systems, and extended offerings. Workday prides itself on rapidly expanding its product portfolio to meet the needs of organizations in a changing world.
    • The integrated cloud data model Workday has been built on allows for seamless end-to-end organizational data.
    • Offerings include Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Workday Adaptive Planning, Spend Management, Talent Management, Payroll & Workforce Management, Analytics & Reporting, Student, Professional Services Automation, Platform & Product Extensions, Workday Peakon Employee Voice, and most recently VNDLY (contract and vendor management).

    Evolution of Workday

    Workday HCM 2006

    Workday Financial Management 2007

    Workday 10 (Finance & HCM) 2010

    Workday Student (Higher Education) 2011

    Workday Cloud (PAAS) 2017

    Acquisition of Adaptive Insights 2018

    Acquisition of VNDLY 2021

    Vendor Description

    • Workday was founded in 2005 by Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield (former PeopleSoft founder.)
    • The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) bundles and modules are sold in a subscription model to customers.
    • Workday has untaken several acquisitions in recent years to grow the product and invests in early-stage companies through Workday Ventures.
    • Workday is publicly traded (2012); Nasdaq: WDAY.

    Employees: 12,500

    Headquarters: Pleasanton, CA

    Website: workday.com

    Founded: 2005

    Presence: Global, Publicly Traded

    Workday by the numbers

    77%

    77% of clients were satisfied with the product’s business value created. 78% of clients were satisfied that the cost is fair relative to value, and 95% plan to renew. (SoftwareReviews, 2022)

    50% of Fortune 500

    Workday has seen steady growth working with over 50% of Fortune 500 companies. 4,100 of those are HCM and finance customers. It has seen great success in service industries and has a 95% gross retention rate. (Diginomica)

    40%

    Workday reported a 40% year-over-year increase in Workday Financial Management deployments for both new and existing customers, as accelerated demand for Workday cloud-based continues. (Workday, June 2021)

    Workday Finance

    A great opportunity for Workday

    Workday continues to invest in Workday Finance

    • 35% of the Fortune 500 and 50% of the Fortune 50 use Workday HCM products (Seeking Alpha, 2019).
    • The customer base for Workday Financial Management has increased from 45 in 2014 to 530 in 2019 with 9 Fortune 500 companies in the mix. This infers that Financial Management is a product that will drive future growth for Workday.

    Recent Finance-Related Acquisitions

    • Zimit - Quotation Management
    • Stories.bi - Augmented Analytics
    • Adaptive Insights - Business Planning
    • SkipFlag - Machine Learning (AI)
    • Platfora - Analytics
    • VNDLY - Contractor and Vendor Management

    Workday challenges and dissatisfaction

    Workday challenges and dissatisfaction

    Organizational

    • Competing Priorities
    • Lack of Strategy
    • Budget Challenges

    People and teams

    • Knowledgeable Staff/Turnover
    • Lack of Internal Skills
    • Ability to Manage New Products
    • Lack of Training

    Technology

    • Integration Issues
    • Selecting Tools & Technology
    • Keeping Pace With Technology Changes
    • Update Challenges

    Data

    • Access to Data
    • Data Literacy
    • Data Hygiene
    • One View of the Customer

    Finance, IT, Sales, and other users of the ERP system can only optimize ERP with the full support of each other. The cooperation of the departments is crucial when trying to improve ERP technology capabilities and customer interaction.

    Info-Tech Insight

    While technology is the key enabler of building strong customer experiences, there are many other drivers of dissatisfaction. IT must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the business to develop a technology framework for ERP.

    Where are applications leaders focusing?

    Big growth numbers

    Year-over-year call topic requests

    Enterprise Application Optimization - 124%

    Product - 65%

    Enterprise Application Selection - 76%

    Agile - 79%

    (Info-Tech case data, 2022; N=3,293)

    We are seeing Applications leaders’ priorities change year over year, driven by a shift in their approach to problem solving. Leaders are moving from a process-centric approach to a collaborative approach that breaks down boundaries and brings teams together.

    Other changes

    Year-over-year call topic requests

    Application Portfolio Management - 13%

    Business Process Management - 4%

    Software Development Lifecycle -25%

    (Info-Tech case data, 2022; N=3,293)

    Software development lifecycle topics are tactical point solutions. Organizations have been “shifting left” to tackle the strategic issues such as product vision and Agile mindset to optimize the whole organization.

    Application optimization is risky without a plan

    Avoid these common pitfalls:

    • Not considering how this pays into the short-, medium-, and long-term ERP strategy.
    • Not considering application optimization as a business and IT partnership, which requires the continuous formal engagement of all participants.
    • Not having a good understanding of your current state, including integration points and data.
    • Not adequately accommodating feedback and changes after digital applications are deployed and employed.
    • Not treating digital applications as a motivator for potential future IT optimization efforts and incorporating digital assets in strategic business planning.
    • Not involving department leads, management, and other subject-matter experts to facilitate the organizational change digital applications bring.

    “A successful application optimization strategy starts with the business need in mind and not from a technological point of view. No matter from which angle you look at it, modernizing a legacy application is a considerable undertaking that can’t be taken lightly. Your best approach is to begin the journey with baby steps.” – Norelus, Pamidala, and Senti, 2020

    Info-Tech’s methodology for getting the most out of your ERP

    1. Map Current-State Capabilities 2. Assess Your Current State 3. Identify Key Optimization Areas 4. Build Your Optimization Roadmap
    Phase Steps
    1. Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Workday Optimization Team
    2. Build an ERP Strategy Model
    3. Inventory Current System State
    4. Define Business Capabilities
    • Conduct a Gap Analysis for ERP Processes
    • Assess User Satisfaction
    • Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor and Product
    1. Identify Key Optimization Areas
    2. Evaluate Product Sustainability Over the Short, Medium, and Long Term
    3. Identify Any Product Changes Anticipated Over Short, Medium, and Long Term
    1. Prioritize Optimization Opportunities
    2. Identify Key Optimization Areas
    3. Compile Optimization Assessment Results
    Phase Outcomes
    1. Stakeholder map
    2. Workday optimization team
    3. Workday business model
    4. Strategy alignment
    5. Systems inventory and diagram
    6. Business capabilities map
    7. Key Workday processes list
    1. Gap analysis for Workday-related processes
    2. Understanding of user satisfaction across applications and processes
    3. Insight into Workday data quality
    4. Quantified satisfaction with the vendor and product
    5. Understanding Workday costs
    1. List of Workday optimization opportunities
    1. Workday optimization roadmap

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

    Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Identify and prioritize your Workday optimization goals.

    Application Portfolio Assessment

    Assess IT-enabled user satisfaction across your Workday portfolio.

    Key deliverable:

    Workday Optimization Roadmap

    Complete an assessment of processes, user satisfaction, data quality, and vendor management.

    Case Study

    MANAGED AP AUTOMATION with OneSource Virtual

    TripAdvisor + OneSource

    INDUSTRY: Travel

    SOURCE: OneSource Virtual, 2017

    Challenge

    TripAdvisor needed a solution that would decrease administrative labor from its accounting department.

    “We needed something that was already compatible with our Workday tenant, that didn’t require a lot of customizations and would be an enhancement to our processes.” – Director of Accounting Operations, Scott Garner

    Requirements included:

    • Easy implementation
    • Existing system compatibility
    • Enhancement to the company’s process
    • Competitive pricing
    • Secure

    Solution

    TripAdvisor chose to outsource its accounts payable services to OneSource Virtual (OSV).

    OneSource Virtual offers the comprehensive finance and accounting outsourcing solutions needed to improve efficiency, eliminate paper processes, reduce errors, and improve cash flow.

    Managed AP services include scanning and auditing all extracted invoice data for accuracy, transmitting AP files with line-item details from invoices, and creating full invoice images in Workday.

    Results

    • Accurate and timely invoice processing for over 3,000 invoices per month.
    • Empowered employees to focus on higher-level tasks rather than day-to-day data entry.
    • 50+ hours saved per week on routine data entry.
    • Employees had 30% of their time freed up to focus on high-value tasks.
    • Allowed TripAdvisor to become more scalable across departments and as an organization.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

    Phase 1

    Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenge.

    Phase 2

    Call #2:

    • Build the Workday team.
    • Align organizational goals.

    Call #3:

    • Map current state.
    • Inventory Workday capabilities and processes.
    • Explore Workday-related costs.

    Phase 3

    Call #4: Understand product satisfaction and vendor management.

    Call #5: Review APA results.

    Call #6: Understand Workday optimization opportunities.

    Call #7: Determine the right Workday path for your organization.

    Phase 4

    Call #8: Build out optimization roadmap and next steps.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1Day 2Day 3Day 4Day 5
    Define Your Workday Application VisionMap Current StateAssess WorkdayBuild Your Optimization RoadmapNext Steps and

    Wrap-Up (offsite)

    Activities

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    1.2 Build an ERP Strategy Model

    1.3 Inventory Current System State

    1.4 Define Optimization Timeframe

    1.5 Understand Workday Costs

    2.1 Assess Workday Capabilities

    2.2 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    3.1 Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

    3.2 Discover Optimization Initiatives

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    5.1 Complete In-progress Deliverables From Previous Four Days.

    5.2 Set Up Review Time for Workshop Deliverables and to Discuss Next Steps.

    Deliverables
    1. Workday optimization team
    2. Workday business model
    3. Workday optimization goals
    4. System inventory and data flow
    5. Application and business capabilities list
    6. Workday optimization timeline
    1. Workday capability gap analysis
    2. Workday user satisfaction (application portfolio assessment)
    3. Workday SoftwareReviews survey results
    4. Workday current costs
    1. Product and vendor satisfaction opportunities
    2. Capability and feature optimization opportunities
    3. Process optimization opportunities
    4. Integration optimization opportunities
    5. Data optimization opportunities
    6. Workday cost-saving opportunities
    1. Workday optimization roadmap

    Phase 1

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    Phase 1

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    1.2 Build an ERP Strategy Model

    1.3 Inventory Current System State

    1.4 Define Optimization Timeframe

    1.5 Understand Workday Costs

    Phase 2

    2.1 Assess Workday Capabilities

    2.2 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    Phase 3

    3.1 Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

    3.2 Discover Optimization Initiatives

    Phase 4

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This phase will guide you through the following activities:

    • Align your organizational goals
    • Gain a firm understanding of your current state
    • Inventory Workday and related applications
    • Confirm the organization’s capabilities

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CFO
    • Department Leads – Finance, Procurement, Asset Management
    • Applications Director
    • Senior Business Analyst
    • Senior Developer
    • Procurement Analysts

    Step 1.1

    Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    Activities

    1.1.1 Identify Stakeholders Critical to Success

    1.1.2 Map Your Workday Optimization Stakeholders

    1.1.3 Determine Your Workday Optimization Team

    Map Current State Capabilities

    Step 1.1

    Step 1.2

    Step 1.3

    Step 1.4

    Step 1.5

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Identify ERP drivers and objectives
    • Explore ERP challenges and pain points
    • Discover ERP benefits and opportunities
    • Align the ERP foundation with your corporate strategy

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Stakeholders
    • Project sponsors and leaders

    Outcomes of this step

    • Stakeholder map
    • Workday optimization team

    ERP optimization stakeholders

    • Understand the roles necessary to Get the Most Out of Your Workday.
    • Understand the role of each player within your project structure. Look for listed participants on the activities slides to determine when each player should be involved.
    Title Role Within the Project Structure
    Organizational Sponsor
    • Owns the project at the management/C-suite level
    • Responsible for breaking down barriers and ensuring alignment with your organizational strategy
    • CIO, CFO, COO, or similar
    Project Manager
    • The IT individual(s) that oversee day-to-day project operations
    • Responsible for preparing and managing the project plan and monitoring the project team’s progress
    • Applications Manager or other IT Manager, Business Analyst, Business Process Owner, or similar
    Business Unit Leaders
    • Works alongside the IT Project Manager to ensure the strategy is aligned with business needs
    • In this case, likely to be a marketing, sales, or customer service lead
    • Sales Director, Marketing Director, Customer Care Director, or similar
    Optimization Team
    • Comprised of individuals whose knowledge and skills are crucial to project success
    • Responsible for driving day-to-day activities, coordinating communication, and making process and design decisions; can assist with persona and scenario development for ERP
    • Project Manager, Business Lead, ERP Manager, Integration Manager, Application SMEs, Developers, Business Process Architects, and/or similar SMEs
    Steering Committee
    • Comprised of the C-suite/management-level individuals that act as the project’s decision makers
    • Responsible for validating goals and priorities, defining the project scope, enabling adequate resourcing, and managing change
    • Project Sponsor, Project Manager, Business Lead, CFO, Business Unit SMEs, or similar

    Info-Tech Insight

    Do not limit project input or participation. Include subject-matter experts and internal stakeholders at stages within the project. Such inputs can be solicited on a one-off basis as needed. This ensures you take a holistic approach to create your ERP optimization strategy.

    1.1.1 Identify Workday optimization stakeholders

    1 hour

    1. Hold a meeting to identify the Workday optimization stakeholders.
    2. Use the next slide as a guide.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Understand how to navigate the complex web of stakeholders in ERP

    Identify which stakeholders to include and what their level of involvement should be during requirements elicitation based on relevant topic expertise.

    Sponsor End User IT Business
    Description An internal stakeholder who has final sign-off on the ERP project. Front-line users of the ERP technology. Back-end support staff who are tasked with project planning, execution, and eventual system maintenance. Additional stakeholders that will be impacted by any ERP technology changes.
    Examples
    • CEO
    • CIO/CTO
    • COO
    • CFO
    • Warehouse personnel
    • Sales teams
    • HR admins
    • Applications manager
    • Vendor relationship manager(s)
    • Director, Procurement
    • VP, Marketing
    • Manager, HR
    Values Executive buy-in and support is essential to the success of the project. Often, the sponsor controls funding and resource allocation. End users determine the success of the system through user adoption. If the end user does not adopt the system, the system is deemed useless and benefits realization is poor. IT is likely to be responsible for more in-depth requirements gathering. IT possesses critical knowledge around system compatibility, integration, and data. Involving business stakeholders in the requirements gathering will ensure alignment between HR and organizational objectives.

    Large-scale ERP projects require the involvement of many stakeholders from all corners and levels of the organization, including project sponsors, IT, end users, and business stakeholders. Consider the influence and interest of stakeholders in contributing to the requirements elicitation process and involve them accordingly.

    The image shows a graph with dots on it, titled Example: Stakeholder Involvement during Selection.

    Activity 1.1.2 Map your Workday optimization stakeholders

    1 hour

    1. Use the list of Workday optimization stakeholders.
    2. Map each stakeholder on the quadrant based on their expected Influence and involvement in the project.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    The image shows a graph titled Map the Organization's Stakeholders, with stakeholders listed on the left, and arranged in quadrants. Along the bottom of the graph is the text: Involvement, with an arrow pointing to the right. Along the left side of the graph is the text: Influence, with an arrow pointing upwards.

    Map the organization’s stakeholders

    The image shows the same organization stakeholder map shown in the previous section.

    The Workday optimization team

    Consider the core team functions when putting together the project team. Form a cross-functional team (i.e. across IT, Marketing, Sales, Service, and Operations) to create a well-aligned ERP optimization strategy.

    Don’t let your project team become too large when trying to include all relevant stakeholders. Carefully limiting the size of the project team will enable effective decision making while still including functional business units such as Human Resources, Operations, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Service, and Finance as well as IT.

    Required Skills/Knowledge Suggested Project Team Members
    Business
    • Department leads
    • Business process leads
    • Business analysts
    • Subject matter experts
    • SMEs/Business process leads across all functional areas, for example, Strategy, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Finance, HR
    IT
    • Application development
    • Enterprise integration
    • Business processes
    • Data management
    • Product owner
    • ERP application manager
    • Business process manager
    • Integration manager
    • Application developer
    • Data stewards
    Other
    • Operations
    • Administrative
    • Change management
    • COO
    • CFO
    • Change management officer

    1.1.3 Determine your Workday optimization team

    1 hour

    1. Have the project manager and other key stakeholders discuss and determine who will be involved in the Workday optimization project.
      • The size of the team will depend on the initiative and size of your organization.
      • Key business leaders in key areas and IT representatives should be involved.

    Note: Depending on your initiative and size of your organization, the size of this team will vary.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Step 1.2

    Build an ERP Strategy Model

    Activities

    1.2.1 Explore Organizational Goals and Business Needs

    1.2.2 Discover Environmental Factors and Technology Drivers

    1.2.3 Consider Potential Barriers to Achieving Workday Optimization

    1.2.4 Set the Foundation for Success

    1.2.5 Discuss Workday Strategy and Develop Your ERP Optimization Goals

    Map Current State Capabilities

    Step 1.1

    Step 1.2

    Step 1.3

    Step 1.4

    Step 1.5

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Identify ERP drivers and objectives
    • Explore ERP challenges and pain points
    • Discover ERP benefits and opportunities
    • Align the ERP foundation with the corporate strategy

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • ERP business model
    • Strategy alignment

    Align your Workday strategy with the corporate strategy

    Corporate Strategy

    Your corporate strategy:

    • Conveys the current state of the organization and the path it wants to take.
    • Identifies future goals and business aspirations.
    • Communicates the initiatives that are critical for getting the organization from its current state to the desired future state.

    Unified ERP Strategy

    • The ideal ERP strategy is aligned with overarching organizational business goals and broader IT initiatives.
    • Include all affected business units and departments in these conversations.
    • The ERP optimization can be and should be linked, with metrics, to the corporate strategy and ultimate business objectives.

    IT Strategy

    Your IT strategy:

    • Communicates the organization’s budget and spending on ERP.
    • Identifies IT initiatives that will support the business and key ERP objectives.
    • Outlines staffing and resourcing for ERP initiatives.

    ERP projects are more successful when the management team understands the strategic importance and the criticality of alignment. Time needs to be spent upfront aligning business strategies with ERP capabilities. Effective alignment between IT and the business should happen daily. Alignment doesn’t just need to occur at the executive level but at each level of the organization.

    ERP Business Model Template

    The image shows a template of the ERP Business Model. At the top, there is a section for ERP Needs, then on the left and right, Environmental Factors and Organizational Goals. At the center, there is a box with text that reads Barriers, with empty space underneath it, then the text: ERP Strategy, and then the heading Enables with empty space beneath it. At the bottom are Technology Drivers. There are notes attached to sections. For ERP Needs, the note reads: What are your business drivers? What are your current ERP pains?. For the Environmental Factors section, the note reads: What factors impacting your strategy are out of your control?. For the Technology Drivers section, the note reads: Why do you need a new system? What is the purpose for becoming an integrated organization?.

    Conduct interviews to elicit the business context

    Stakeholder Interviews

    Begin by conducting interviews of your executive team. Interview the following leaders:

    1. Chief Information Officer
    2. Chief Executive Officer
    3. Chief Financial Officer
    4. Chief Revenue Officer/Sales Leader
    5. Chief Operating Officer/Supply Chain & Logistics Leader
    6. Chief Technology Officer/Chief Product Officer

    INTERVIEWS MUST UNCOVER:

    1. Your organization’s mission & vision
    2. Your organization’s top business goals
    3. Your organization’s top business initiatives
    4. The stakeholder’s top goals and initiatives
    5. Tools and systems needed to facilitate organizational and departmental goals

    Understand the mission, vision, and goals of the organization and supporting departments

    Business Needs Business Drivers
    Definition A business need is a requirement associated with a particular business process. A business need is a requirement associated with a particular business process.
    Examples
    • Audit tracking
    • Authorization levels
    • Business rules
    • Data quality
    • Customer satisfaction
    • Branding
    • Time-to-resolution

    Info-Tech Insight

    One of the biggest drivers for ERP adoption is the ability to make quicker decisions from timely information. This driver is a result of external considerations. Many industries today are highly competitive, uncertain, and rapidly changing. To succeed under these pressures, there needs to be timely information and visibility into all components of the organization.

    1.2.1 Explore organizational goals and business needs

    60 minutes

    1. Discuss organizational mission, vision, and goals. What are the top initiatives underway? Are you contracting, expanding, or innovating?
    2. Discuss business needs to support organizational goals. What are identified goals and initiatives at the departmental level? What tools and resources within the Workday system will help make this successful?
    3. Understand how the company is running today and what the organization’s future will look like. Envision the future system state.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows the same ERP Business Model Template from the previous section, zoomed in on the centre of the graphic.

    Organizational Goals

    • Organization’s mission and vision
    • Top business goals
    • Initiatives underway

    Business Needs

    • Departmental goals
    • Business drivers
    • Key initiatives
    • Key capabilities to support the organization
    • Requirements to support the business capability and process

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    ERP Business Model

    Organizational Goals

    • Organization’s mission and vision
    • Top business goals (~3)
    • Initiatives underway
    • KPIs and metrics that are important to the organization in achieving its goals and objectives

    Business Needs

    • Departmental goals
    • Key initiatives
    • Key capabilities to support the organization
    • Tools and systems required to support business capability or process
    • KPIs and metrics that are important to the department/stakeholder in achieving its goals and objectives

    Understand the technology drivers and environmental factors

    Technology Drivers Environmental Factors
    Definition Technology drivers are technological changes that have created the need for a new ERP enablement strategy. Many organizations turn to technology systems to help them obtain a competitive edge. These external considerations are factors that take place outside of the organization and impact the way business is conducted inside the organization. These are often outside the control of the business. Look three to five years ahead, what challenges will the business face? Where will you have to adapt and pivot? How can we prepare for this?
    Examples
    • Deployment model (i.e. SaaS)
    • Integration
    • Reporting capabilities
    • Fragmented technologies
    • Economic and political factors
    • Competitive influencers
    • Compliance regulations

    Info-Tech Insight

    A comprehensive plan that takes into consideration organizational goals, departmental needs, technology drivers, and environmental factors will allow for a collaborative approach to defining your Workday strategy.

    1.2.2 Discover environmental factors and technology drivers

    30 minutes

    1. Identify business drivers that are contributing to the organization’s need for ERP.
    2. Understand how the company is running today and what the organization’s future will look like. Try to identify the purpose for becoming an integrated organization. Use a whiteboard or flip charts and markers to capture key findings.
    3. Consider external considerations, organizational drivers, technology drivers, and key functional requirements.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image is the same ERP Business Model Template from previous sections. In this instance, it is zoomed into the centre of the graphic, with the environmental factors section circled.

    External Considerations

    • Funding constraints
    • Regulations

    Technology Considerations

    • Data accuracy
    • Data quality
    • Better reporting

    Functional Requirements

    • Information availability
    • Integration between systems
    • Secure data

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Create a realistic ERP foundation by identifying the challenges and barriers the project will bestow

    There are several different factors that may stifle the success of an ERP implementation. Organizations that are creating an ERP foundation must scan their current environment to identify internal barriers and challenges.

    Common Internal Barriers

    Management Support Organizational Culture Organizational Structure IT Readiness
    Definition The degree of understanding and acceptance toward ERP systems. The collective shared values and beliefs. The functional relationships between people and departments in an organization. The degree to which the organization’s people and processes are prepared for a new ERP system.
    Questions
    • Is an ERP project recognized as a top priority?
    • Will management commit time to the project?
    • Are employees resistant to change?
    • Is the organization highly individualized?
    • Is the organization centralized?
    • Is the organization highly formalized?
    • Is there strong technical expertise?
    • Is there strong infrastructure?
    Impact
    • Funding
    • Resources
    • Knowledge sharing
    • User acceptance
    • Flow of knowledge
    • Quality of implementation
    • Need for reliance on consultants

    1.2.3 Consider potential barriers to achieving Workday optimization

    1-3 hours

    1. Open tab 1.2, “Strategy & Goals,” in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.
    2. Identify barriers to ERP optimization success.
    3. Review the ERP critical success factors and how they relate to your optimization efforts.
    4. Discuss potential barriers to successful ERP optimization.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image is the same zoomed-in section of the ERP Strategy Business Model Template seen in previous sections. In this instance, the Barriers section is circled.

    Functional Gaps

    • No online purchase order requisitions

    Technical Gaps

    • Inconsistent reporting – data quality concerns

    Process Gaps

    • Duplication of data
    • Lack of system integration

    Barriers to Success

    • Cultural mindset
    • Resistance to change
    • Lack of training
    • Funding

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    ERP Business Model

    Organizational Goals

    • Efficiency
    • Effectiveness
    • Integrity
    • One source of truth for data
    • One team
    • Customer service, external and internal

    Barriers

    • Organizational silos
    • Lack of formal process documentation
    • Funding availability
    • What goes first? Organizational priorities

    What does success look like?

    Top 15 Critical Success Factors for ERP System Implementation

    The image shows a horizontal bar graph with the text: Frequency of Citation (n=127) at the top. Different implementation strategies are listed on the left, in descending order of frequency.

    (Epizitone and Olugbara, 2019; CC BY 4.0)

    Info-Tech Insight

    Complement your ability to deliver on your critical success factors with the capabilities of your implementation partner to drive a successful ERP implementation.

    “Implementation partners can play an important role in successful ERP implementations. They can work across the organizational departments and layers creating a synergy and a communications mechanism.” – Ayogeboh Epizitone, Durban University of Technology

    1.2.3 Set the foundation for success

    1-3 hours

    1. Open tab 1.2, “Strategy & Goals,” in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.
    2. Identify barriers to ERP optimization success.
    3. Review the ERP critical success factors and how they relate to your optimization efforts.
    4. Discuss potential barriers to successful ERP optimization.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image is the same zoomed-in section of the ERP Strategy Business Model Template seen in previous sections. In this instance, the Enablers section is circled.

    Business Benefits

    • Business-IT alignment

    IT Benefits

    • Compliance
    • Scalability
    • Operational efficiency

    Organizational Benefits

    • Data accuracy
    • Data quality
    • Better reporting

    Enablers of Success

    • Change management
    • Training
    • Alignment with strategic objectives

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    ERP Business Model

    Organizational Goals

    • Efficiency
    • Effectiveness
    • Integrity
    • One source of truth for data
    • One team
    • Customer service, external and internal

    Enablers

    • Cross-trained employees
    • Desire to focus on value-add activities
    • Collaborative
    • Top-level executive support
    • Effective change management process

    The Business Value Matrix

    Rationalizing and quantifying the value of Workday

    Benefits can be realized internally and externally to the organization or department and have different drivers of value.

    • Financial benefits refer to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics and are often quite tangible.
    • Human benefits refer to how an application can deliver value through a user’s experience.
    • Inward refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in performing its operations.
    • Outward refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external factors, such as the market or your customers.

    Organizational Goals

    Increased Revenue

    Application functions that are specifically related to the impact on your organization’s ability to generate revenue and deliver value to your customers.

    Reduced Costs

    Reduction of overhead. The ways in which an application limits the operational costs of business functions.

    Enhanced Services

    Functions that enable business capabilities that improve the organization’s ability to perform its internal operations.

    Reach Customers

    Application functions that enable and improve the interaction with customers or produce market information and insights.

    Business Value Matrix

    The image shows a matrix, with Human benefits and Financial Benefits on the horizontal axis, and Outward and Inward on the Vertical axis.

    1.2.4 Define your Workday strategy and optimization goals

    30 minutes

    1. Discuss the Workday business model exercises and ERP critical success factors.
    2. Through the lens of corporate goals and objectives think about the supporting ERP technology. How can the ERP system bring value to the organization? What are the top things that will make this initiative a success? What major themes are emerging?
    3. Develop five to ten optimization goals that will form the basis for the success of this initiative.
      • What is a strong statement that will help guide decision making throughout the life of the ERP project?
      • What are your overarching requirements for business processes?
      • What do you ultimately want to achieve?
      • What is a statement that will ensure all stakeholders are on the same page for the project?

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Workday strategy and optimization goals

    Key Themes Emerging / Workday Strategy

    • Efficiency
    • Effectiveness
    • Integrity
    • One source of truth for data
    • One team
    • Customer service, external and internal

    Optimization Goals

    • Support Business Agility: A flexible and adaptable integrated business system providing a seamless user experience.
    • Use ERP best practices: Do not recreate or replicate what we have today; focus on modernization. Exercise customization governance by focusing on those customizations that are strategically differentiating.
    • Automate: Take manual work out where we can, empowering staff and improving productivity through automation and process efficiencies.
    • Stay focused: Focus on scope around core business capabilities. Maintain scope control. Prioritize demand in line with the strategy.
    • Strive for “One Source of Truth”: Unified data model and integrate processes where possible. Assess integration needs carefully.

    Step 1.3

    Inventory Current System State

    Activities

    1.3.1 Inventory Workday Applications and Interactions

    1.3.2 Draw Your Workday System Diagram

    1.3.3 Inventory Your Workday Modules and Business Capabilities (or Business Processes)

    1.3.4 Define Your Key Workday Optimization Modules and Business Capabilities

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    Step 1.1

    Step 1.2

    Step 1.3

    Step 1.4

    Step 1.5

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Inventory of applications
    • Mapping interactions between systems

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team
    • Enterprise Architect
    • Data Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • Systems inventory
    • Systems diagram

    1.3.1 Inventory Workday applications and interfaces

    1-3+ hours

    1. Enter your Workday systems, Workday extended applications, and integrated applications within scope.
    2. Include any abbreviated names or nicknames.
    3. List the application type or main function. List the modules the organization has licensed.
    4. List any integrations.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    ERP Data Flow

    When assessing the current application portfolio that supports your ERP, the tendency will be to focus on the applications under the ERP umbrella. These relate mostly to marketing, sales, and customer service. Be sure to include systems that act as input to, or benefit due to outputs from, ERP or similar applications.

    The image shows a flowchart, with example ERP Data. There is a colour-coded legend for the data, and at the bottom of the graphic, there is text that reads: Be sure to include enterprise applications that are not included in the ERP application portfolio. There are also definitions of abbreviated terms at the bottom of the graphic.

    1.3.2 Draw your Workday system diagram (optional)

    1-3+ hours

    1. From the Workday application inventory, diagram your network. Include:
      • Any internal or external systems
      • Integration points
      • Data flow

    The image shows the flowchart section of th image that appears in the previous section.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Sample Workday and integrations map

    The image shows a sample map of Workday and integrations. There is a colour-coded legend at the bottom right.

    Business capability map (Level 0)

    In business architecture, the primary view of an organization is known as a business capability map.

    A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation, rather than how.

    Business capabilities:

    • Represent stable business functions.
    • Are unique and independent of each other.
    • Will typically have a defined business outcome.

    A business capability map provides details that help the business architecture practitioner direct attention to a specific area of the business for further assessment.

    The image shows a Business Capability Map, which is divided into 4 sections: Products and Services Development; Revenue Generation; Demand Fulfillment; and Enterprise Management and Planning

    The value stream

    Value stream defined:

    Value Streams:

    Design Product

    • Manufacturers work proactively to design products and services that will meet consumer demand.
    • Products are driven by consumer demand and government regulations.

    Produce Product

    • Production processes and labor costs are constantly analyzed for efficiencies and accuracies.
    • Quality of product and services are highly regulated through all levels of the supply chain.

    Sell Product

    • Sales networks and sales staff deliver the product from the organization to the end consumer.
    • Marketing plays a key role throughout the value stream connecting consumers’ wants and needs to the products and services offered.

    Customer Service

    • Relationships with consumers continue after the sale of products and services.
    • Continued customer support and data mining is important to revenue streams.

    Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities in the marketplace. Those activities are dependent on the specific industry segment in which an organization operates. There are two types of value streams: core value streams and support value streams.

    • Core value streams are mostly externally facing. They deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map.
    • Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.

    Taking a value stream approach to process mapping allows you to move across departmental and system boundaries to understand the underlying business capability.

    Some mistakes organizations make are over-customizing processes, or conversely, not customizing when required. Workday provides good baseline process that work for most organizations. However, if a process is broken or not working efficiently take the time to investigate it, including underlying policies, roles, workflows, and integrations.

    Process frameworks

    Help define your inventory of sales, marketing, and customer services processes.

    Operating Processes
    1. Develop vision and strategy 2. Develop and manage products and services 3. Market and sell products and services 4. Deliver physical products 5. Deliver services
    Management and Support Processes
    6. Manage customer service
    7. Develop and manage human capital
    8. Manage IT
    9. Manage financial resources
    10. Acquire, construct, and manage assets
    11. Manage enterprise risk, compliance, remediation, and resiliency
    12. Manage external relationships
    13. Develop and manage business capabilities

    (APQC)

    If you do not have a documented process model, you can use the APQC Framework to help define your inventory of sales business processes.

    APQC’s Process Classification Framework is a taxonomy of cross-functional business processes intended to allow the objective comparison of organizational performance within and among organizations.

    APQC’s Process Classification Framework

    Process mapping hierarchy

    A process classification framework is helpful for organizations to effectively define their processes and manage them appropriately.

    Use Info-Tech’s related industry resources or publicly available process frameworks (such as APQC) to develop and map your business processes.

    These processes can then be mapped to supporting applications and modules. Policies, roles, and workflows also play a role and should be considered in the overall functioning.

    APQC’s Process Classification Framework

    The image shows a chart, titled PCL Levels Explained, with each of the PCF Levels listed, and a brief description of each.

    (APQC)

    Focus on level-1 processes

    Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4
    Market and sell products and services Understand markets, customers, and capabilities Perform customer and market intelligence analysis Conduct customer and market research
    Market and sell products and services Develop a sales strategy Develop a sales forecast Gather current and historic order information
    Deliver services Manage service delivery resources Manage service delivery resource demand Develop baseline forecasts
    ? ? ? ?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Focus your initial assessment on the level-1 processes that matter to your organization. This allows you to target your scant resources on the areas of optimization that matter most to the organization and minimize the effort required from your business partners.

    You may need to iterate the assessment as challenges are identified. This allows you to be adaptive and deal with emerging issues more readily and become a more responsive partner to the business.

    Process mapping and supporting ERP modules

    The operating model

    An operating model is a framework that drives operating decisions. It helps to set the parameters for the scope of ERP and the processes that will be supported. The operating model will serve to group core operational processes. These groupings represent a set of interrelated, consecutive processes aimed at generating a common output.

    From your developed processes and your Workday license agreements you will be able to pinpoint the scope for investigation, including the processes and modules.

    The image shows three images, overlapping one another. At the back is a chart with three sections, and boxes beneath. In front of that is a graphic with Objectives, Value Streams, Capabilities, and Processes written down the left side, and descriptions on the right. Below that image is an arrow pointing downward to the text Supporting Workday Modules. In front is a circular graphic with the word Workday in the centre, and circles with text in them around it.

    Workday modules and process enablement

    Workday Finance

    • Accounts Receivable and Collections
    • Accounts Payable and Payments
    • Asset Management
    • Audit and Controls
    • Billing and Invoicing
    • Cash Management
    • Contracts
    • Financial Reporting and Analysis
    • [Global] Close and Consolidation
    • Multi-GAAP/Multi-book/Multi-chart of Accounts
    • Revenue Management

    Spend Management

    • Strategic Sourcing
    • Procure to Pay
    • Inventory
    • Expenses

    Professional Services Automation

    • Project and Resource Management
    • Project Financials
    • Project Billing
    • Expense Management
    • Time Tracking

    Enterprise Planning

    • Financial planning
    • Reporting
    • Analytics
    • Budgets
    • Insights
    • Workforce planning
    • Sales planning
    • Operational planning

    Analytics and Reporting

    • Financial Management Core Reporting
    • Human Capital Management Core Reporting
    • Benchmarking
    • Data Hub
    • Augmented Analytics

    Student

    • Admissions
    • Financial Aid
    • Advising
    • Student Finance
    • Student Records

    Human Capital Management (HCM)

    • Human Resource Management
    • Organization Management
    • Business Process Management
    • Reporting and Analytics
    • Employee and Manager Self-Service
    • Contingent Labor Management
    • Skills Cloud
    • Absence Management
    • Benefits Administration
    • ACA Management
    • Compensation
    • Talent Optimization

    Payroll and Workforce Management

    • Scheduling and Labor Management
    • Time and Attendance
    • Absence
    • Payroll

    Employee Experience

    • Employee Engagement Insights
    • Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Measurement
    • Health and Well-Being Metrics
    • Back-to-Workplace Readiness
    • Confidential Employee-Manager Conversations
    • Attrition Prediction
    • Continuous Industry Benchmarks

    Talent and Performance

    • Talent Profile
    • Continuous Feedback
    • Survey Campaigns
    • Embedded Analytics
    • Goal Management
    • Performance Management
    • Talent Review
    • Calibration
    • Competencies
    • Career and Development Planning
    • Succession Planning
    • Talent Marketplace
    • Mobile
    • Expenses

    1.3.3 Inventory your Workday modules and business capabilities

    1-3+ hours

    1. Look at the major functions or processes within the scope of ERP.
    2. From the inventory of current systems, choose the submodules or processes that you want to investigate and are within scope for this optimization initiative.
    3. List the top modules, capabilities, or processes that will be within the scope of this optimization initiative.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    1.3.4 Define your key Workday optimization modules and business capabilities

    1-3+ hours

    1. Look at the major functions or processes within the scope of ERP.
    2. From the inventory of current systems, choose the submodules or processes for this optimization initiative. Base this on those that are most critical to the business, those with the lowest levels of satisfaction, or those that perhaps need more knowledge around them.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Step 1.4

    Define Optimization Timeframe

    Activities

    1.4.1 Define Workday Key Dates, and Workday Optimization Roadmap Timeframe and Structure

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    Step 1.1

    Step 1.2

    Step 1.3

    Step 1.4

    Step 1.5

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Defining key dates related to your optimization initiative
    • Identifying key building blocks for your optimization roadmap

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team
    • Vendor Management

    Outcomes of this step

    • Optimization Key Dates
    • Optimization Roadmap Timeframe and Structure

    1.4.1 Optimization roadmap timeframe and structure

    1-3+ hours

    1. Key items and dates relevant to your optimization initiatives, such as any products reaching end of life or end of contract, or budget proposal submission deadlines.
    2. Enter the expected Optimization Initiative Start Date.
    3. Enter the Roadmap Length. This is the total amount of time you expect to participate in the Workday Optimization Initiative. This includes short-, medium-, and long-term initiatives.
    4. Enter your Roadmap Date markers – how you want dates displayed on the roadmap.
    5. Enter column time values – what level of granularity will be helpful for this initiative?
    6. Enter the sprint or cycle timeframe – use this if following Agile.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Step 1.5

    Understand Workday Costs

    Activities

    1.5.1 Document Costs Associated With Workday

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    Step 1.1

    Step 1.2

    Step 1.3

    Step 1.4

    Step 1.5

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Define your Workday direct and indirect costs
    • List your Workday expense line items

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Finance representatives
    • Workday Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Current Workday and related costs

    1.5.1 Document costs associated with Workday

    1-3 hours

    Before you can make changes and optimization decisions, you need to understand the high-level costs associated with your current application architecture. This activity will help you identify the types of technology and people costs associated with your current systems.

    1. Identify the types of technology costs associated with each current system:
      1. System Maintenance
      2. Annual Renewal
      3. Licensing
    2. Identify the cost of people associated with each current system:
      1. Full-Time Employees
      2. Application Support Staff
      3. Help Desk Tickets

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Phase 2

    Assess Your Current State

    Phase 1

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    1.2 Build an ERP Strategy Model

    1.3 Inventory Current System State

    1.4 Define Optimization Timeframe

    1.5 Understand Workday Costs

    Phase 2

    2.1 Assess Workday Capabilities

    2.2 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    Phase 3

    3.1 Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

    3.2 Discover Optimization Initiatives

    Phase 4

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This phase will guide you through the following activities:

    • Determine process relevance
    • Perform a gap analysis
    • Perform a user satisfaction survey
    • Assess software and vendor satisfaction

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team
    • Users across functional areas of your ERP and related technologies

    Step 2.1

    Assess Workday Capabilities

    Activities

    2.1.1 Rate Capability Relevance to Organizational Goals

    2.1.2 Complete a Workday Application Portfolio Assessment

    2.1.3 (Optional) Assess Workday Process Maturity

    Assess Workday Capabilities

    Step 2.1

    Step 2.2

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Capability Relevance
    • Process Gap Analysis
    • Application Portfolio Assessment

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Users

    Outcomes of this step

    • Workday Capability Assessment

    Benefits of the Application Portfolio Assessment

    Assess the health of the application portfolio

    • Get a full 360-degree view of the effectiveness, criticality, and prevalence of all relevant applications to get a comprehensive view of the health of the applications portfolio.
    • Identify opportunities to drive more value from effective applications, retire nonessential applications, and immediately address at-risk applications that are not meeting expectations.

    Provide targeted department feedback

    • Share end-user satisfaction and importance ratings for core IT services, IT communications, and business enablement to focus on the right end-user groups or lines of business, and ramp up satisfaction and productivity.

    Gain insight into the state of data quality

    • Data quality is one of the key issues causing poor ERP user satisfaction and business results. This can include the relevance, accuracy, timeliness, or usability of the organization’s data.
    • Targeted, open-ended feedback around data quality will provide insight into where optimization efforts should be focused.

    2.1.1 Complete a current state assessment (via the Application Portfolio Assessment)

    3 hours

    Option 1: Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to generate your user satisfaction score. This tool not only measures application satisfaction but also elicits great feedback from users regarding the support they receive from the IT team around Workday.

    1. Download the Workday Application Inventory Tool.
    2. Complete the “Demographics” tab (tab 2).
    3. Complete the “Inventory” tab (tab 3).
      1. Complete the inventory by treating each module within your Workday system as an application.
      2. Treat every department as a separate column in the department section. Feel free to add, remove, or modify department names to match your organization.
      3. Include data quality for all applications applicable.

    Option 2: Create a survey manually.

    1. Use tab Reference 2.1 “APA Questions” as a guide for creating your survey.
    2. Send out surveys to end users.
    3. Modify tab 2.1 “Workday Assessment” if required.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Content for New section Tag Goes HereThe image shows a number of charts relating to applications, such as Overall Applications Portfolio Satisfaction and Most Critical Applications. Data is shown in each category relating to number of users, usability, data quality, status, and others.

    2.1.2 Complete the Application Portfolio Assessment

    3 hours

    Option 1: Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to generate your user satisfaction score. This tool not only measures application satisfaction but also elicits great feedback from users regarding the support they receive from the IT team around Workday.

    1. Download the Workday Application Inventory Tool.
    2. Complete the “Demographics” tab (tab 2).
    3. Complete the “Inventory” tab (tab 3).
      1. Complete the inventory by treating each module within your Workday system as an application.
      2. Treat every department as a separate column in the department section. Feel free to add, remove, or modify department names to match your organization.
      3. Include data quality for all applications applicable.

    Option 2: Create a survey manually.

    1. Use tab Reference 2.1 “APA Questions” as a guide for creating your survey.
    2. Send out surveys to end users.
    3. Modify tab 2.1 “Workday Assessment” if required.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    2.1.3 (Optional) Assess Workday process maturity

    1. As with any ERP system, the issues encountered may not be related to the system itself but processes that have developed over time.
    2. Use this opportunity to interview key stakeholders to learn about deeper capability processes.
      1. Identify key stakeholders.
      2. Hold sessions to document deeper processes.
      3. Discuss processes and technical enablement in each area.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Process Maturity Assessment

    Process Assessment

    Strong

    Moderate

    Weak

    1.1 Financial Planning and Analysis

    1.2 Accounting and Financial Close

    1.3 Treasury Management

    1.4 Financial Operations

    1.5 Governance, Risk & Compliance

    2.1 Core HR

    Description All aspects related to financial operations
    Key Success Indicators Month-end reporting in 5 days AR at risk managing down (zero over 90 days) Weekly operating cash flow updates
    Timely liquidity for claims payments Payroll audit reporting and insights reporting 90% of workflow tasks captured in ERP
    EFT uptake Automated reconciliations Reduce audit hours required
    Current Pain Points A lot of voided and re-issued checks NIDPP Integration with banks; can’t get the information back into existing ERP
    There is no payroll integration No payroll automation and other processes Lack of integration with HUB
    Not one true source of data Incentive payment processing Rewards program management
    Audit process is onerous Reconcile AP and AR for dealers

    Stakeholders Interviewed:

    The process is formalized, documented, optimized, and audited.

    The process is poorly documented. More than one person knows how to do it. Inefficient and error-prone.

    The process is not documented. One person knows how to do it. The process is ad hoc, not formalized, inconsistent.

    Capability Processes:

    General Ledger

    Accounts Receivable

    Incentives Management

    Accounts Payable

    General Ledger Consolidation

    Treasury Management

    Cash Management

    Subscription / recurring payments

    Treasury Transactions

    Step 2.2

    Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    Activities

    2.2.1 Rate Your Vendor and Product Satisfaction

    2.2.2 Review Workday Product Scores (if applicable)

    2.2.3 Evaluate Your Product Satisfaction

    2.2.4 Check Your Business Process Change Tolerance

    Product Satisfaction

    Step 2.1

    Step 2.2

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Rate your vendor and product satisfaction
    • Compare with survey data from SoftwareReviews

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Product Owner(s)
    • Procurement Representative
    • Vendor Contracts Manager

    Outcomes of this step

    • Quantified satisfaction with vendor and product

    2.2.1 Rate your vendor and product satisfaction

    30 minutes

    Use Info-Tech’s vendor satisfaction survey to identify optimization areas with your ERP product(s) and vendor(s).

    1. Option 1 (recommended): Conduct a satisfaction survey using SoftwareReviews. This option allows you to see your results in the context of the vendor landscape.
    2. Option 2: Use the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook to review your satisfaction with your Workday software.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise Resource Planning Category

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    2.2.2 Review Workday product scores (if applicable)

    30 minutes

    1. Download the scorecard for your Workday product from the SoftwareReviews website. (Note: Not all products are represented or have sufficient data, so a scorecard may not be available.)
    2. Use the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook tab 2.3 to record the scorecard results.
    3. Use your Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook to flag areas where your score may be lower than the product scorecard. Brainstorm ideas for optimization.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    SoftwareReviews’ Enterprise Resource Planning Category

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    2.2.3 How does your satisfaction compare with your peers?

    Use SoftwareReviews to explore product features, vendor experience, and capability satisfaction.

    The image shows two data quadrants, one titled Enterprise Resource Planning - Enterprise, and Enterprise Resource Planning - Midmarket.

    (SoftwareReviews ERP Mid-Market, 2022; SoftwareReviews ERP Enterprise, 2022)

    2.2.4 Check your business process change tolerance

    1 hours

    Input

    • Business process capability map

    Output

    • Heat map of risk areas that require more attention to validate best practices or minimize customization

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Participants

    • Implementation team
    • SMEs
    • Departmental Leaders
    1. As a group, list your level-0 and level-1 business capabilities. Sample on the next slide.
    2. Assess the department’s willingness for change and the risk of maintaining the status quo.
    3. Color-code the level-0 business capabilities based on:
      1. Green – Willing to follow best practices
      2. Yellow – May be challenging or unique business model
      3. Red – Low tolerance for change

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Heat map representing desire for best practice or those having the least tolerance for change

    Legend:

    Willing to follow best practice

    May be challenging or unique business model

    Low tolerance for change

    Out of Scope

    Product-Centric Capabilities
    R&D Production Supply Chain Distribution Asset Mgmt
    Idea to Offering Plan to Produce Procure to Pay Forecast to Delivery Acquire to Dispose
    Add/Remove Shop Floor Scheduling Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove
    Add/Remove Product Costing Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove
    Service-Centric Capabilities
    Finance HR Marketing Sales Service
    Record to Report Hire to Retire Market to Order Quote to Cash Issue to Resolution
    Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove
    Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove Add/Remove

    Determine the areas of risk to conform to best practice and minimize customization. These will be areas needing focus from the vendor, supporting change and guiding best practice.

    For example: Must be able to support our unique process manufacturing capabilities and enhance planning and visibility to detailed costing.

    Phase 3

    Identify Key Optimization Opportunities

    Phase 1

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    1.2 Build an ERP Strategy Model

    1.3 Inventory Current System State

    1.4 Define Optimization Timeframe

    1.5 Understand Workday Costs

    Phase 2

    2.1 Assess Workday Capabilities

    2.2 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    Phase 3

    3.1 Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

    3.2 Discover Optimization Initiatives

    Phase 4

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify key optimization areas
    • Create an optimization roadmap

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team

    Step 3.1

    Prioritize optimization opportunities

    Activities

    3.1.1 Prioritize Optimization Capability Areas

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    Step 3.1

    Step 3.2

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Explore existing process gaps
    • Identify the impact of processes on user satisfaction
    • Identify the impact of data quality on user satisfaction
    • Review your overall product satisfaction and vendor management

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Application optimization plan

    Info-Tech Insight

    Enabling a high-performing organization requires excellent management practices and continuous optimization efforts. Your technology portfolio and architecture are important, but we must go deeper. Taking a holistic view of ERP technologies in the environments in which they operate allows for the inclusion of people and process improvements – this is key to maximizing business results. Using a formal ERP optimization initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify IT automation priorities, and dig deep into continuous process improvement.

    Address process gaps:

    • ERP and related technologies are invaluable to the goal of organizational enablement, but they must have supported processes driven by business goals.
    • Identify areas where capabilities need to be improved and work toward optimization.

    Support user satisfaction:

    • The best technology in the world won’t deliver business results if it’s not working for the users who need it.
    • Understand concerns, communicate improvements, and support users in all roles.

    Improve data quality:

    • Data quality is unique to each business unit and requires tolerance, not perfection.
    • Implement data quality initiatives that are aligned with overall business objectives and aimed at addressing data practices and the data itself.

    Proactively manage vendors:

    • Vendor management is a critical component of technology enablement and IT satisfaction.
    • Assess your current satisfaction against that of your peers and work toward building a process that is best fit for your organization.

    Assessing application business value

    The Business

    Keepers of the organization’s mission, vision, and value statements that define IT success. The business maintains the overall ownership and evaluation of the applications.

    Business Value of Applications

    IT

    Technical subject matter experts of the applications they deliver and maintain. Each IT function works together to ensure quality applications are delivered to stakeholder expectations.

    First, the authorities on business value need to define and weigh their value drivers that describe the priorities of the organization. This will allow the applications team to apply a consistent, objective, and strategically aligned evaluation of applications across the organization.

    In this context…

    business value is

    the value of the business outcome that the application produces. Additionally, it is how effective the application is at producing that outcome.

    Business value IS NOT

    the user’s experience or satisfaction with the application.

    Brainstorm IT initiatives to enable high areas of opportunity to support the business

    Create or Improve:

    • ERP Capabilities
    • Optimization Initiatives

    Capabilities are what the system and business do that creates value for the organization.

    Optimization initiatives are projects with a definitive start and end date, and they enhance, create, maintain, or remove capabilities with the goal of increasing value.

    Brainstorm ERP optimization initiatives in each area. Ensure you are looking for all-encompassing opportunities within the context of IT, the business, and Workday systems.

    • Process
    • Technology
    • Organization

    Discover the value drivers of your applications

    Financial vs. Human Benefits

    Financial benefits refer to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics and are often quite tangible.

    Human benefits refer to how an application can deliver value through a user’s experience.

    Inward vs. Outward Orientation

    Inward refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in performing its operations.

    Outward refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external factors, such as the market or your customers.

    The image shows a business value matrix, with Human benefit and Financial benefit in the horizontal and Outward and Inward on the vertical. In the top left quadrant is Reach Customers; top right is Increase Revenue or Deliver Value; bottom left is Enhance Services, and bottom right is Reduce Costs.

    The image shows a graph titled Perceived business benefits from using digital tools. It is a bar graph, showing percentages assigned to each perceived benefit. The source is Collins et al, 2017.

    Increased Revenue

    Application functions that are specifically related to the impact on your organization’s ability to generate revenue and deliver value to your customers.

    Reduced Costs

    Reduction of overhead. The ways in which an application limits the operational costs of business functions.

    Enhanced Services

    Functions that enable business capabilities that improve the organization’s ability to perform its internal operations.

    Reach Customers

    Application functions that enable and improve the interaction with customers or produce market information and insights.

    Prioritize Workday optimization areas that will bring the most value to the organization

    Review your ERP capability areas and rate them according to relevance to organizational goals. This will allow you to eliminate optimization ideas that may not bring value to the organization.

    The image shows a graph, separated into quadrants. On the x-axis is Satisfaction, from low to high, and on the Y-axis is Relevant to Organizational Goals from Low to High. The top left quadrant is High Priority, top right is Maintain, and the two lower quadrants are both low priority.

    Value vs. Effort

    How important is it? vs. How difficult is it?

    How important is it? How Difficult is it?

    What is the value?

    • Increase revenue
    • Decrease costs
    • Enhanced services
    • Reach customers

    What is the benefit?

    • How can it help us reach our goals?

    What is the impact?

    • To organizational goals
    • To ERP goals
    • To departmental goals

    What is the cost?

    • Hours x Rates ++ =

    What is the level of effort?

    • Development effort
    • Operational effort
    • Implementation effort
    • Outside resource coordination

    What is the risk of implementing/not implementing?

    What is the complexity?

    (Roadmunk)

    RICE method

    Measure the “total impact per time worked”

    The image shows a graphic with the word Confidence at the top, then an arrow pointing upwards that reads Impact. Below that, there is an arrow pointing horizontally in both directions that reads Reach, and then a horizontal line, with the word Effort below it.

    Reach Impact Confidence Effort

    How many people will this improvement impact? Internal: # of users OR # of transactions per period

    External: # of customers OR # of transactions per period

    What is the scale of impact? How much will the improvement affect satisfaction?

    Example Weighting:

    1 = Massive Impact

    2 = High Impact

    1 = Medium Impact

    0.5 = Low Impact

    0.25 = Very Low Impact

    How confident are we that the improvements are achievable and that they will meet the impact estimates?

    Example Weighting:

    1 = High Confidence

    0.80 = Medium Confidence

    0.50 = Low Confidence

    How much investment will be required to implement the improvement initiative?

    FTE hours x cost per hour

    (Intercom)

    3.1.1 Prioritize and rate optimization capability areas

    1-3 hours

    1. Use tab 3.1 Optimization Priorities.
    2. From the Workday Key Capabilities (pulled from tab 1.3 Key Capabilities), discuss areas of scope for the Workday optimization initiative.
    3. Discuss the four areas of the business value matrix and identify how each module, along with organizational goals, can bring value to the organization.
    4. Rate each of your Workday capabilities for the level of importance to your organization. The levels of importance are:
      • Crucial
      • Important
      • Secondary
      • Unimportant
      • Not applicable

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Step 3.2

    Discover Optimization Initiatives

    Activities

    3.2.1 Discover Product and Vendor Satisfaction Opportunities

    3.2.2 Discover Capability and Feature Optimization Opportunities

    3.2.3 Discover Process Optimization Opportunities

    3.2.4 Discover Integration Optimization Opportunities

    3.2.5 Discover Data Optimization Opportunities

    3.2.6 Discover Workday Cost-Saving Opportunities

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    Step 3.1

    Step 3.2

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Explore existing process gaps
    • Identify the impact of processes on user satisfaction
    • Identify the impact of data quality on user satisfaction
    • Review your overall product satisfaction and vendor management

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Workday Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Application optimization plan
    Content for New section Tag Goes HereThe image shows a graphic title Product Feature Satisfaction, showing features in rank order and data on each.
    Content for New section Tag Goes HereThe image shows a graphic titled Vendor Capability Satisfaction, showing features in rank order with related data.

    Workday’s partner landscape

    Workday uses an extensive partner network to help deliver results.

    ADVISORY PARTNERS

    Workday Advisory Partners have in-depth knowledge to help customers determine what’s best for their needs and how to maximize business value. They guide you through digital acceleration strategy and planning, product selection, change management, and more.

    SERVICES PARTNERS

    Workday Services Partners represent a curated community of global systems integrators and regional firms that help companies deploy Workday and continually adopt new capabilities.

    SOFTWARE PARTNERS

    Workday Software Partners are a global ecosystem of application, content, and technology software companies that design, build, and deploy solution extensions to help customers enhance the capabilities of Workday.

    Global payroll PARTNERS

    Workday’s Global Payroll Cloud (GPC) program makes it easy to expand payroll (outside of the US, Canada, the UK, and France) to third-party payroll providers around the world using certified, prebuilt integrations from Workday Partners. Payroll partners provide solutions in more than 100 countries.

    Adaptive planning PARTNERS

    Adaptive planning partners guide you through all aspects of everything from integration to deployment.

    With large-scale ERP and HCM systems, the success of the system can be as much about the SI (Systems Integrator) or vendor partners as it is about the core product.

    In evaluating your Workday system, think about Workday’s extensive partner network to understand how you can capitalize on your installation.

    You do not need to reinvent the system; you may just need an additional service partner or bolt-on solution to round out your product functionality.

    Improving vendor management

    Create a right-size, right-fit strategy for managing the vendors relevant to your organization.

    The image shows a matrix, with strategic value on the x-axis from low to high, and Vendor Spend/Switching Costs on the y-axis, from low to high. In the top left is Operational, top right is Strategic; lower left is commodity; and lower right Tactical.

    Info-Tech Insight

    A vendor management initiative is an organization’s formalized process for evaluating, selecting, managing, and optimizing third-party providers of goods and services.

    The amount of resources you assign to managing vendors depends on the number and value of your organization’s relationships. Before optimizing your vendor management program around the best practices presented in Info-Tech’s Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative blueprint, assess your current maturity and build the process around a model that reflects the needs of your organization.

    Note: Info-Tech uses VMI interchangeably with the terms “vendor management office (VMO),” “vendor management function,” “vendor management process,” and “vendor management program.”

    Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative

    3.2.1 Discover product and vendor satisfaction

    1-2 hours

    1. Review tab 2.2 Vend. & Prod. Sat. to review the overall Product (and Vendor) satisfaction of your Workday system.
    2. Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives to answer the following questions in the Overall Product (and Vendor) Evaluation area.
      • Document overall product satisfaction.
      • How does your satisfaction compare with your peers?
      • Is the overall system fit for use?
      • Do you have a proactive vendor management strategy in place?
      • Is the product dissatisfaction at the point that you need to evaluate if it is time to replace the product?
      • Could your vendor or SI help you achieve better results?

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a box with text in it, titled 3.2.1 Overall Product (and Vendor) Evaluation.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Content for New section Tag Goes HereThe image is a graphic, with the Five Most Critical Applications section at the top, with related data, and other sets of data included in smaller text at the bottom of the image.

    3.2.2 Discover capability and feature optimization opportunities

    1-2 hours

    1. Review tab 2.2 Vend. & Prod. Sat. and tab 3.1 Optimization Priorities to review the satisfaction with the capabilities and features of your Workday system.
    2. Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives to answer the following questions in the Capabilities and Features Evaluation area to answer the following questions:
      • What capabilities and features are performing the worst?
      • Do other organizations and users struggle with these areas?
      • Why is it not performing well?
      • Is there an opportunity for improvement?
      • What are some optimization initiatives that could be undertaken?

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    The image is a box with text in it, titled 3.2.2 Capabilities and Features Evaluation.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Process optimization: the hidden goldmine

    Know your strategic goals and KPIs that will deliver results.

    Goals of Process Improvement Process Improvement Sample Areas Improvement Possibilities
    • Optimize business and improve value drivers
    • Reduce TCO
    • Reduce process complexity
    • Eliminate manual processes
    • Increase efficiencies
    • Support digital transformation and enablement
    • Order to cash
    • Procure to pay
    • Order to replenish
    • Plan to produce
    • Request to settle
    • Make to order
    • Make to stock
    • Purchase to order
    • Increase number of process instances processed successfully end to end
    • Increase number of instances processed in time
    • Increase degree of process automation
    • Speed up cycle times of supply chain processes
    • Reduce number of process exceptions
    • Apply internal best practices across organizational units

    3.2.3 Discover process optimization opportunities

    1-2 hours

    1. Use tab 3.1 Optimization Priorities and tab 2.2 Bus Proc Change Tolerance to review process optimization opportunities.
    2. Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives to answer the following questions in the Capabilities and Features Evaluation area to answer the following questions:
      • List underperforming capabilities around process.
      • Answer the following:
        • What is the state of the current processes?
        • Is there an opportunity for process improvement?
        • What are some optimization initiatives that could be undertaken in this area?

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a box with text in it, titled Processes Optimization.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Integration provides long-term usability

    Balance the need for secure, compliant data availability with organizational agility.

    The benefits of integration

    • The largest benefit is the extended use of data. The ERP data can be used in the enterprise-level business intelligence suite rather than the application-specific analytics.
    • Enhanced data security. Integrated approaches lend themselves to auditable processes such as sign-on and limit the email movement of data.
    • Regulatory compliance. Large multi-site organizations have many layers of regulation. A clear understanding of where orders, deliveries, and payments were made streamlines the audit process.

    The challenges of integration

    • Extending a single instance ERP to multiple sites. The challenge for data management is the same as any SaaS application. The connection and data replication present challenges.
    • Combining data from equally high-volume systems. For Workday it is recommended that one instance is set to primary and all other sites are read-only to maintain data integrity.
    • Incorporating data from the separate system(s). The proprietary and locked-in nature of the data collection and definitions for ERP systems often limit the movement of data between separate systems.

    Common integration and consolidation scenarios

    Financial Consolidation Data Backup Synchronization Across Sites Legacy Consolidation
    • Financial consolidation requires a holistic view of data format and accounting schedules
    • Problem: Controlling financial documentation across geographic regions. Most companies are required to report in each region where they maintain a presence. Stakeholders and senior management also need a holistic view. This leads to significant strain on the financial department to consolidate both revenue and budget allocations for cross-site projects across the various geographic locations on a regular basis.
    • Solution: For enterprises with a single vendor or Workday-only portfolios, Workday can offer integration tools. For those needing to integrate with other ERPs the use of a connector may be required to send financial data to the main system. The format and accounting calendar for transactions should match the primary ERP system to allow consolidation. The local specific format should be a role-based customization at the level of the site’s specific instance.
    • Use a data center as the main repository to ensure all geographic locations have equal access to the necessary data.
    • Problem: ERP systems generate high volumes of data. Most systems have a defined schedule of back-up during off-hours. Multi-instance brings additional issues through lack of defined off-hours, higher volume of data, and the potential for cross-site or instance data relationships. This leads to headaches for both the Database Administrator and Business Analysts.
    • Solution: The best solution is an offsite data center with high availability. This may include cloud storage or hosted data centers. Regardless of where the data is stored, centralize the data and replicate to each site. Ensure that the data center can mirror the database and Binary Large Object (BLOB) storage that exists for each site.
    • Set up synchronization schedules based on data usage, not site location.
    • Problem: Providing access to up-to-date transactions requires copying of both contextual information (permissions, timestamp, location, history) and the transaction itself across multiple sites to allow local copies to be used for analysis and audits. The sheer volume of information makes timely synchronization difficult.
    • Solution: Not all data needs to be synchronized in a timely fashion. In Workday, administrators can use NetWeaver to maintain and alter global data synchronization through the Master Data Management module. Permissions can be given to users to perform on-demand synchronization of data attached to that user.
    • Carefully define older transactions. Only active transactions should be brought in the ERP. Send older data to storage.
    • Problem: Subsidiaries and acquired companies often have a Tier 2 ERP product. Prior to fully consolidating the processes, many enterprises will want to migrate data to their ERP system to build compliance and audit trails. Migration of data often breaks historical linkages between transactions.
    • Solution: Workday offers tools to integrate data across applications that can be used as part of a data migration strategy. The process of data migration should be combined with data warehousing to ensure a cost-effective process. For most enterprises, the lack of experience in data migration will necessitate the use of consultants and Independent Software Vendors (ISV).

    For more information: Implement a Multi-site ERP

    3.2.4 Discover integration optimization opportunities

    1-2 hours

    1. Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives to answer the following questions in the Integration Evaluation area:
      1. Are there some areas where integration could be improved?
      2. Is there an opportunity for process improvement?
      3. What are some optimization initiatives that could be undertaken in this area?

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a box with text in it, titled Integration Evaluation.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Use a data strategy that fixes the enterprise-wide data management issues

    Your data management must allow for flexibility and scalability for future needs.

    IT has several concerns around ERP data and wide dissemination of that data across sites. Large organizations can benefit from building a data warehouse or at least adopting some of the principles of data warehousing. The optimal way to deal with the issue of integration is to design a metadata-driven data warehouse that acts as a central repository for all ERP data. This serves as the storage facility for millions of transactions, formatted to allow analysis and comparison.

    Key considerations:

    • Technical: At what stage does data move to the warehouse? Can processes be automated to dump data or to do a scheduled data movement?
    • Process: Data integration requires some level of historical context for all data. Ensure that all data has multiple metadata tags to future-proof the data.
    • People: Who will be accessing the data and what are the key items that users will need to adapt to the data warehouse process?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Data warehouse solutions can be expensive. See Info-Tech’s Build a Data Warehouse on a Solid Foundation for guidance on what options are available to meet your budget and data needs.

    Optimizing Workday data, additional considerations

    Data Quality Management Effective Data Governance Data-Centric Integration Strategy Extensible Data Warehousing
    • Prevention is 10x cheaper than remediation. Stop fixing data quality with band-aid solutions and start fixing at the source of the problem.
    • Data quality is unique to each business unit and requires tolerance, not perfection. If the data allows the business to operate at the desired level, don’t waste time fixing data that may not need to be fixed.
    • Implement a set of data quality initiatives that are aligned with overall business objectives and aimed at addressing data practices and the data itself.
    • Develop a prioritized data quality improvement project roadmap and long-term improvement strategy.
    • Build related practices with more confidence and less risk after achieving an appropriate level of data quality.
    • Data governance enables data-driven insight. Think of governance as a structure for making better use of data.
    • Collaboration is critical. The business may own the data, but IT understands the data. Data governance will not work unless the business and IT work together.
    • Data governance powers the organization up the data value chain through policies and procedures, master data management, data quality, and data architecture.
    • Create a roadmap to prioritize initiatives and delineate responsibilities among data stewards, data owners, and the data governance steering committee.
    • Ensure buy-in from business and IT stakeholders. Communicate initiatives to end users and executives to reduce resistance.
    • Every enterprise application involves data integration. Any change in the application and database ecosystem requires you to solve a data integration problem.
    • Data integration is becoming more and more critical for downstream functions of data management and for business operations to be successful. Poor integration holds back these critical functions.
    • Build your data integration practice with a firm foundation in governance and a reference architecture. Ensure that your process is scalable and sustainable.
    • Support the flow of data through the organization and meet the organization’s requirements for data latency, availability, and relevancy.
    • Data availability must be frequently reviewed and repositioned to continue to grow with the business.
    • A data warehouse is a project, but successful data warehousing is a program. An effective data warehouse requires planning beyond the technology implementation.
    • Governance, not technology, needs to be the core support system for enabling a data warehouse program.
    • Leverage an approach that focuses on constructing a data warehouse foundation that can address a combination of operational, tactical, and ad hoc business needs.
    • Invest time and effort to put together pre-project governance to inform and guide your data warehouse implementation.
    • Select the most suitable architecture pattern to ensure the data warehouse is “built right” at the very beginning.

    Build Your Data Quality Program

    Establish Data Governance

    Build a Data Integration Strategy

    Build an Extensible Data Warehouse Foundation

    3.2.5 Discover data optimization opportunities

    1-2 hours

    1. Use your 2.1 APA survey and/or tab 2.2 Vendor & Prod Sat to better understand issues related to data.
    • Note: Data issues happen for a number of reasons:
      • Poor underlying data in the system
      • More than one source of truth
      • Inability to consolidate data
      • Inability to measure KPIs (key performance indicators) effectively
      • Reporting that is cumbersome or non-existent
  • Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives to answer the following questions in the Data Evaluation area:
    • What are some underlying issues?
    • Is there an opportunity for data improvement?
    • What are some optimization initiatives that could be undertaken in this area?
  • Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a box with text in it, titled 3.2.5 Data Evaluation.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Content for New section Tag Goes HereThe image shows a graphic, with a bar graph at the bottom, showing Primary Reason for Leaving Workday Human Capital Management.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The number one reason organizations leave Workday is because of cost. Do not be strong-armed into a contract you do not feel comfortable with. Do your homework, know your leverage points, be fully prepared for cost negotiations, use their competition to your advantage, and get support – such as Info-Tech’s vendor management resources and team.

    Approach contracts and pricing strategically

    Don’t go into contract negotiation blind.

    • Understand the vendor – year-end, market strategy, and competitive position.
    • Take the time to understand the contract. including contract details such as length of the contract, full-service equivalent (FSE, employee count,) innovation fees, modules included, and renewal clauses.
    • Be fully prepared to take a proactive approach to cost negotiations.
      • Use Info-Tech’s vendor management services to support you.
      • Go in prepared.
      • Use your leverage points – FSE count, Module Bundles, CPI & Innovation Fees.
      • Use competition to your advantage.

    Since 2007, Workday has been steadily growing its market share and footprint in human capital management, finance, and student information systems.

    Organizations considering additional modules or undergoing contract renewal need to gain insight into areas of leverage and other relevant vendor information.

    Key issues that occur include pricing transparency and contractual flexibility on terms and conditions. Adequate planning and communication need to be taken into consideration before entering into any agreement.

    3.2.6 Discover Workday cost-saving opportunities

    1-2 hours

    1. Use tab 1.5 Current Costs, as an input for this exercise. Another great resource is Info-Tech’s Workday vendor management resources which you can use to help understand cost-saving strategies.
    2. Use tab 3.2 Optimization Initiatives Costs Evaluation area to list cost savings initiatives and opportunities.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a box with text in it, titled 3.2.6 Costs Evaluation.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Other optimization opportunities

    There are many opportunities to improve your Workday portfolio. Choose the ones that are right for your business.

    • Artificial intelligence (AI) (and management of the AI lifecycle)
    • Machine learning (ML)
    • Augment business interactions
    • Automatically execute sales pipelines
    • Process mining
    • Workday application monitoring
    • Be aware of the Workday product roadmap
    • Implement and take advantage of Workday tools and product offerings

    Phase 4

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    Phase 1

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    1.2 Build an ERP Strategy Model

    1.3 Inventory Current System State

    1.4 Define Optimization Timeframe

    1.5 Understand Workday Costs

    Phase 2

    2.1 Assess Workday Capabilities

    2.2 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor/Product and Willingness for Change

    Phase 3

    3.1 Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

    3.2 Discover Optimization Initiatives

    Phase 4

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Review the different options to solve the identified pain points
    • Build out a roadmap showing how you will get to those solutions
    • Build a communication plan that includes the stakeholder presentation

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Primary stakeholders in each value stream supported by the ERP
    • ERP Applications support team

    Get the Most Out of Your Workday

    Step 4.1

    4.1 Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    Activities

    4.1.1 Evaluate Optimization Initiatives

    4.1.2 Prioritize Your Workday Initiatives

    4.1.3 Build a Roadmap

    4.1.4 Build a Visual Roadmap

    Next steps

    Step 4.1

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Review the different options to solve the identified pain points then build out a roadmap of how to get to that solution.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Primary stakeholders in each value stream supported by the ERP
    • ERP Applications support team

    Outcomes of this step

    • A strategic direction is set
    • An initial roadmap is laid out

    Evaluate your optimization initiatives and determine next steps to build out your optimization roadmap

    The image shows a chart titled Value Drivers, with specific categories and criteria listed along the top as headings. The rows below the headings are blank.

    Activity 4.1.1 Evaluate optimization Initiatives

    1 hour

    1. Evaluate your optimization initiatives from tab 3.2, Optimization Initiatives.
    2. Complete Value Drivers:
    • Relevance to Organizational Goals and Objectives
    • Applications Portfolio Assessment Survey:
      • Impact: Number of Users, Importance to Role
      • Current State: Satisfaction With Features, Usability, and Data Quality.
    • Value Drivers: Increase Revenue, Decrease Costs, Enhanced Services, or Reach Customers.
    • Additional Factors:
      • Current to Future Risk Profile
      • Number of Departments to Benefit
      • Importance to Stakeholder Relations
  • Complete Effort and Cost Estimations:
    • Resources: Do we have resources available and the skillset?
    • Cost
    • Overall Effort Rating
  • Gut Check: “Is it achievable? Have we done it or something similar before? Are we willing to invest in it?“
  • Decision to Proceed
  • Next Steps
  • Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Activity 4.1.2 Determine your optimization roadmap building blocks

    1 hour

    Optimization initiatives: Determine which if any to proceed with.

    1. Identify initiatives.
    2. For each item on your roadmap assign an owner who will be accountable to the completion of the roadmap item.
    3. Wherever possible, assign a start date, month, or quarter. The more specific you can be the better.
    4. Identify completion dates to create a sense of urgency. If you are struggling with start dates, it can help to start with a finish date and “back in” to a start date based on estimated efforts.
    5. Include periphery tasks such as communication strategy.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    Note: Your roadmap should be treated as a living document that is updated and shared with the stakeholders on a regular schedule.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Activity 4.1.3 – Build a visual Workday optimization roadmap (optional)

    1 hour

    For some, a visual representation of a roadmap is easier to comprehend.

    Consider taking the roadmap built in 4.1.2 and creating a visual roadmap.

    Record this information in the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook.

    The image shows a chart that tracks Initiative and Owner across multiple years.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your Workday Workbook

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Get the Most Out of Your Workday

    ERP technology is critical to facilitating an organization’s flow of information across business units. It allows for seamless integration of systems and creates a holistic view of the enterprise to support decision making. ERP implementation should not be a one-and-done exercise. There needs to be ongoing optimization to enable business processes and optimal organizational results.

    Get the Most Out of Your Workday allows organizations to proactively implement continuous assessment and optimization of their enterprise resource planning system, including:

    • Alignment and prioritization of key business and technology drivers.
    • Identification of processes, including classification and gap analysis.
    • Measurement of user satisfaction across key departments.
    • Improved vendor relations.
    • Data quality initiatives.

    This formal Workday optimization initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify IT automation priorities, and dig deep into continuous process improvement.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    workshops@infotech.com

    1-888-670-8889

    Research Contributors

    Ben Dickie

    Research Practice Lead

    Info-Tech Research Group

    Ben Dickie is a Research Practice Lead at Info-Tech Research Group. His areas of expertise include customer experience management, CRM platforms, and digital marketing. He has also led projects pertaining to enterprise collaboration and unified communications.

    Scott Bickley

    Practice Lead and Principal Research

    Director Info-Tech Research Group

    Scott Bickley is a Practice Lead and Principal Research Director at Info-Tech Research Group focused on vendor management and contract review. He also has experience in the areas of IT asset management (ITAM), software asset management (SAM), and technology procurement along with a deep background in operations, engineering, and quality systems management.

    Andy Neil

    Practice Lead, Applications

    Info-Tech Research Group

    Andy is a Senior Research Director, Data Management and BI, at Info-Tech Research Group. He has over 15 years of experience in managing technical teams, information architecture, data modeling, and enterprise data strategy. He is an expert in enterprise data architecture, data integration, data standards, data strategy, big data, and the development of industry standard data models.

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    Norelus, Ernese, Sreeni Pamidala, and Oliver Senti. "An Approach to Application Modernization: Discovery and Assessment Phase," Medium, 24 Feb. 2020. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

    "Process Frameworks." APQC, n.d. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

    Saxena, Deepak, and Joe Mcdonagh. "Evaluating ERP Implementations: The Case for a Lifecycle-based Interpretive Approach." The Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, vol. 22, no. 1, 2019, pp. 29-37. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

    “Workday Enterprise Management Cloud Product Scorecard.” SoftwareReviews, May 2022. Web.

    “Workday Meets Growing Customer Demand with Record Number of Deployments and Industry-Leading Customer Satisfaction Score.” Workday, Inc., 7 June 2021. Web.

    Application Portfolio Management Foundations

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    Organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor:

    • No dedicated or centralized effort to manage the app portfolio means no single source of truth is available to support informed decision making.
    • Organizations acquire more applications over time, creating redundancy, waste, and the need for additional support.
    • Organizations are more vulnerable to changing markets. Flexibility and growth are compromised when applications are unadaptable or cannot scale.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • You cannot outsource application strategy.
    • Modern software options have lessened the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. But your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require centralized oversight to ensure the best overall return on investment.
    • Application portfolio management is the mechanism to ensure that the applications in your enterprise are delivering value and support for your value streams and business capabilities. Understanding value, satisfaction, technical health, and total cost of ownership are critical to digital transformation, modernization, and roadmaps.

    Impact and Result

    Build an APM program that is actionable and fit for size:

    • Understand your current state, needs, and goals for your application portfolio management.
    • Create an application and platform inventory that is built for better decision making.
    • Rationalize your apps with business priorities and communicate risk in operational terms.
    • Create a roadmap that improves communication between those who own, manage, and support your applications.

    Application Portfolio Management Foundations Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Application Portfolio Management Foundations Deck – A guide that helps you establish your core application inventory, simplified rationalization, redundancy comparison, and modernization roadmap.

    Enterprises have more applications than they need and rarely apply oversight to monitor the health, cost, and relative value of applications to ensure efficiency and minimal risk. This blueprint will help you build a streamlined application portfolio management process.

    • Application Portfolio Management Foundations – Phases 1-4

    2. Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool – A tool that assesses your current application portfolio.

    Visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices will help inform and guide your next steps.

    • Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool

    3. Application Portfolio Management Foundations Playbook – A template that builds your application portfolio management playbook.

    Capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.

    • Application Portfolio Management Foundations Playbook

    4. Application Portfolio Management Snapshot and Foundations Tool – A tool that stores application information and allows you to execute rationalization and build a portfolio roadmap.

    This tool is the central hub for the activities within Application Portfolio Management Foundations.

    • Application Portfolio Management Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Application Portfolio Management Foundations

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Lay Your Foundations

    The Purpose

    Work with key corporate stakeholders to come to a shared understanding of the benefits and aspects of application portfolio management.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Establish the goals of APM.

    Set the scope of APM responsibilities.

    Establish business priorities for the application portfolio.

    Activities

    1.1 Define goals and metrics.

    1.2 Define application categories.

    1.3 Determine steps and roles.

    1.4 Weight value drivers.

    Outputs

    Set short- and long-term goals and metrics.

    Set the scope for applications.

    Set the scope for the APM process.

    Defined business value drivers.

    2 Improve Your Inventory

    The Purpose

    Gather information on your applications to build a detailed inventory and identify areas of redundancy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Populated inventory based on your and your team’s current knowledge.

    Understanding of outstanding data and a plan to collect it.

    Activities

    2.1 Populate inventory.

    2.2 Assign business capabilities.

    2.3 Review outstanding data.

    Outputs

    Initial application inventory

    List of areas of redundancy

    Plan to collect outstanding data

    3 Gather Application Information

    The Purpose

    Work with the application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Dispositions for individual applications

    Application rationalization framework

    Activities

    3.1 Assess business value.

    3.2 Assess end-user perspective.

    3.3 Assess TCO.

    3.4 Assess technical health.

    3.5 Assess redundancies.

    3.6 Determine dispositions.

    Outputs

    Business value score for individual applications

    End-user satisfaction scores for individual applications

    TCO score for individual applications

    Technical health scores for individual applications

    Feature-level assessment of redundant applications

    Assigned dispositions for individual applications

    4 Gather, Assess, and Select Dispositions

    The Purpose

    Work with application delivery specialists to determine the strategic plans for your apps and place these in your portfolio roadmap.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Prioritized initiatives

    Initial application portfolio roadmap

    Ongoing structure of APM

    Activities

    4.1 Prioritize initiatives

    4.2 Populate roadmap.

    4.3 Determine ongoing APM cadence.

    4.4 Build APM action plan.

    Outputs

    Prioritized new potential initiatives.

    Built an initial portfolio roadmap.

    Established an ongoing cadence of APM activities.

    Built an action plan to complete APM activities.

    Further reading

    Application Portfolio Management Foundations

    Ensure your application portfolio delivers the best possible return on investment.

    Analyst Perspective

    You can’t outsource accountability.

    Many lack visibility into their overall application portfolio, focusing instead on individual projects or application development. Inevitably, application sprawl creates process and data disparities, redundant applications, and duplication of resources and stands as a significant barrier to business agility and responsiveness. The shift from strategic investment to application maintenance creates an unnecessary constraint on innovation and value delivery.

    With the rise and convenience of SAAS solutions, IT has an increasing need to discover and support all applications in the organization. Unmanaged and unsanctioned applications can lead to increased reputational risk. What you don’t know WILL hurt you.

    You can outsource development, you can even outsource maintenance, but you cannot outsource accountability for the portfolio. Organizations need a holistic dashboard of application performance and dispositions to help guide and inform planning and investment discussions. Application portfolio management (APM) can’t tell you why something is broken or how to fix it, but it is an important tool to determine if an application’s value and performance are up to your standards and can help meet your future goals.

    The image contains a picture of Hans Eckman.

    Hans Eckman
    Principal Research Director
    Info-Tech Research Group


    Is this research right for you?

    Research Navigation

    Managing your application portfolio is essential regardless of its size or whether your software is purchased or developed in house. Each organization must have some degree of application portfolio management to ensure that applications deliver value efficiently and that their risk or gradual decline in technical health is appropriately limited.

    Your APM goals

    If this describes your primary goal(s)

    • We are building a business case to determine where and if APM is needed now.
    • We want to understand how well supported are our business capabilities, departments, or core functions by our current applications.
    • We want to start our APM program with our core or critical applications.
    • We want to build our APM inventory for less than 150 applications (division, department, operating unit, government, small enterprise, etc.).
    • We want to start simple with a quick win for our 150 most important applications.
    • We want to start with an APM pilot before committing to an enterprise APM program.
    • We need to rationalize potentially redundant and underperforming applications to determine which to keep, replace, or retire.
    • We want to start enterprise APM, with up to 150 critical applications.
    • We want to collect and analyze detailed information about our applications.
    • We need tools to help us calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) and value.
    • We want to customize our APM journey and rationalization.
    • We want to build a formal communication strategy for our APM program.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Common Obstacles

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    • Organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor.
    • No dedicated or centralized effort to manage the app portfolio means no single source of truth is available to support informed decision making.
    • Organizations acquire more applications over time, creating redundancy, waste, and the need for additional support.
    • Organizations are more vulnerable to changing markets. Flexibility and growth are compromised when applications are unadaptable or cannot scale.
    • APM implies taking a holistic approach and compiling multiple priorities and perspectives.
    • Organizations have limited time to act strategically or proactively and need to be succinct.
    • Uncertainties on business value prevent IT from successfully advising software decision making.
    • IT knows its technical debt but struggles to get the business to act on technical risks.
    • Attempts at exposing these problems rarely gain buy-in and discourage the push for improvement.
    • Think low priority over no priority.
    • Integrate these tasks into your mixed workload.
    • Create an inventory built for better decision making.
    • Rationalize your apps in accordance with business priorities and communicate risks on their terms.
    • Create a roadmap that improves communication between those who own, manage, and support an application.
    • Build your APM process fit for size.

    Info-Tech Insight: You can’t outsource strategy.

    Modern software options have decreased the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. Your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require a centralized IT oversight to ensure the best return on investment.

    The top IT challenges for SE come from app management

    #1 challenge small enterprise owners face in their use of technology:

    Taking appropriate security precautions

    24%

    The costs of needed upgrades to technology

    17%

    The time it takes to fix problems

    17%

    The cost of maintaining technology

    14%

    Lack of expertise

    9%

    Breaks in service

    7%
    Source: National Small Business Association, 2019

    Having more applications than an organization needs means unnecessarily high costs and additional burden on the teams who support the applications. Especially in the case of small enterprises, this is added pressure the IT team cannot afford.

    A poorly maintained portfolio will eventually hurt the business more than it hurts IT.

    Legacy systems, complex environments, or anything that leads to a portfolio that can’t adapt to changing business needs will eventually become a barrier to business growth and accomplishing objectives. Often the blame is put on the IT department.

    56%

    of small businesses cited inflexible technology as a barrier to growth

    Source: Salesforce as quoted by Tech Republic, 2019

    A hidden and inefficient application portfolio is the root cause of so many pains experienced by both IT and the business.

    • Demand/Capacity Imbalance
    • Overspending
    • Security and Business Continuity Risk
    • Delays in Delivery
    • Barriers to Growth

    APM comes at a justified cost

    The image contains a screenshot of a graph to demonstrate APM and the costs.

    The benefits of APM

    APM identifies areas where you can reduce core spending and reinvest in innovation initiatives.

    Other benefits can include:

    • Fewer redundancies
    • Less risk
    • Less complexity
    • Improved processes
    • Flexibility
    • Scalability

    APM allows you to better understand and set the direction of your portfolio

    Application Inventory

    The artifact that documents and informs the business of your application portfolio.

    Application Rationalization

    The process of collecting information and assessing your applications to determine recommended dispositions.

    Application Alignment

    The process of revealing application information through interviewing stakeholders and aligning to business capabilities.

    Application Roadmap

    The artifact that showcases the strategic directions for your applications over a given timeline.

    Application Portfolio Management (APM):

    The ongoing practice of:

    • Providing visibility into applications across the organization.
    • Recommending corrections or enhancements to decision makers.
    • Aligning delivery teams on priority.
    • Showcasing the direction of applications to stakeholders.

    Create a balanced approach to value delivery

    Enterprise Agility and Value Realization

    Product Lifecycle Management

    Align your product and service improvement and execution to enterprise strategy and value realization in three key areas: defining your products and services, aligning product/service owners, and developing your product vision.

    Product Delivery Lifecycle (Agile DevOps)

    Enhance business agility by leveraging an Agile mindset and continuously improving your delivery throughput, quality, value realization, and adaptive governance.

    Application Portfolio Management

    Transform your application portfolio into a cohesive service catalog aligned to your business capabilities by discovering, rationalizing, and modernizing your applications while improving application maintenance, management, and reuse.

    The image contains a screenshot of a Thought Model on the Application Department Strategy.


    The image contains a screenshot of a Thought Model on Accelerate Your Transition to Product Delivery.

    Every organization experiences some degree of application sprawl

    The image contains a screenshot of images to demonstrate application sprawl.

    Causes of Sprawl

    • Poor Lifecycle Management
    • Turnover & Lack of Knowledge Transfer
    • Siloed Business Units & Decentralized IT
    • Business-Managed IT
    • (Shadow IT)
    • Mergers & Acquisitions

    Problems With Sprawl

    • Redundancy and Inefficient Spending
    • Disparate Apps & Data
    • Obsolescence
    • Difficulties in Prioritizing Support
    • Barriers to Change & Growth

    Application Sprawl:

    Inefficiencies within your application portfolio are created by the gradual and non-strategic accumulation of applications.

    You have more apps than you need.

    Only 34% of software is rated as both IMPORTANT and EFFECTIVE by users.

    Source: Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision

    Build your APM journey map

    The image contains screenshots of diagrams that reviews building your APM journey map.

    Application rationalization provides insight

    Directionless portfolio of applications

    Info-Tech’s Five Lens Model

    Assigned dispositions for individual apps

    The image contains a screenshot of an example of directionless portfolio of applications.

    Application Alignment

    Business Value

    Technical Health

    End-User Perspective

    Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

    Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure.

    Modernize: Create a new initiative to address an inadequacy.

    Consolidate: Create a new initiative to reduce duplicate functionality.

    Retire: Phase out the application.

    Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.

    How well do your apps support your core functions and teams?

    How well are your apps aligned to value delivery?

    Do your apps meet all IT quality standards and policies?

    How well do your apps meet your end users’ needs?

    What is the relative cost of ownership and operation of your apps?

    Application rationalization requires the collection of several data points that represent these perspectives and act as the criteria for determining a disposition for each of your applications.

    APM is an iterative and evergreen process

    APM provides oversight and awareness of your application portfolio’s performance and support for your business operations and value delivery to all users and customers.

    Determine Scope and categories Build your list of applications and capabilities Score each application based on your values Determine outcomes based on app scoring and support for capabilities

    1. Lay Your Foundations

    1.1 Assess the state of your current application portfolio.

    1.2 Determine narrative.

    1.3 Define goals and metrics.

    1.4 Define application categories.

    1.5 Determine APM steps and roles (SIPOC).

    2. Improve Your Inventory

    2.1 Populate your inventory.

    2.2 Align to business capabilities.

    *Repeat

    3. Rationalize Your Apps

    3.1 Assess business value.

    3.2 Assess technical health.

    3.3 Assess end-user perspective.

    3.4 Assess total cost of ownership.

    *Repeat

    4. Populate Your Roadmap

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot results.

    4.2 Review APM Foundations results.

    4.3 Determine dispositions.

    4.4 Assess redundancies (optional).

    4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional).

    4.6 Prioritize initiatives.

    4.7 Determine ongoing cadence.

    *Repeat

    Repeat according to APM cadence and application changes

    Executive Brief Case Study

    INDUSTRY: Retail

    SOURCE: Deloitte, 2017

    Supermarket Company

    The grocer was a smaller organization for the supermarket industry with a relatively low IT budget. While its portfolio consisted of a dozen applications, the organization still found it difficult to react to an evolving industry due to inflexible and overly complex legacy systems.

    The IT manager found himself in a scenario where he knew the applications well but had little awareness of the business processes they supported. Application maintenance was purely in keeping things operational, with little consideration for a future business strategy.

    As the business demanded more responsiveness to changes, the IT team needed to be able to react more efficiently and effectively while still securing the continuity of the business.

    The IT manager found success by introducing APM and gaining a better understanding of the business use and future needs for the applications. The organization started small but then increased the scope over time to produce and develop techniques to aid the business in meeting strategic goals with applications.

    Results

    The IT manager gained credibility and trust within the organization. The organization was able to build a plan to move away from the legacy systems and create a portfolio more responsive to the dynamic needs of an evolving marketplace.

    The application portfolio management initiative included the following components:

    Train teams and stakeholders on APM

    Model the core business processes

    Collect application inventory

    Assign APM responsibilities

    Start small, then grow

    Info-Tech’s application portfolio management methodology

    1. Lay Your Foundations

    2. Improve Your Inventory

    3. Rationalize Your Apps

    4. Populate Your Roadmap

    Phase Activities

    1.1 Assess your current application portfolio

    1.2 Determine narrative

    1.3 Define goals and metrics

    1.4 Define application categories

    1.5 Determine APM steps and roles

    2.1 Populate your inventory

    2.2 Align to business capabilities

    3.1 Assess business value

    3.2 Assess technical health

    3.3 Assess end-user perspective

    3.4 Assess total cost of ownership

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations results

    4.3 Determine dispositions

    4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

    4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)

    4.6 Prioritize initiatives

    4.7 Determine ongoing APM cadence

    Phase Outcomes

    Work with the appropriate management stakeholders to:

    • Extract key business priorities.
    • Set your goals.
    • Define scope of APM effort.

    Gather information on your own understanding of your applications to build a detailed inventory and identify areas of redundancy.

    Work with application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.

    Work with application delivery specialists to determine the strategic plans for your apps and place these in your portfolio roadmap.

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

    Application Portfolio Management Foundations Playbook

    Application Portfolio Management Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    This template allows you to capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.

    This tool stores all relevant application information and allows you to assess your capability support, execute rationalization, and build a portfolio roadmap.

    The image contains screenshots of the Application Portfolio Management Foundations Playbook. The image contains screenshots of the Application Portfolio Management Snapshot and Foundations Tool.

    Key deliverable:

    Blueprint Storyboard

    This is the PowerPoint document you are viewing now. Follow this guide to understand APM, learn how to use the tools, and build a repeatable APM process that will be captured in your playbook.

    The image contains a screenshot of the blueprint storyboard.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.” “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.” “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.” “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI for on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

    Call #1: Establish goals and foundations for your APM practice.

    Call #2:

    Initiate inventory and determine data requirements.

    Call #3:

    Initiate rationalization with group of applications.

    Call #4:

    Review result of first iteration and perform retrospective.

    Call #5:

    Initiate your roadmap and determine your ongoing APM practice.

    Note: The Guided Implementation will focus on a subset or group of applications depending on the state of your current APM inventory and available time. The goal is to use this first group to build your APM process and models to support your ongoing discovery, rationalization, and modernization efforts.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our right-sized best practices in your organization. A typical GI, using our materials, is 3 to 6 calls over the course of 1 to 3 months.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    1. Lay Your Foundations

    2. Improve Your Inventory

    3. Rationalize Your Apps

    4. Populate Your Roadmap

    Post Workshop Steps

    Activities

    1.1 Assess your current
    application portfolio

    1.2 Determine narrative

    1.3 Define goals and metrics

    1.4 Define application categories

    1.5 Determine APM steps and roles

    2.1 Populate your inventory

    2.2 Align to business capabilities

    3.1 Assess business value

    3.2 Assess technical health

    3.3 Assess end-user perspective

    3.4 Assess total cost of ownership

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations results

    4.3 Determine dispositions

    4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

    4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)

    4.6 Prioritize initiatives

    4.7 Determine ongoing APM cadence

    • Complete in-progress deliverables from the previous four days.
    • Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss the next steps.

    Outcomes

    Work with the appropriate management stakeholders to:

    1. Extract key business priorities
    2. Set your goals
    3. Agree on key terms and set the scope for your APM effort

    Work with your applications team to:

    1. Build a detailed inventory
    2. Identify areas of redundancy

    Work with the SMEs for a subset of applications to:

    1. Define your rationalization criteria, descriptions, and scoring
    2. Evaluate each application using rationalization criteria

    Work with application delivery specialists to:

    1. Determine the appropriate disposition for your apps
    2. Build an initial application portfolio roadmap
    3. Establish an ongoing cadence of APM activities

    Info-Tech analysts complete:

    1. Workshop report
    2. APM Snapshot and Foundations Toolset
    3. Action plan

    Note: The workshop will focus on a subset or group of applications depending on the state of your current APM inventory and available time. The goal is to use this first group to build your APM process and models to support your ongoing discovery, rationalization, and modernization efforts.

    Workshop Options

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Outcomes

    1-Day Snapshot

    3-Day Snapshot and Foundations (Key Apps)

    4-Day Snapshot and Foundations (Pilot Area)

    APM Snapshot

    • Align applications to business capabilities
    • Evaluate application support for business capabilities

    APM Foundations

    • Define your APM program and cadence
    • Rationalize applications using weighted criteria
    • Define application dispositions
    • Build an application roadmap aligned to initiatives

    Establish APM practice with a small sample set of apps and capabilities.

    Establish APM practice with a pilot group of apps and capabilities.

    Blueprint Pre-Step: Get the right stakeholders to the right exercises

    The image contains four steps and demonstrates who should be handling each exercise. 1. Lay Your Foundations, is to be handled by the APM Lead/Owner and the Key Corporate Stakeholders. 2. Improve Your Inventory, is to be handled by the APM Lead/Owner and the Applications Subject Matter Experts. 3. Rationalize Your Apps, is to be handled by the APM Lead/Owner, the Applications Subject Matter Experts, and the Delivery Leads. 4. Populate Your Roadmap, is to be handled by the APM Lead/Owner, the Key Corporate Stakeholders, and the Delivery Leads.

    APM Lead/Owner (Recommended)

    ☐ Applications Lead or the individual responsible for application portfolio management, along with any applications team members, if available

    Key Corporate Stakeholders

    Depending on size and structure, participants could include:

    ☐ Head of IT (CIO, CTO, IT Director, or IT Manager)

    ☐ Head of shared services (CFO, COO, VP HR, etc.)

    ☐ Compliance Officer, Steering Committee

    ☐ Company owner or CEO

    Application Subject Matter Experts

    Individuals who have familiarity with a specific subset of applications

    ☐ Business owners (product owners, Head of Business Function, power users)

    ☐ Support owners (Operations Manager, IT Technician)

    Delivery Leads

    ☐ Development Managers

    ☐ Solution Architects

    ☐ Project Managers

    Understand your APM tools and outcomes

    1.Diagnostic The image contains a screenshot of the diagnostic APM tool.

    5. Foundations: Chart

    The image contains a screenshot of the Foundations: Chart APM tool.

    2. Data Journey

    The image contains a screenshot of the data journey APM tool.

    6. App Comparison

    The image contains a screenshot of the App Comparison APM tool.

    3. Snapshot

    The image contains a screenshot of the snapshot APM tool.

    7. Roadmap

    The image contains a screenshot of the Roadmap APM tool.

    4. Foundations: Results

    The image contains a screenshot of the Foundations: Results APM Tool.

    Examples and explanations of these tools are located on the following slides and within the phases where they occur.

    Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s APM Diagnostic Tool

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Diagnostic Tool.

    One of the primary purposes of application portfolio management is to get what we know and need to know on paper so we can share a common vision and understanding of our portfolio. This enables better discussions and decisions with your application owners and stakeholders.

    APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM worksheet data journey map.

    Interpreting your APM Snapshot results

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM snapshots results.

    Interpreting your APM Foundations results

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Foundations results.

    Interpreting your APM Foundations chart

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Foundations chart.

    Compare application groups

    Group comparison can be used for more than just redundant/overlapping applications.

    The image contains a screenshot of images that demonstrate comparing application groups.

    Apply Info-Tech’s 6 R’s Rationalization Disposition Model

    The image contains a screenshot of Info-Tech's 6 R's Rationalization Disposition Model.

    Disposition

    Description

    Reward

    Prioritize new features or enhancement requests and openly welcome the expansion of these applications as new requests are presented.

    Refresh

    Address the poor end-user satisfaction with a prioritized project. Consult with users to determine if UX issues require improvement to address satisfaction.

    Refocus

    Determine the root cause of the low value. Refocus, retrain, or refresh the UX to improve value. If there is no value found, aim to "keep the lights on" until the app can be decommissioned.

    Replace

    Replace or rebuild the application as technical and user issues are putting important business capabilities at risk. Decommission application alongside replacement.

    Remediate

    Address the poor technical health or risk with a prioritized project. Further consult with development and technical teams to determine if migration or refactoring is suited to address the technical issue.

    Retire

    Cancel any requested features and enhancements. Schedule the proper decommission and transfer end users to a new or alternative system if necessary.

    TCO, compared relatively to business value, helps determine the practicality of a disposition and the urgency of any call to action. Application alignment is factored in when assessing redundancies and has a separate set of dispositions.

    Populate roadmap example

    The image contains an example of the populate roadmap.

    ARE YOU READY TO GET STARTED?

    Phase 1

    Lay Your Foundations

    Phase 1

    1.1 Assess Your Current Application Portfolio

    1.2 Determine Narrative

    1.3 Define Goals and Metrics

    1.4 Define Application Categories

    1.5 Determine APM Steps and Roles

    Phase 2

    2.1 Populate Your Inventory

    2.2 Align to Business Capabilities

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess Business Value

    3.2 Assess Technical Health

    3.3 Assess End-User Perspective

    3.4 Assess Total Cost of Ownership

    Phase 4

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot Results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations Results

    4.3 Determine Dispositions

    4.4 Assess Redundancies (Optional)

    4.5 Determine Dispositions for Redundant Applications (Optional)

    4.6 Prioritize Initiatives

    4.7 Determine Ongoing APM Cadence

    This phase involves the following participants:

    Applications Lead

    Key Corporate Stakeholders

    Additional Resources

    APM supports many goals

    Building an APM process requires a proper understanding of the underlying business goals and objectives of your organization’s strategy. Effectively identifying these drivers is paramount to gaining buy-in and the approval for any changes you plan to make to your application portfolio.

    After identifying these goals, you will need to ensure they are built into the foundations of your APM process.

    “What is most critical?” but also “What must come first?”

    Discover

    Improve

    Transform

    Collect Inventory

    Uncover Shadow IT

    Uncover Redundancies

    Anticipate Upgrades

    Predict Retirement

    Reduce Cost

    Increase Efficiency

    Reduce Applications

    Eliminate Redundancy

    Limit Risk

    Improve Architecture

    Modernize

    Enable Scalability

    Drive Business Growth

    Improve UX

    Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s APM Diagnostic Tool

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Diagnostic Tool.

    One of the primary purposes of application portfolio management is to get what we know and need to know on paper so we can share a common vision and understanding of our portfolio. This enables better discussions and decisions with your application owners and stakeholders.

    1.1 Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s diagnostic tool

    Estimated time: 1 hour

    1. This tool provides visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices.
    2. Based on your assessment, you should gain a better understanding of whether the appropriate next steps are in application discovery, rationalization, or roadmapping.
    3. Complete the “Data Entry” worksheet in the Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool (Excel).
    4. Review the “Results” worksheet to help inform and guide your next steps.

    Download the Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool

    Input Output
    • Current APM program
    • Application landscape
    • APM current-state assessment
    Materials Participants
    • Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool
    • Applications Lead

    1.1 Understanding the diagnostic results

    • Managed Apps are your known knowns and most of your portfolio.
    • Unmanaged and Unsanctioned Apps are known but have unknown risks and compliance. Bring these under IT support.
    • Unknown Apps are high risk and noncompliant. Prioritize these based on risk, cost, and use.
    The image contains a screenshot of the diagnostic APM tool.
    • APM is more than an inventory and assessment. A strong APM program provides ongoing visibility and insights to drive application improvement and value delivery.
    • Use your Sprawl Factors to identify process and organizational gaps that may need to be addressed.
    • Your APM inventory is only as good as the information in it. Use this chart to identify gaps and develop a path to define missing information.
    • APM is an iterative process. Use this state assessment to determine where to focus most of your current effort.

    Understand potential motivations for APM

    The value of APM is defined by how the information will be used to drive better decisions.

    Portfolio Governance

    Transformative Initiatives

    Event-Driven Rationalization

    Improves:

    • Spending efficiency
    • Risk
    • Retirement of aged and low-value applications
    • Business enablement

    Impact on your rationalization framework:

    • Less urgent
    • As rigorous as appropriate
    • Apply in-depth analysis as needed

    Enables:

    • Data migration or harmonization
    • Legacy modernization
    • Infrastructure/cloud migration
    • Standardizing platforms
    • Shift to cloud and SAAS

    Impact on your rationalization framework:

    • Time sensitive
    • Scope on impacted areas
    • Need to determine specific dispositions
    • Outcomes need to include detailed and actionable steps

    Responds to:

    • Mergers and acquisitions
    • Regulatory and compliance change
    • New applications
    • Application retirement by vendors
    • Changes in business operations
    • Security risks and BC/DR

    Impact on your rationalization framework:

    • Time constrained
    • Lots of discovery work
    • Primary focus on duplication
    • Increased process and system understanding

    Different motivations will influence the appropriate approach to and urgency of APM or, specifically, rationalizing the portfolio. When rationalizing is directly related to enabling or in response to a broader initiative, you will need to create a more structured approach with a formal budget and resources.

    1.2 Determine narrative

    Estimated time: 30 minutes-2 hours

    1. Open the “Narrative” tab in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool.
    2. Start by listing your prevailing IT pain points with the application portfolio. These will be the issues experienced predominantly by the IT team and not necessarily by the stakeholders. Be sure to distinguish pain points from their root causes.
    3. Determine an equivalent business pain point for each IT pain point. This should be how the problem manifests itself to business stakeholders and should include potential risks to the organization is exposed to.
    4. Determine the business goal for each business pain point. Ideally, these are established organizational goals that key decision-makers will recognize. These goals should address the business pain points you have documented.
    5. Determine the technical objective for each business goal. These speak to the general corrections or enhancements to the portfolio required to accomplish the business goals.
    6. Use the “Narrative - Matrix” worksheet to group items into themes if needed.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Input Output
    • Familiarity with application landscape
    • Organizational context and strategic artifacts
    • Narrative for application portfolio transformation
    Materials Participants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Application Portfolio Manager

    Connect your pains to what the business cares about to find the most effective narrative

    Root Cause

    IT Pain Points

    Business Pain Points

    Business Goals

    Narrative

    Technical Objectives

    Sprawl

    Shadow IT/decentralized oversight

    Neglect over time

    Poor delivery processes

    Back-End Complexity

    Disparate Data/Apps

    Poor Architectural Fit

    Redundancy

    Maintenance Demand/
    Resource Drain

    Low Maintainability

    Technical Debt

    Legacy, Aging, or Expiring Apps

    Security Vulnerabilities

    Unsatisfied Customers

    Hurdles to Growth/Change

    Poor Business Analytics

    Process Inefficiency

    Software Costs

    Business Continuity Risk

    Data Privacy Risk

    Data/IP Theft Risk

    Poor User Experience

    Low-Value Apps

    Scalability

    Flexibility/Agility

    Data-Driven Insights

    M&A Transition

    Business Unit Consolidation/ Centralization

    Process Improvement

    Process Modernization

    Cost Reduction

    Stability

    Customer Protection

    Security

    Employee Enablement

    Business Enablement

    Innovation

    Create Strategic Alignment

    Identify specific business capabilities that are incompatible with strategic initiatives.

    Reduce Application Intensity

    Highlight the capabilities that are encumbered due to functional overlaps and complexity.

    Reduce Software Costs

    Specific business capabilities come at an unnecessarily or disproportionately high cost.

    Mitigate Business Continuity Risk

    Specific business capabilities are at risk of interruption or stoppages due to unresolved back-end issues.

    Mitigate Security Risk

    Specific business capabilities are at risk due to unmitigated security vulnerabilities or breaches.

    Increase Satisfaction Applications

    Specific business capabilities are not achieving their optimal business value.

    Platform Standardization

    Platform Standardization Consolidation

    Data Harmonization

    Removal/Consolidation of Redundant Applications

    Legacy Modernization

    Application Upgrades

    Removal of Low-Value Applications

    1.3 Define goals and metrics

    Estimated time: 1 hour

    1. Determine the motivations behind APM. You may want to collect and review any of the organization’s strategic documents that provide additional context on previously established goals.
    2. With the appropriate stakeholders, discuss the goals of APM. Try to label your goals as either:
      1. Short term: Refers to immediate goals used to represent the progress of APM activities. Likely these goals are more IT-oriented
      2. Long term: Refers to broader and more distant goals more related to the impact of APM. These goals tend to be more business-oriented.
    3. To help clearly define your goals, discuss appropriate metrics for each goal. Often these metrics can be expressed as:
      1. Leading indicators: Metrics used to gauge the success of your short-term goals and the progress of APM activities.
      2. Lagging indicators: Metrics used to gauge the success of your long-term goals.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Input Output
    • Overarching organizational strategy
    • IT strategy
    • Defined goals and metrics for APM
    Materials Participants
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Key Corporate Stakeholders

    1.3 Define goals and metrics: Example

    Goals

    Metric

    Target

    Short Term

    Improve ability to inform the business

    Leading Indicators

    • Application inventory with all data fields completed
    • Applications with recommended dispositions
    • 80% of portfolio

    Improve ownership of applications

    • Applications with an assigned business and technical owner
    • 80% of portfolio

    Reduce costs of portfolio

    • TCO of full application portfolio
    • The number of recovered/avoided software licenses from retired apps
    • Reduce by 5%
    • $50,000

    Long Term

    Migrate platform

    Lagging Indicators

    • Migrate all applications
    • Total value change in on-premises apps switched to SaaS
    • 100% of applications
    • Increase 50%

    Improve overall satisfaction with portfolio

    • End-user satisfaction rating
    • Increase 25%

    Become more customer-centric

    • Increased sales
    • Increased customer experience
    • Increase 35%

    “Application” doesn’t have the same meaning to everyone

    The image contains a picture of Martin Fowler.

    Code: A body of code that's seen by developers as a single unit.

    Functionality: A group of functionality that business customers see as a single unit.

    Funding: An initiative that those with the money see as a single budget.

    ?: What else?

    “Essentially applications are social constructions.

    Source: Martin Fowler

    APM focuses on business applications.

    “Software used by business users to perform a business function.”

    – ServiceNow, 2020

    Unfortunately, that definition is still quite vague.

    You must set boundaries and scope for “application”

    1. Many individual items can be considered applications on their own or components within or associated with an application.

    2. Different categories of applications may be out of scope or handled differently within the activities and artifacts of APM.

    Different categories of applications may be out of scope or handled differently within the activities and artifacts of APM.

    • Interface
    • Software Component
    • Supporting Software
    • Platform
    • Presentation Layer
    • Middleware
    • Micro Service
    • Database
    • UI
    • API
    • Data Access/ Transfer/Load
    • Operating System

    Apps can be categorized by generic categories

    • Enterprise Applications
    • Unique Function-Specific Applications
    • Productivity Tools
    • Customer-Facing Applications
    • Mobile Applications

    Apps can be categorized by bought vs. built or install types

    • Custom
    • On-Prem
    • Off the Shelf
    • SaaS
    • Hybrid
    • End-User-Built Tools

    Apps can be categorized by the application family

    • Parent Application
    • Child Application
    • Package
    • Module
    • Suite
    • Component (Functional)

    Apps can be categorized by the group managing them

    • IT-Managed Applications
    • Business-Managed Applications (Shadow IT)
    • Partner/External Applications

    Apps can be categorized by tiers

    • Mission Critical
    • Tier 2
    • Tier 3

    Set boundaries on what is an application or the individual unit that you’re making business decisions on. Also, determine which categories of applications are in scope and how they will be included in the activities and artifacts of APM. Use your product families defined in Deliver Digital Products at Scale to help define your application categories, groups, and boundaries.

    1.4 Define application categories

    Estimated time: 1 hour

    1. Review the items listed on the previous slide and consider what categories provide the best initial grouping to help organize your rationalization and dispositions. Update the category list to match your application groupings.
    2. Identify the additional categories you need to manage in your application portfolio.
    3. For each category, establish or modify a description or definition and provide examples that exist in your current portfolio.
    4. For each category, answer:
      1. Will these be documented in the application inventory?
      2. Will these be included in application rationalization? Think about if this item will be assigned a TCO, value score, and, ultimately, a disposition.
      3. Will these be listed in the application portfolio roadmap?
    5. If you completed Deliver Digital Products at Scale, use your product families to help define your application categories.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    InputOutput
    • Working list of applications
    • Definitions and guidelines for which application categories are in scope for APM
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Key Corporate Stakeholders

    1.4 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM worksheet data journey map.

    1.4 Define application categories: Example

    Category

    Definition/Description

    Examples

    Documented in your application inventory?

    Included in application rationalization?

    Listed in your application portfolio roadmap?

    Business Application

    End-user facing applications that directly enable specific business functions. This includes enterprise-wide and business-function-specific applications. Separate modules will be considered a business application when appropriate.

    ERP system, CRM software, accounting software

    Yes

    Yes. Unless currently in dev. TCO of the parent application will be divided among child apps.

    Yes

    Software Components

    Back-end solutions are self-contained units that support business functions.

    ETL, middleware, operating systems

    No. Documentation in CMDB. These will be listed as a dependency in the application inventory.

    No. These will be linked to a business app and included in TCO estimates and tech health assessments.

    No

    Productivity Tools

    End-user-facing applications that enable standard communication of general document creation.

    MS Word, MS Excel, corporate email

    Yes

    No

    Yes

    End-User- Built Microsoft Tools

    Single instances of a Microsoft tool that the business has grown dependent on.

    Payroll Excel tool, Access databases

    No. Documentation in Business Tool Glossary.

    No No

    Partner Applications

    Partners or third-party applications that the business has grown dependent on but are internally owned or managed.

    Supplier’s ERP portal, government portal

    No No

    Yes

    Shadow IT

    Business-managed applications.

    Downloaded tools

    Yes

    Yes. However, just from a redundancy perspective.

    Yes

    The roles in APM rarely exist; you need to adapt

    Application Portfolio Manager

    • Responsible for the health and evolution of the application portfolio.
    • Facilitates the rationalization process.
    • Compiles and assesses application information and recommends and supports key decisions regarding the direction of the applications.
    • This is rarely a dedicated role even in large enterprises. For small enterprises, this should be an IT employee at a manager level – an IT manager or operations manager.

    Business Owner

    • Responsible for managing individual applications on a functional level and approves and prioritizes projects.
    • Provides business process or functional subject matter expertise for the assessment of applications.
    • For small enterprises, this role is rarely defined, but the responsibility should exist. Consider the head of a business unit or a process owner as the owner of the application.

    Support Owner

    • Responsible for the maintenance and management of individual applications.
    • Provides technical information and subject matter expertise for the assessment of an application.
    • For small enterprises, this would be those responsible for maintaining the application and those responsible for its initial implementation. Often support responsibilities are external, and this role will be more of a vendor manager.

    Project Portfolio Manager

    • Responsible for intake, planning, and coordinating the resources that deliver any changes.
    • The body that consumes the results of rationalization and begins planning any required action or project.
    • For small enterprises, the approval process can come from a steering committee but it is often less formal. Often a smaller group of project managers facilitates planning and coordination and works closely with the delivery leads.

    Corner-of-the-Desk Approach

    • No one is explicitly dedicated to building a strategy or APM practices.
    • Information is collected whenever the applications team has time available.
    • Benefits are pushed out and the value is lost.

    Dedicated Approach

    • The initiative is given a budget and formal agenda.
    • Roles and responsibilities are assigned to team members.

    The high-level steps of APM present some questions you need to answer

    Build Inventory

    Create the full list of applications and capture all necessary attributes.

    • Who will build the inventory?
    • Do you know all your applications (Shadow IT)?
    • Do you know your applications’ functionality?
    • Do you know where your applications overlap?
    • Who do you need to consult with to fill in the gaps?
    • Who will provide specific application information?

    Collect & Compile

    Engage with appropriate SMEs and collect necessary data points for rationalization.

    • Who will collect and compile the data points for rationalization?
    • What are the specific data points?
    • Are some of the data points currently documented?
    • Who will provide specific data points on technical health, cost, performance, and business value?
    • Who will determine what business value is?

    Assess & Recommend

    Apply rationalization framework and toolset to determine dispositions.

    • Who will apply a rationalization tool or decision-making framework to generate dispositions for the applications?
    • Who will modify the tool or framework to ensure results align to the goals of the organization?
    • Who will define any actions or projects that result from the rationalization? And who needs to be consulted to assess the feasibility of any potential project?

    Validate & Roadmap

    Present dispositions for validation and communicate any decisions or direction for applications.

    • Who will present the recommended disposition, corrective action, or new project to the appropriate decision maker?
    • Who is the appropriate decision maker for application changes or project approval?
    • What format is recommended (idea, proposal, business case) and what extra analysis is required?
    • Who needs to be consulted regarding the potential changes?

    1.5 Determine APM steps and roles (SIPOC)

    Estimated time: 1-2 hours

    1. Begin by comparing Info-Tech’s list of common APM roles to the roles that exist in your organization with respect to application management and ownership.
    2. There are four high-level steps for APM: build inventory, collect & compile, assess & recommend, and validate & roadmap. Apply the SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer) model by completing the following for each step:
      1. In the Process column, modify the description, if necessary. Identify who is responsible for performing the step.
      2. In the Inputs column, modify the list of inputs.
      3. In the Suppliers column, identify who must be included to provide the inputs.
      4. In the Outputs column, modify the list of outputs.
      5. In the Customers column, identify who consumes the outputs.
    3. (Optional) Outline how the results of APM will be consumed. For example, project intake or execution, data or platform migration, application or product management, or whichever is appropriate.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Input Output
    • Existing function and roles regarding application delivery, management, and ownership
    • Scope of APM
    • Responsibilities assigned to your roles
    Materials Participants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • “Supporting Activities – SIPOC” worksheet in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Key Corporate Stakeholders

    1.5 Determine steps and roles

    Suppliers

    Inputs

    Process

    Outputs

    Customers

    • Applications Manager
    • Operations Manager
    • Business Owners
    • IT Team
    • List of applications
    • Application attributes
    • Business capabilities

    Build Inventory

    Create the full list of applications and capture all necessary attributes.

    Resp: Applications Manager & IT team member

    • Application inventory
    • Identified redundancies
    • Whole organization
    • Applications SMEs
    • Business Owners
    • Support Owners & Team
    • End Users
    • Application inventory
    • Existing documentation
    • Additional collection methods
    • Knowledge of business value, cost, and performance for each application

    Collect & Compile

    Engage with appropriate SMEs and collect necessary data points for rationalization.

    Resp: IT team member

    • Data points of business value, cost, and performance for each application
    • Applications Manager
    • Applications Manager
    • Defined application rationalization framework and toolset
    • Data points of business value, cost, and performance for each application

    Assess & Recommend

    Apply rationalization framework and toolset to determine dispositions.

    Resp: Applications Manager

    • Assigned disposition for each application
    • New project ideas for applications
    • Business Owners
    • Steering Committee
    • Business Owners
    • Steering Committee
    • Assigned disposition for each application
    • New project ideas for applications
    • Awareness of goals and priorities
    • Awareness of existing projects and resources capacity

    Validate & Roadmap

    Present dispositions for validation and communicate any decisions or direction for applications.

    Resp: Applications Manager

    • Application portfolio roadmap
    • Confirmed disposition for each application
    • Project request submission
    • Whole organization
    • Applications Manager
    • Solutions Engineer
    • Business Owner
    • Project request submission
    • Estimated cost
    • Estimated value or ROI

    Project Intake

    Build business case for project request.

    Resp: Project Manager

    • Approved project
    • Steering Committee

    Planning your APM modernization journey steps

    Discovery Rationalization Disposition Roadmap

    Enter your pilot inventory.

    • Optional Snapshot: Populate your desired snapshot grouping lists (departments, functions, groups, capabilities, etc.).

    Score your pilot apps to refine your rationalization criteria and scoring.

    • Score 3 to 9 apps to adjust and get comfortable with the scoring.
    • Validate scoring with the remaining apps in your pilot group. Refine and finalize the criteria and scoring descriptions.
    • Optional Snapshot: Use the Group Alignment Matrix to match your grouping list to select which apps support each grouping item.

    Determine recommended disposition for each application.

    • Review and adjust the disposition recommendations on the “Disposition Options” worksheet and set your pass/fail threshold.
    • Review your apps on the “App Rationalization Results” worksheet. Update (override) the recommended disposition and priority if needed.

    Populate your application roadmap.

    • Indicate programs, projects, initiatives, or releases that are planned for each app.
    • Update the priority based on the initiative.
    • Use the visual roadmap to show high-level delivery phases.

    Phase 2

    Improve Your Inventory

    Phase 1

    1.1 Assess Your Current Application Portfolio

    1.2 Determine Narrative

    1.3 Define Goals and Metrics

    1.4 Define Application Categories

    1.5 Determine APM Steps and Roles

    Phase 2

    2.1 Populate Your Inventory

    2.2 Align to Business Capabilities

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess Business Value

    3.2 Assess Technical Health

    3.3 Assess End-User Perspective

    3.4 Assess Total Cost of Ownership

    Phase 4

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot Results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations Results

    4.3 Determine Dispositions

    4.4 Assess Redundancies (Optional)

    4.5 Determine Dispositions for Redundant Applications (Optional)

    4.6 Prioritize Initiatives

    4.7 Determine Ongoing APM Cadence

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Applications Lead
    • Applications Team

    Additional Resources

    Document Your Business Architecture

    Industry Reference Architectures

    Application Capability Template

    Pre-step: Collect your applications

    1. Consult with your IT team and leverage any existing documentation to gather an initial list of your applications.
    2. Build an initial working list of applications. This is just meant to be a starting point. Aim to include any new applications in procurement, implementation, or development.
    3. The rationalization and roadmapping phases are best completed when iteratively focusing on manageable groups of applications. Group your applications into subsets based on shared subject matter experts. Likely this will mean grouping applications by business units.
    4. Select a subset to be the first group of applications that will undergo the activities of rationalization and roadmapping to refine your APM processes, scoring, and disposition selection.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    The more information you plan to capture, the larger the time and effort, especially as you move along toward advanced and strategic items. Capture the information most aligned to your objectives to make the most of your investment.

    If you completed Deliver Digital Products at Scale, use your product families and products to help define your applications.

    Learn more about automated application discovery:
    High Application Satisfaction Starts With Discovering Your Application Inventory

    Discover your applications

    The image contains a screenshot of examples of applications that support APM.

    2.1 Populate your inventory

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours per group

    1. Review Info-Tech’s list of application inventory attributes.
    2. Open the “Application Inventory Details” tab of the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool. Modify, add, or omit attributes.
    3. For each application, populate your prioritized data fields or any fields you know at the time of discovery. You will complete all the fields in future iterations.
    4. Complete this the best you can based on your team’s familiarity and any readily available documentation related to these applications.
    5. Use the drop-down list to select Enabling, Redundant/Overlapping, and Dependent apps. This will be used to help determine dispositions and comparisons.
    6. Highlight missing information or placeholder values that need to be verified.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Input Output
    • Working list of applications
    • Determined attributes for inventory
    • Populated inventory
    Materials Participants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    2.1 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM worksheet data journey map.

    Why is the business capability so important?

    For the purposes of an inventory, business capabilities help all stakeholders gain a sense of the functionality the application provides.

    However, the true value of business capability comes with rationalization.

    Upon linking all the organization’s applications to a standardized and consistent set of business capabilities, you can then group your applications based on similar, complementary, or overlapping functionality. In other words, find your redundancies and consolidation opportunities.

    Important Consideration

    Defining business capabilities and determining the full extent of redundancy is a challenging undertaking and often is a larger effort than APM all together.

    Business capabilities should be defined according to the unique functions and language of your organization, at varying levels of granularity, and ideally including target-state capabilities that identify gaps in the future strategy.

    This blueprint provides a simplified and generic list for the purpose of categorizing similar functionality. We strongly encourage exploring Document Your Business Architecture to help in the business capability defining process, especially when visibility into your portfolio and knowledge of redundancies is poor.

    The image contains a screenshot of the business capability scenarios.

    For a more detailed capability mapping, use the Application Portfolio Snapshot and the worksheets in your current workbook.

    What is a business capability map?

    The image contains a screenshot of a business capability map.

    A business capability map (BCM) is an abstraction of business operations that helps describe what the enterprise does to achieve its vision, mission, and goals. Business capabilities are the building blocks of the enterprise. They are typically defined at varying levels of granularity and include target-state capabilities that identify gaps in the future strategy. These are the people, process, and tool units that deliver value to your teams and customers.

    Info-Tech’s Industry Coverage and Reference Architectures give you a head start on producing a BCM fit for your organization. The visual to the left is an example of a reference architecture for the retail industry.

    These are the foundational piece for our Application Portfolio Snapshot. By linking capabilities to your supporting applications, you can better visualize how the portfolio supports the organization at a single glance. More specifically, you can highlight how issues with the portfolio are impacting capability delivery.

    Reminder: Best practices imply that business capabilities are methodologically defined by business stakeholders and business architects to capture the unique functions and language of your organization.

    The approach laid out in this service is about applying minimal time and effort to make the case for proper investment into the best practices, which can include creating a tailored BCM. Start with a good enough example to produce a useful visual and generate a positive conversation toward resourcing and analyses.

    We strongly encourage exploring Document Your Business Architecture and the Application Portfolio Snapshot to understand the thorough methods and tactics for BCM.

    Why perform a high-level application alignment before rationalization?

    Having to address redundancy complicates the application rationalization process. There is no doubt that assessing applications in isolation is much easier and allows you to arrive at dispositions for your applications in a timelier manner.

    Rationalization has two basic steps: first, collect and compile information, and second, analyze that information and determine a disposition for each application. When you don’t have redundancy, you can analyze an application and determine a disposition in isolation. When you do have redundancies, you need to collect information for multiple applications, likely across departments or lines of business, then perform a comparative analysis.

    Most likely your approach will fall somewhere between the examples below and require a hybrid approach.

    Benefits of a high-level application alignment:

    • Review the degree of redundancy across your portfolio.
    • Understand the priority areas for rationalization and the sequence of information collection.

    The image contains a screenshot of a timeline of rationalization effort.

    2.2 Align apps to capabilities and functions

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours per grouping

    The APM tool provides up to three different grouping comparisons to assess how well your applications are supporting your enterprise. Although business capabilities are important, identify your organizational perspectives to determine how well your portfolio supports these functions, departments, or value streams. Each grouping should be a consistent category, type, or arrangement of applications.

    1. Enter the business capabilities, from either your own BCM or the Info-Tech reference architectures, into the Business Capability column under Grouping 1.
    2. Open the “Group 1 Alignment Matrix” worksheet in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool.
    3. For each application’s row, enter an “X” in the column of a capability that the application supports.
    4. Optionally, repeat these steps under Grouping 2 and 3 for each value stream, department, function, or business unit where you’d like to assess application support. Note: To use Grouping 3, unhide the columns on the “Application and Group Lists” worksheet and unhide the worksheet “Grouping 3 Alignment Matrix.”

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    InputOutput
    • Application inventory
    • List of business capabilities, Info-Tech Reference Architecture capabilities, departments, functions, divisions, or value streams for grouping comparison
    • Assigned business capabilities to applications
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    2.2 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM worksheet data journey map.

    2.2 Aligning applications to groups example

    Alignment Matrix: Identify applications supporting each capability or function.

    Capability, Department, or Function 1

    Capability, Department, or Function 2

    Capability, Department, or Function 3

    Capability, Department, or Function 4

    Capability, Department, or Function 5

    Capability, Department, or Function 6

    Application A

    x

    Application B

    x

    Application C

    x

    Application D

    x

    Application E

    x x

    Application F

    x

    Application G

    x

    Application H

    x

    Application I

    x

    Application J

    x

    In this example:

    BC 1 is supported by App A

    BC 2 is supported by App B

    BC 3 is supported by Apps C & D

    BCs 4 & 5 are supported by App E

    BC 6 is supported by Apps F-G. BC 6 shows an example of potential redundancy and portfolio complexity.

    The APM tool supports three different Snapshot groupings. Repeat this exercise for each grouping.

    Align application to capabilities – tool view

    The image contains screenshots of the align application to capabilities - tool view

    Phase 3

    Rationalize Your Applications

    Phase 1

    1.1 Assess Your Current Application Portfolio

    1.2 Determine Narrative

    1.3 Define Goals and Metrics

    1.4 Define Application Categories

    1.5 Determine APM Steps and Roles

    Phase 2

    2.1 Populate Your Inventory

    2.2 Align to Business Capabilities

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess Business Value

    3.2 Assess Technical Health

    3.3 Assess End-User Perspective

    3.4 Assess Total Cost of Ownership

    Phase 4

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot Results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations Results

    4.3 Determine Dispositions

    4.4 Assess Redundancies (Optional)

    4.5 Determine Dispositions for Redundant Applications (Optional)

    4.6 Prioritize Initiatives

    4.7 Determine Ongoing APM Cadence

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Applications Lead
    • Application SMEs

    Additional Resources

    Phase pre-step: Sequence rationalization assessments appropriately

    Use the APM Snapshot results to determine APM iterations

    • Application rationalization requires an iterative approach.
    • Review your application types and alignment from Phase 2 to begin to identify areas of overlapping or redundant applications.
    • Sequence the activities of Phase 3 based on whether you have a:
      • Redundant Portfolio
        • Use the APM Snapshot to prioritize analysis by grouping.
        • Complete the application functional analysis.
        • Use the “Application Comparison” worksheet to aid your comparison of application subsets.
        • Update application dispositions and roadmap initiatives.
      • Non-Redundant Portfolio
        • Use the APM Snapshot to prioritize analysis by grouping.
        • Update application dispositions and roadmap initiatives.

    The image contains a screenshot of a timeline of rationalization effort.

    Phase pre-step: Are the right stakeholders present?

    Make sure you have the right people at the table from the beginning.

    • Application rationalization requires specific stakeholders to provide specific data points.
    • Ensure your application subsets are grouped by shared subject matter experts. Ideally, these are grouped by business units.
    • For each subset, identify the appropriate SMEs for the five areas of rationalization criteria.
    • Communicate and schedule interviews with groups of stakeholders. Inform them of additional information sources to have readily available.
    • (Optional) This phase’s activities follow the clockwise sequence of the diagram to the right. Reorder the sequence of activities based on overlaps of availability in subject matter expertise.

    Application

    Rationalization

    Additional Information Sources

    Ideal Stakeholders

    • KPIs

    Business Value

    • Business Application/Product Owners
    • Business Unit/ Process Owners
    • Survey Results

    End User

    • Business Application/ Product Owners
    • Key/Power Users
    • End Users
    • General Ledger
    • Service Desk
    • Vendor Contracts

    TCO

    • Operations/Maintenance Manager
    • Vendor Managers
    • Finance & Acct.
    • Service Desk
    • ALM Tools

    Technical Health

    • Operations/ Maintenance Manager
    • Solution Architect
    • Security Manager
    • Dev. Manager
    • Capability Maps
    • Process Maps

    Application Alignment

    • Business Unit/ Process Owners

    Rationalize your applications

    The image contains screenshots of diagrams that reviews building your APM journey map.

    One of the principal goals of application rationalization is determining dispositions

    Disposition: The intended strategic direction or course of action for an application.

    Directionless portfolio of applications

    Assigned dispositions for individual apps

    High-level examples:

    The image contains a screenshot of an image that demonstrates a directionless portfolio of applications.

    Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure.

    The image contains screenshots of a few images taken from the directionless application to demonstrate the text above.

    Modernize: Create a new project to address an inadequacy.

    The image contains screenshots of a few images taken from the directionless application to demonstrate the text above.

    Consolidate: Create a new project to reduce duplicate functionality.

    The image contains screenshots of a few images taken from the directionless application to demonstrate the text above.

    Retire: Phase out the application.

    The image contains screenshots of a few images taken from the directionless application to demonstrate the text above.

    Application rationalization provides insight

    Directionless portfolio of applications

    Info-Tech’s Five Lens Model

    Assigned dispositions for individual apps

    The image contains a screenshot of an example of directionless portfolio of applications.

    Application Alignment

    Business Value

    Technical Health

    End-User Perspective

    Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

    Maintain: Keep the application but adjust its support structure.

    Modernize: Create a new initiative to address an inadequacy.

    Consolidate: Create a new initiative to reduce duplicate functionality.

    Retire: Phase out the application.

    Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.

    How well do your apps support your core functions and teams?

    How well are your apps aligned to value delivery?

    Do your apps meet all IT quality standards and policies?

    How well do your apps meet your end users’ needs?

    What is the relative cost of ownership and operation of your apps?

    Application rationalization requires the collection of several data points that represent these perspectives and act as the criteria for determining a disposition for each of your applications.

    Disposition: The intended strategic direction or implied course of action for an application.

    3.1-3.4 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM worksheet data journey map.

    Assessing application business value

    The Business Business Value of Applications IT
    Keepers of the organization’s mission, vision, and value statements that define IT success. The business maintains the overall ownership and evaluation of the applications. Technical subject matter experts of the applications they deliver and maintain. Each IT function works together to ensure quality applications are delivered to stakeholder expectations.

    First, the authorities on business value need to define and weigh their value drivers that describe the priorities of the organization.

    This will then allow the applications team to apply a consistent, objective, and strategically aligned evaluation of applications across the organization.

    In this context…business value is the value of the business outcome that the application produces and how effective the application is at producing that outcome.

    Business value IS NOT the user’s experience or satisfaction with the application.

    Review the value drivers of your applications

    The image contains a screenshot of a the business value matrix.

    Financial vs. Human Benefits

    Financial benefits refer to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics and are often quite tangible.

    Human benefits refer to how an application can deliver value through a user’s experience.

    Inward vs. Outward Orientation

    Inward orientation refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in performing its operations.

    Outward orientation refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external factors, such as the market or your customers.

    Increased Revenue

    Reduced Costs

    Enhanced Services

    Reach Customers

    Application functions that are specifically related to the impact on your organization’s ability to generate revenue and deliver value to your customers.

    Reduction of overhead. The ways in which an application limits the operational costs of business functions.

    Functions that enable business capabilities that improve the organization’s ability to perform its internal operations.

    Application functions that enable and improve the interaction with customers or produce market information and insights.

    3.1 Assess business value

    Estimated time: 1 -4 hours

    1. Review Info-Tech’s four quadrants of business value: increase revenue/value, reduce costs, enhance services, and reach customers. Edit your value drivers, description, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each value driver, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities. When editing the scoring descriptions, keep only the one you are using.
    2. (Optional) Add an additional value driver if your organization has distinct value drivers (e.g. compliance, sustainability, innovation, and growth).
    3. For each application, score on a scale of 0 to 5 how impactful the application is for each value driver. Use the indicators set in Phase 1 to guide your scoring.
    4. For each value driver, adjust the criteria weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    InputOutput
    • Knowledge of organizational priorities
    • (Optional) Existing mission, vision, and value statements
    • Scoring scheme for assessing business value
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Key Corporate Stakeholders

    3.1 Weigh value drivers: Example

    The image contains a screenshot example of the weigh value drivers.

    For additional support in implementing a balanced value framework, refer to Build a Value Measurement Framework.

    Understand the back end and technical health of your applications

    Technical health identifies the extent of technology risk to the organization.

    MAINTAINABILITY (RAS)

    RAS refers to an app’s reliability, availability, and serviceability. How often, how long, and how difficult is it for your resources to keep an app functioning, and what are the resulting continuity risks? This can include root causes of maintenance challenges.

    SECURITY

    Applications should be aligned and compliant with ALL security policies. Are there vulnerabilities or is there a history of security incidents? Remember that threats are often internal and non-malicious.

    ADAPTABILITY

    How easily can the app be enhanced or scaled to meet changes in business needs? Does the app fit within the business strategy?

    INTEROPERABILITY

    The degree to which an app is integrated with current systems. Apps require comprehensive technical planning and oversight to ensure they connect within the greater application architecture. Does the app fit within your enterprise architecture strategy?

    BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY

    The degree to which the application is compatible with business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) policies and plans that are routinely tested and verified.

    Unfortunately, the business only cares about what they can see or experience. Rationalization is your opportunity to get risk on the business’ radar and gain buy-in for the necessary action.

    3.2 Assess technical health

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours

    1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested technical health criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
    2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
    3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.
    InputOutput
    • Familiarity of technical health perspective for applications within this subset
    • Maintenance history, architectural models
    • Technical health scores for each application
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Technical SMEs
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    End users provide valuable perspective

    Your end users are your best means of determining front-end issues.

    Data Quality

    To what degree do the end users find the data quality sufficient to perform their role and achieve their desired outcome?

    Effectiveness

    To what degree do the end users find the application effective for performing their role and desired outcome?

    Usability

    To what degree do the end users find the application reliable and easy to use to achieve their desired outcome?

    Satisfaction

    To what degree are end users satisfied with the features of this application?

    What else matters to you?

    Tune your criteria to match your values and priorities.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    When facing large user groups, do not make assumptions or use lengthy methods of collecting information. Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to collect data by surveying your end users’ perspectives.

    3.3 Assess end-user perspective

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours

    1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested end-user perspective criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
    2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
    3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.
    InputOutput
    • Familiarity of end user’s perspective for applications within this subset
    • User satisfaction scores for each application
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners, Key Users
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Consider the spectrum of application cost

    An application’s cost extends past a vendor’s fee and even the application itself.

    LICENSING AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: Your recurring payments to a vendor.

    Many commercial off-the-shelf applications require a license on a per-user basis. Review contracts and determine costs by looking at per-user or fixed rates charged by the vendor.

    MAINTENANCE COSTS: Your internal spending to maintain an app.

    These are the additional costs to maintain an application such as support agreements, annual maintenance fees, or additional software or hosting expenses.

    INDIRECT COSTS: Miscellaneous expenses necessary for an app’s continued use.

    Expenses like end-user training, developer education, and admin are often neglected, but they are very real costs organizations pay regularly.

    RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Perceived value of the application related to its TCO.

    Some of our most valuable applications are the most expensive. ROI is an optional criterion to account for the value and importance of the application.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    The TCO assessment is one area where what you are considering the ”application” matters quite a bit. An application’s peripherals or software components need to be considered in your estimates. For additional help calculating TCO, use the Application TCO Calculator from Build a Rationalization Framework.

    3.4 Assess total cost of ownership

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours

    1. Review Info-Tech’s suggested TCO criteria. Edit your criteria, descriptions, and scoring on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet. For each criterion, update the key indicators specific to your organization’s priorities.
    2. For each application, score on a scale of 1 to 5 on how impactful the application is for each criterion.
    3. For each criterion, adjust the weighting to match its relative importance to the organization. Start with a balanced or low weighting. Adjust the weights to ensure that the category score matches your relative values and priorities.
    InputOutput
    • Familiarity with the TCO for applications within this subset
    • Vendor contracts, maintenance history
    • TCO scores for each application
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners, Vendor Managers, Operations Managers
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Phase 4

    Populate Your Roadmap

    Phase 1

    1.1 Assess Your Current Application Portfolio

    1.2 Determine Narrative

    1.3 Define Goals and Metrics

    1.4 Define Application Categories

    1.5 Determine APM Steps and Roles

    Phase 2

    2.1 Populate Your Inventory

    2.2 Align to Business Capabilities

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess Business Value

    3.2 Assess Technical Health

    3.3 Assess End-User Perspective

    3.4 Assess Total Cost of Ownership

    Phase 4

    4.1 Review APM Snapshot Results

    4.2 Review APM Foundations Results

    4.3 Determine Dispositions

    4.4 Assess Redundancies (Optional)

    4.5 Determine Dispositions for Redundant Applications (Optional)

    4.6 Prioritize Initiatives

    4.7 Determine Ongoing APM Cadence

    his phase involves the following participants:

    • Applications Lead
    • Delivery Leads

    Additional Resources

    Review your APM Snapshot

    The image contains a screenshot of examples of applications that support APM.

    4.1 Review your APM Snapshot results

    Estimated time: 1-2 hours

    1. The APM Snapshot provides a dashboard to support your APM program’s focus and as an input to demand planning. Unhide the “Group 3” worksheet if you completed the alignment matrix.
    2. For each grouping area, review the results to determine underperforming areas. Use this information to prioritize your application root cause analysis and demand planning. Use the key on the following slide to guide your analysis.
    3. Analysis guidance:
      1. Start with the quartile grouping to find areas scoring in Remediate or Critical Need and focus follow-up actions on these areas.
      2. Use the lens/category heat map to determine which lenses are underperforming. Use this to then look up the individual app scores supporting that group to identify application issues.
      3. Use the “Application Comparison” worksheet to select and compare applications for the group to make your review and comparison easier.
      4. Work with teams in the group to provide root cause analysis for low scores.
      5. Build a plan to address any apps not supported by IT.
    InputOutput
    • Application list
    • Application to Group mapping
    • Rationalization scores
    • Awareness of application support for each grouping

    Materials

    Participants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Interpreting your APM Snapshot

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Snapshot with guides on how to interpret it.

    4.1 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the AMP worksheet data journey map.

    Review your APM rationalization results

    The image contains a screenshot of examples of applications that support APM.

    4.2 Review your APM Foundations results

    Estimated time: 1-2 hours

    The APM Foundations Results dashboard (“App Rationalization Results” worksheet) provides a detailed summary of your relative app scoring to serve as input to demand planning.

    1. For each grouping, review the results to determine underperforming app support. Use this information to prioritize your application root cause analysis using the individual criteria scores on the “Rationalization Inputs” worksheet.
    2. Use guidance on the following example slides to understand each area of the results.
    3. Any applications marked as N/A for evaluation will display N/A on the results worksheet and will not be displayed in the chart. You can still enter dispositions.
    4. Use the column filters to compare a subset of applications or use the “App Comparison” worksheet to maintain an ongoing view by grouping, redundancy, or category.
    5. Any applications marked as N/A for evaluation will display N/A on the results worksheet and will not be displayed in the chart. You can still enter dispositions.
    InputOutput
    • Application list
    • Rationalization scores
    • Application awareness
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    4.2 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the AMP worksheet data journey map.

    Interpreting your APM Foundations results

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Foundations results.

    Interpreting your APM Foundations chart

    The image contains a screenshot of the APM Foundations chart.

    Modernize your applications

    The image contains a screenshot of examples of applications that support APM.

    Apply Info-Tech’s 6 R’s Rationalization Disposition Model

    The image contains a screenshot of Info-Tech's 6 R's Rationalization Disposition Model.

    Disposition

    Description

    Reward

    Prioritize new features or enhancement requests and openly welcome the expansion of these applications as new requests are presented.

    Refresh

    Address the poor end-user satisfaction with a prioritized project. Consult with users to determine if UX issues require improvement to address satisfaction.

    Refocus

    Determine the root cause of the low value. Refocus, retrain, or refresh the UX to improve value. If there is no value found, aim to "keep the lights on" until the app can be decommissioned.

    Replace

    Replace or rebuild the application as technical and user issues are putting important business capabilities at risk. Decommission application alongside replacement.

    Remediate

    Address the poor technical health or risk with a prioritized project. Further consult with development and technical teams to determine if migration or refactoring is suited to address the technical issue.

    Retire

    Cancel any requested features and enhancements. Schedule the proper decommission and transfer end users to a new or alternative system if necessary.

    TCO, compared relatively to business value, helps determine the practicality of a disposition and the urgency of any call to action. Application alignment is factored in when assessing redundancies and has a separate set of dispositions.

    4.3 Determine dispositions

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours

    1. The Recommended Disposition and Priority fields are prepopulated from your scoring thresholds and options on the “Disposition Options” worksheet. You can update any individual application disposition or priority using the drop-down menu and it will populate your selection on the “Roadmap” worksheet.
    2. Question if that disposition is appropriate. Be sure to consider:
      1. TCO – cost should come into play for any decisions.
      2. Alignment to strategic goals set for the overarching organizational, IT, technology (infrastructure), or application portfolio.
      3. Existing organizational priorities or funded initiatives impacting the app.
    3. Some dispositions may imply a call to action, new project, or initiative. Ideate and/or discuss with the team any potential initiatives. You can use different dispositions and priorities on the “App Rationalization Results” and “Roadmap” worksheets.
    4. Note: Modify the list of dispositions on the “Disposition Options” worksheet as appropriate for your rationalization initiative. Any modifications to the Disposition column will be automatically updated in the “App Rationalization Results” and “Roadmap” worksheets.
    InputOutput
    • Rationalization results
    • Assigned dispositions for applications
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    4.3 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the worksheet data journey map.

    Redundancies require a different analysis and set of dispositions

    Solving application redundancy is a lot more complicated than simply keeping one application and eliminating the others.

    First, you need to understand the extent of the redundancy. The applications may support the same capability, but do they offer the same functions? Determine which apps offer which functions within a capability. This means you cannot accurately arrive at a disposition until you have evaluated all applications.

    Next, you need to isolate the preferred system. This is completed by comparing the same data points collected for rationalization and the application alignment analysis. Cost and coverage of all necessary functions become the more important factors in this decision-making process.

    Lastly, for the non-preferred redundant applications you need to determine: What will you do with the users? What will you do with the data? And what can you do with the functionality (can the actual coding be merged onto a common platform)?

    Disposition

    Description & Additional Analysis

    Call to Action (Priority)

    Keep & Absorb

    Higher value, health satisfaction, and cost than alternatives

    These are the preferred apps to be kept. However, additional efforts are still required to migrate new users and data and potentially configure the app to new processes.

    Application or Process Initiative

    (Moderate)

    Shift & Retire

    Lower value, health satisfaction, and cost than alternatives

    These apps will be decommissioned alongside efforts to migrate users and data to the preferred system.

    *Confirm there are no unique and necessary features.

    Process Initiative & Decommission

    (Moderate)

    Merge

    Lower value, health satisfaction, and cost than alternatives but still has some necessary unique features

    These apps will be merged with the preferred system onto a common platform.

    *Determine the unique and necessary features.

    *Determine if the multiple applications are compatible for consolidation.

    Application Initiative

    (Moderate)

    Compare groups of applications

    The image contains a screenshot of examples of applications that support APM.

    4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

    Estimated rime: 1 hour per group

    This exercise is best performed after aligning business capabilities to applications across the portfolio and identifying your areas of redundancy. At this stage, this is still an information collection exercise, and it will not yield a consolidation-based disposition until applied to all relevant applications. Lastly, this exercise may still be at too high a level to outline the full details of redundancy, but it is still vital information to collect and a starting point to determine which areas require more concentrated analysis.

    1. Determine which areas of redundancy or comparisons are desired. Duplicate the “App Comparison” worksheet for each grouping or comparison.
    2. Extend the comparison to better identify redundancy.
      1. For each area of redundancy, identify the high-level features. Aim to limit the features to ten, grouping smaller features if necessary. SoftwareReviews can be a resource for identifying common features.
      2. Label features using the MoSCoW model: must have, should have, could have, will not have.
      3. For each application, identify which features they support. You can use the grouping alignment matrix as a template for feature alignment comparison. Duplicate the worksheet, unlock it, and replace the grouping cell references with your list of features.
    Input Output
    • Areas of redundancy
    • Familiarity with features for applications within this subset
    • Feature-level review of application redundancy
    Materials Participants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)

    Account Management

    Call Management

    Order/Transaction Processing

    Contract Management

    Lead/Opportunity Management

    Forecasting/Planning

    Customer Surveying

    Email Synchronization

    M M M M S S C W

    CRM 1

    CRM 2

    CRM 3

    4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)

    Estimated time: 1 hour per group

    1. Based on the feature-level assessment, determine if you can omit applications if they don’t truly overlap with other applications.
    2. Make a copy of the “App Comparison” worksheet and select the applications you want to compare based on your functional analysis.
    3. Determine the preferred application(s). Use the diagram to inform your decision. This may be the application closest to the top right (strong health and value). However, less expensive options or any options that provide a more complete set of features may be preferable.
    4. Open the “App Rationalization Results” worksheet. Update your disposition for each application.
    5. Use these updated dispositions to determine a call to action, new project, or initiative. Ideate and/or discuss with the team any potential initiatives. Update your roadmap with these initiatives in the next step.
    InputOutput
    • Feature-level review of application redundancy
    • Redundancy comparison
    • Assigned dispositions for redundant applications
    MaterialsParticipants
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Business Owners
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    Compare application groups

    Group comparison can be used for more than just redundant/overlapping applications.

    The image contains a screenshot of images that demonstrate comparing application groups.

    Roadmaps are used for different purposes

    Roadmaps are used for different communication purposes and at varying points in your application delivery practice. Some use a roadmap to showcase strategy and act as a feedback mechanism that allows stakeholders to validate any changes (process 1). Others may use it to illustrate and communicate approved and granular elements of a change to an application to inform appropriate stakeholders of what to anticipate (process 2).

    Select Dispositions & Identify New Initiatives

    Add to Roadmap

    Validate Direction

    Plan Project

    Execute Project

    Select Dispositions & Identify New Initiatives

    • Project Proposal
    • Feasibility/ Estimation
    • Impact Assessment
    • Business Case
    • Initial Design

    Approve Project

    Add to Roadmap

    Execute Project

    The steps between selecting a disposition and executing on any resulting project will vary based on the organization’s project intake standards (or lack thereof).

    This blueprint focuses on building a strategic portfolio roadmap prior to any in-depth assessments related to initiative/project intake, approval, and prioritization. For in-depth support related to intake, approval, prioritization, or planning, review the following resources.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Deliver on your Digital Product Vision blueprint. The image contains a screenshot of the Deliver Digital Products at Scale blueprint.

    Determine what makes it onto the roadmap

    A roadmap should not be limited to what is approved or committed to. A roadmap should be used to present the items that need to happen and begin the discussion of how or if this can be put into place. However, not every idea should make the cut and end up in front of key stakeholders.

    The image contains a screenshot of steps to be taken to determine what makes it onto the roadmap.

    4.6 Prioritize initiatives

    Estimated time: 1-4 hours

    1. This is a high-level assessment to provide a sense of feasibility, practicality, and priority as well as an estimated timeline of a given initiative. Do not get lost in granular estimations. Use this as an input to your demand planning process.
    2. Enter the specific name or type of initiative.
      1. Process Initiative: Any project or effort focused on process improvements without technical modification to an app (e.g. user migration, change in SLA, new training program). Write the application and initiative name on a blue sticky note.
      2. App Initiative: Any project or effort involving technical modification to an app (e.g. refactoring, platform migration, feature addition or upgrade). Write the application and initiative name on a yellow sticky note.
      3. Decommission Initiative: Any project and related efforts to remove an app (e.g. migrating data, removal from server). Write the application and initiative name on a red sticky note.
    3. Prioritize the initiative to aid in demand planning. This is prepopulated from your selected application disposition, but you can set a different priority for the initiative here.
    4. Select the Initiative Phase in the timeline to show the intended schedule and sequencing of the initiative.
    Input Output
    • Assigned dispositions
    • Rationalization results
    • Prioritized initiatives
    Materials Participants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Delivery Leads
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    4.6 APM worksheet data journey map

    The image contains a screenshot of the worksheet data journey map.

    Populate roadmap example

    The image contains an example of the populate roadmap.

    Create a recurring update plan

    • Application inventories become stale before you know it. Build steps in your procurement process to capture the appropriate information on new applications. Also, build in checkpoints to revisit your inventory regularly to assess the accuracy of inventory data.
    • Rationalization is not one and done; it must occur with an appropriate cadence.
      • Business priorities change, which will impact the current and future value of your apps.
      • Now more than ever, user expectations evolve rapidly.
      • Application sprawl likely won’t stop, so neither will shadow IT and redundancies.
      • Obsolescence, growing technical debt, changing security threats, or shifting technology strategies are all inevitable, as is the gradual decline of an app’s health or technical fit.
    • An application’s disposition changes quicker than you think, and rationalization requires a structured cadence. You need to plan to minimize the need for repeated efforts. Conversely, many use preceding iterations to increase the analysis (e.g. more thorough TCO projections or more granular capability-application alignment).
    • Portfolio roadmaps require a cadence for both updates and presentations to stakeholders. Updates are often completed semiannually or quarterly to gauge the business adjustments that affect the timeline of the domain-specific applications. The presentation of a roadmap should be completed alongside meetings or gatherings of key decision makers.
    • M&A or other restructuring events will prompt the need to address all the above.

    The image contains a screenshot of chart to help determine frequency of updating your roadmap.

    Build your APM maturity by taking the right steps at the right time

    The image contains a diagram to demonstrate the steps taken to build APM maturity.

    Info-Tech’s Build an Application Rationalization Framework provides additional TCO and value tools to help build out your portfolio strategy.

    APM is an iterative and evergreen process

    APM provides oversight and awareness of your application portfolio’s performance and support for your business operations and value delivery to all users and customers.

    Determine scope and categories Build your list of applications and capabilities Score each application based on your values Determine outcomes based on app scoring and support for capabilities

    1. Lay Your Foundations

    • 1.1 Assess the state of your current application portfolio
    • 1.2 Determine narrative
    • 1.3 Define goals and metrics
    • 1.4 Define application categories
    • 1.5 Determine APM steps and roles (SIPOC)

    2. Improve Your Inventory

    • 2.1 Populate your inventory
    • 2.2 Align to business capabilities

    3. Rationalize Your Apps

    • 3.1 Assess business value
    • 3.2 Assess technical health
    • 3.3 Assess end-user perspective
    • 3.4 Assess total cost of ownership

    4. Populate Your Roadmap

    • 4.1 Review APM Snapshot results
    • 4.2 Review APM Foundations results
    • 4.3 Determine dispositions
    • 4.4 Assess redundancies (Optional)
    • 4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (Optional)
    • 4.6 Prioritize initiatives
    • 4.7 Ongoing APM cadence

    Repeat according to APM cadence and application changes

    4.7 Ongoing APM cadence

    Estimated time: 1-2 hours

    1. Determine how frequently you will update or present the artifacts of your APM practice: Application Inventory, Rationalization, Disposition, and Roadmap.
    2. For each artifact, determine the:
      1. Owner: Who is accountable for the artifact and the data or information within the artifact and will be responsible for or delegate the responsibility of updating or presenting the artifact to the appropriate audience?
      2. Update Cadence: How frequently will you update the artifact? Include what regularly scheduled meetings this activity will be within.
      3. Update Scope: Describe what activities will be performed to keep the artifact up to date. The goal here is to minimize the need for a full set of activities laid out within the blueprint. Optional: How will you expand the thoroughness of your analysis?
      4. Audience: Who is the audience for the artifact or assessment results?
      5. Presentation Cadence: How frequently and when will you review the artifact with the audience?
    InputOutput
    • Initial experience with APM
    • Strategic meetings schedule
    • Ongoing cadence for APM activities
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard and markers
    • APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool
    • Applications Lead
    • Any Applications Team Members

    Record the results in the APM Snapshot and Foundations Tool

    4.7 Ongoing APM cadence

    Artifact

    Owner

    Update Cadence

    Update Scope

    Audience

    Presentation Cadence

    Inventory

    Greg Dawson

    • As new applications are acquired
    • Annual review
    • Add new application data points (this is added to implementation standards)
    • Review inventory and perform a data health check
    • Validate with app’s SME
    • Whole organization
    • Always available on team site

    Rationalization Tool

    Judy Ng

    • Annual update
    • Revisit value driver weights
    • Survey end users
    • Interview support owners
    • Interview business owners
    • Update TCO based on change in operational costs; expand thoroughness of cost estimates
    • Rescore applications
    • Business owners of applications
    • IT leaders
    • Annually alongside yearly strategy meeting

    Portfolio Roadmap

    Judy Ng

    • Monthly update alongside project updates
    • Shift the timeline of the roadmap to current day 1
    • Carry over project updates and timeline changes
    • Validate with PMs and business owners
    • Steering Committee
    • Business owners of applications
    • IT leaders
    • Quarterly alongside Steering Committee meetings
    • Upon request

    Appendices

    • Additional support slides
    • Bibliography

    The APM tool provides a single source of truth and global data sharing

    The table shows where source data is used to support different aspects of APM discovery, rationalization, and modernization.

    Worksheet Data Mapping

    Application and Capability List

    Group Alignment Matrix (1-3)

    Rationalization Inputs

    Group 1-3 Results

    Application Inventory Details

    App Rationalization Results

    Roadmap

    App Redundancy Comparison

    Application and Capability List

    App list, Groupings

    App list

    App list, Groupings

    App list, Categories

    App list, Categories

    App list

    App list

    Groups 1-3 Alignment Matrix

    App to Group Tracing

    Application Categories

    Category
    drop-down

    Category

    Category

    Rationalization Inputs

    Lens Scores (weighted input to Group score)

    Lens Scores (weighted input)

    Disposition Options

    Disposition list, Priorities list, Recommended Disposition and Priority

    Lens Scores (weighted input)

    App Rationalization Results

    Disposition

    Common application inventory attributes

    Attribute Description Common Collection Method
    Name Organization’s terminology used for the application. Auto-discovery tools will provide names for the applications they reveal. However, this may not be the organizational nomenclature. You may adapt the names by leveraging pre-existing documentation and internal knowledge or by consulting business users.
    ID Unique identifiers assigned to the application (e.g. app number). Typically an identification system developed by the application portfolio manager.
    Description A brief description of the application, often referencing core capabilities. Typically completed by leveraging pre-existing documentation and internal knowledge or by consulting business users.
    Business Units A list of all business units, departments, or user groups. Consultation, surveys, or interviews with business unit representatives. However, this doesn’t always expose hidden applications. Application-capability mapping is the most effective way to determine all the business units/user groups of an app.
    Business Capabilities A list of business capabilities the application is intended to enable. Application capability mapping completed via interviews with business unit representatives.
    Criticality A high-level grading of the importance of the application to the business, typically used for support prioritization purposes (i.e. critical, high, medium, low). Typically the criticality rating is determined by a committee representing IT and business leaders.
    Ownership The individual accountable for various aspect of the application (e.g. product owner, product manager, application support, data owner); typically includes contact information and alternatives. If application ownership is an established accountability in your organization, typically consulting appropriate business stakeholders will reveal this information. Otherwise, application capability mapping can be an effective means of identifying who that owner should be.
    Application SMEs Any relevant subject matter experts who can speak to various aspects of the application (e.g. business process owners, development managers, data architects, data stewards, application architects, enterprise architects). Technical SMEs should be known within an IT department, but shadow IT apps may require interviews with the business unit. Application capability mapping will determine the identity of those key users/business process SMEs.
    Type An indication of whether the application was developed in-house, commercial off-the-shelf, or a hybrid option. Consultation, surveys, or interviews with product owners or development managers.
    Active Status An indication of whether the application is currently active, out of commission, in repair, etc. Consultation, surveys, or interviews with product owners or operation managers.

    Common application inventory attributes

    Attribute Description Common Collection Method
    Vendor Information Identification of the vendor from whom the software was procured. May include additional items such as the vendor’s contact information. Consultation with business SMEs, end users, or procurement teams, or review of vendor contracts or license agreements.
    Links to Other Documentation Pertinent information regarding the other relevant documentation of the application (e.g. SLA, vendor contracts, data use policies, disaster recovery plan). Typically includes links to documents. Consultation with product owners, service providers, or SMEs, or review of vendor contracts or license agreements.
    Number of Users The current number of users for the application. This can be based on license information but will often require some estimation. Can include additional items of quantities at different levels of access (e.g. admin, key users, power users). Consultation, surveys, or interviews with product owners or appropriate business SMEs or review of vendor contracts or license agreements. Auto-discovery tools can reveal this information.
    Software Dependencies List of other applications or operating components required to run the application. Consultation with application architects and any architectural tools or documentation. This information can begin to reveal itself through application capability mapping.
    Hardware Dependencies Identification of any hardware or infrastructure components required to run the application (i.e. databases, platform). Consultation with infrastructure or enterprise architects and any architectural tools or documentation. This information can begin to reveal itself through application capability mapping.
    Development Language Coding language used for the application. Consultation, surveys, or interviews with development managers or appropriate technical SMEs.
    Platform A framework of services that application programs rely on for standard operations. Consultation, surveys, or interviews with infrastructure or development managers.
    Lifecycle Stage Where an application is within the birth, growth, mature, end-of-life lifecycle. Consultation with business owners and technical SMEs.
    Scheduled Updates Any major or minor updates related to the application, including the release date. Consultation with business owners and vendor managers.
    Planned or In-Flight Projects Any projects related to the application, including estimated project timeline. Consultation with business owners and project managers.

    Bibliography

    ”2019 Technology & Small Business Survey.” National Small Business Association (NSBA), n.d. Accessed 1 April 2020.
    “Application Rationalization – Essential Part of the Process for Modernization and Operational Efficiency.” Flexera, 2015. Web.
    “Applications Rationalization during M&A: Standardize, Streamline, Simplify.” Deloitte Consulting, 2016. Web.
    Bowling, Alan. “Clearer Visibility of Product Roadmaps Improves IT Planning.” ComputerWeekly.com, 1 Nov. 2010. Web.
    Brown, Alex. “Calculating Business Value.” Agile 2014 Orlando, 13 July 2014. Scrum Inc. 2014. Web.
    Brown, Roger. “Defining Business Value.” Scrum Gathering San Diego 2017. Agile Coach Journal. Web.
    “Business Application Definition.” Microsoft Docs, 18 July 2012. Web.
    “Connecting Small Businesses in the US.” Deloitte Consulting, 2017. Accessed 1 April. 2020.
    Craveiro, João. “Marty meets Martin: connecting the two triads of Product Management.” Product Coalition, 18 Nov. 2017. Web.
    Curtis, Bill. “The Business Value of Application Internal Quality.” CAST, 6 April 2009. Web.
    Fleet, Neville, Joan Lasselle, and Paul Zimmerman. “Using a Balance Scorecard to Measure the Productivity and Value of Technical Documentation Organizations.” CIDM, April 2008. Web.
    Fowler, Martin. “Application Boundary.” MartinFowler.com, 11 Sept. 2003. Web.
    Harris, Michael. “Measuring the Business Value of IT.” David Consulting Group, 2007. Web.
    “How Application Rationalization Contributes to the Bottom Line.” LeanIX, 2017. Web.
    Jayanthi, Aruna. “Application Landscape Report 2014.” Capgemini, 4 March 2014. Web.
    Lankhorst, Marc., et al. “Architecture-Based IT Valuation.” Via Nova Architectura, 31 March 2010. Web.
    “Management of business application.” ServiceNow, Jan.2020. Accessed 1 April 2020.
    Mauboussin, Michael J. “The True Measures of Success.” HBR, Oct. 2012. Web.
    Neogi, Sombit., et al. “Next Generation Application Portfolio Rationalization.” TATA, 2011. Web.
    Riverbed. “Measuring the Business Impact of IT Through Application Performance.” CIO Summits, 2015. Web.
    Rouse, Margaret. “Application Rationalization.” TechTarget, March 2016. Web.
    Van Ramshorst, E.A. “Application Portfolio Management from an Enterprise Architecture Perspective.” Universiteit Utrecht, July 2013.
    “What is a Balanced Scorecard?” Intrafocus, n.d. Web.
    Whitney, Lance. “SMBs share their biggest constraints and great challenges.” Tech Republic, 6 May 2019. Web.

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}190|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.3/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $194,553 Average $ Saved
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    • Parent Category Name: IT Governance, Risk & Compliance
    • Parent Category Link: /it-governance-risk-and-compliance
    • IT governance is the number-one predictor of value generated by IT, yet many organizations struggle to organize their governance effectively.
    • Current IT governance does not address the changing goals, risks, or context of the organization, so IT spend is not easily linked to value.
    • The right people are not making the right decisions about IT.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Organizations do not have a governance framework in place that optimally aligns IT with the business objectives and direction.
    • Implementing IT governance requires the involvement of key business stakeholders who do not see IT’s value in corporate governance and strategy.
    • The current governance processes are poorly designed, making the time to decisions too long and driving non-compliance.

    Impact and Result

    • Use Info-Tech’s four-step process to optimize your IT governance framework.
    • Our client-tested methodology supports the enablement of IT-business alignment, decreases decision-making cycle times, and increases IT’s transparency and effectiveness in decisions around benefits realization, risks, and resources.
    • Successful completion of the IT governance redesign will result in the following outcomes:
      1. Align IT with the business context.
      2. Assess the current governance framework.
      3. Redesign the governance framework.
      4. Implement governance redesign.

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should redesign IT governance, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Align IT with the business context

    Align IT’s direction with the business using the Statement of Business Context.

    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results – Phase 1: Align IT With the Business Context
    • Make the Case for an IT Governance Redesign
    • Stakeholder Power Map Template
    • IT Governance Stakeholder Communication Planning Tool
    • PESTLE Analysis Template
    • Business SWOT Analysis Template
    • Statement of Business Context Template

    2. Assess the current governance framework

    Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of current governance using the Current State Assessment.

    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results – Phase 2: Assess the Current Governance Framework
    • Current State Assessment of IT Governance

    3. Redesign the governance framework

    Build a redesign of the governance framework using the Future State Design template.

    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results – Phase 3: Redesign the Governance Framework
    • Future State Design for IT Governance
    • IT Governance Terms of Reference

    4. Implement governance redesign

    Create an implementation plan to jump-start the communication of the redesign and set it up for success.

    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results – Phase 4: Implement Governance Redesign
    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results Executive Presentation Template
    • IT Governance Implementation Plan
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Identify the Need for Governance

    The Purpose

    Identify the need for governance in your organization and engage the leadership team in the redesign process.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Establish an engagement standard for the leadership of your organization in the IT governance redesign.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify stakeholders.

    1.2 Make the case for improved IT governance.

    1.3 Customize communication plan.

    Outputs

    Stakeholder Power Map

    Make the Case Presentation

    Communication Plan

    2 Align IT With the Business Context

    The Purpose

    Create a mutual understanding with the business leaders of the current state of the organization and the state of business it is moving towards.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    The understanding of the business context will provide an aligned foundation on which to redesign the IT governance framework.

    Activities

    2.1 Review documents.

    2.2 Analyze frameworks.

    2.3 Conduct brainstorming.

    2.4 Finalize the Statement of Business Context.

    Outputs

    PESTLE Analysis

    SWOT Analysis

    Statement of Business Context

    3 Assess the Current Governance Framework

    The Purpose

    Establish a baseline of the current governance framework.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Develop guidelines based off results from the current state that will guide the future state design.

    Activities

    3.1 Create committee profiles.

    3.2 Build governance structure map.

    3.3 Establish governance guidelines.

    Outputs

    Current State Assessment

    4 Redesign the Governance Framework

    The Purpose

    Redesign the governance structure and the committees that operate within it.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Build a future state of governance where the relationships and processes that are built drive optimal business results.

    Activities

    4.1 Build governance structure map.

    4.2 Create committee profiles.

    Outputs

    Future State Design

    IT Governance Terms of Reference

    5 Implement Governance Redesign

    The Purpose

    Build a roadmap for implementing the governance redesign.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Create a transparent and relationship-oriented implementation strategy that will pave the way for a successful redesign implementation.

    Activities

    5.1 Identify next steps for the redesign.

    5.2 Establish communication plan.

    5.3 Lead executive presentation.

    Outputs

    Implementation Plan

    Executive Presentation

    Further reading

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    Avoid bureaucracy and achieve alignment with a minimalist approach.

    ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

    Governance optimization is achieved where decision making, authority, and context meet.

    "Governance is something that is done externally to IT and well as internally by IT, with the intention of providing oversight to direct the organization to meet goals and keep things on target.

    Optimizing IT governance is the most effective way to consistently direct IT spend to areas that provide the most value in producing or supporting business outcomes, yet it is rarely done well.

    IT governance is more than just identifying where decisions are made and who has the authority to make them – it must also provide the context and criteria under which decisions are made in order to truly provide business value" (Valence Howden, Director, CIO Practice Info-Tech Research Group)

    Our understanding of the problem

    This Research is Designed For:

    • CIOs
    • CTOs
    • IT Directors

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Achieve and maintain executive and business support for optimizing IT governance.
    • Optimize your governance structure.
    • Build high-level governance processes.
    • Build governance committee charters and set accountability for decision making.
    • Plan the transition to the optimized governance structure and processes.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • Executive Leadership
    • IT Managers
    • IT Customers
    • Project Managers

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Improve alignment between business decisions and IT initiatives.
    • Establish a mechanism to validate, redirect, and reprioritize IT initiatives.
    • Realize greater value from more effective decision making.
    • Receive a better overall quality of service.

    Executive Summary

    Situation

    • IT governance is the #1 predictor of value generated by IT, yet many organizations struggle to organize their governance effectively.*
    • Current IT governance does not address the changing goals, risks, or context of the organization so IT spend is not easily linked to value.
    • The right people are not making the right decisions about IT.

    Complication

    • Organizations do not have a governance framework in place that optimally aligns IT with the business objectives and direction.
    • Implementing IT governance requires the involvement of key business stakeholders who do not see IT’s value in governance and strategy.
    • The current governance processes are poorly designed, creating long decision-making cycles and driving non-compliance with regulation.

    Resolution

    • Use Info-Tech’s four-step process for optimizing your IT governance framework. Our client-tested methodology supports the enablement of IT-business alignment, decreases decision-making cycle times, and increases IT’s transparency and effectiveness in making decisions around benefits realization, risks, and resources.
    • Successful completion of the IT governance redesign will result in the following outcomes:
      1. Align IT with the business context.
      2. Assess the current governance framework.
      3. Redesign the governance framework.
      4. Implement governance redesign.

    Info-Tech Insight

    • Establish IT-business fusion. In governance, alignment is not enough. Merge IT and the business through governance to ensure business success.
    • With great governance comes great responsibility. Involve relevant business leaders, who will be impacted by IT outcomes, to take on governing responsibility of IT.
    • Let IT manage and the business govern. IT governance should be a component of enterprise governance, allowing IT leaders to focus on managing.

    IT governance is...

    An enabling framework for decision-making context and accountabilities for related processes.

    A means of ensuring business-IT collaboration, leading to increased consistency and transparency in decision making and prioritization of initiatives.

    A critical component of ensuring delivery of business value from IT spend and driving high satisfaction with IT.

    IT governance is not...

    An annoying, finger-waving roadblock in the way of getting things done.

    Limited to making decisions about technology.

    Designed tacitly; it is purposeful, with business objectives in mind.

    A one-time project; you must review and revalidate the efficiency.

    Avoid common misconceptions of IT governance

    Don’t blur the lines between governance and management; each has a unique role to play. Confusing these results in wasted time and confusion around ownership.

    Governance

    A cycle of 'Governance Processes' and 'Management Processes'. On the left side of the cycle 'Governance Processes' begins with 'Evaluate', then 'Direct', then 'Monitor'. This leads to 'Management Processes' on the right side with 'Plan', 'Build', 'Run', and 'Monitor', which then feeds back into 'Evaluate'.

    Management

    IT governance sets direction through prioritization and decision making, and monitors overall IT performance.

    Governance aligns with the mission and vision of the organization to guide IT.

    Management is responsible for executing on, operating, and monitoring activities as determined by IT governance.

    Management makes decisions for implementing based on governance direction.

    The IT Governance Framework

    An IT governance framework is a system that will design structures, processes, authority definitions, and membership assignments that lead IT toward optimal results for the business.

    Governance is performed in three ways:
    1. Evaluate

      Governance ensures that business goals are achieved by evaluating stakeholder needs, criteria, metrics, portfolio, risk, and definition of value.
    2. Direct

      Governance sets the direction of IT by delegating priorities and determining the decisions that will guide the IT organization.
    3. Monitor

      Governance establishes a framework to monitor performance, compliance to regulation, and progress on expected outcomes.

    "Everyone needs good IT, but no one wants to talk about it. Most CFOs would rather spend time with their in-laws than in an IT steering-committee meeting. But companies with good governance consistently outperform companies with bad. Which group do you want to be in?" (Martha Heller, President, Heller Search Associates)

    Create impactful IT governance by embedding it within enterprise governance

    The business should engage in IT governance and IT should influence the direction of the business.

    Enterprise Governance

    IT Governance

    Authority for enterprise governance falls to the board and executive management.

    Responsibilities Include:
    • Provide strategic direction for the organization.
    • Ensure objectives are met.
    • Set the risk standards or profile.
    • Delegate resources responsibly.
    –› Engage in –›

    ‹– Influence ‹–

    Governance of IT is a component of enterprise governance.

    Responsibilities Include:
    • Build structure, authority, process, and membership designations in a governance framework.
    • Ensure the IT organization is aligned with business goals.
    • Influence the direction of the business to ensure business success.

    Identify signals of sub-optimal IT governance within any of these domains

    If you notice any of these signals, governance redesign is right for you!

    Inability to Realize Benefits

    1. IT is unable to articulate the value of its initiatives or spend.
    2. IT is regularly delegated unplanned projects.
    3. The is no standard approach to prioritization.
    4. Projects do not meet target metrics.

    Resource Misallocation

    1. Resources are wasted due to duplication or overlap in IT initiatives.
    2. IT projects fail at an unacceptable rate, leading to wasted resources.
    3. IT’s costs continue to increase without reciprocal performance increase.

    Misdiagnosed Risks

    1. Risk appetite is incorrectly identified or not identified at all.
    2. Disagreement on the approach to risk in the organization.
    3. Increasing rate of IT incidents related to risk.
    4. IT is failing to meet regulatory requirements.

    Dissatisfied Stakeholders

    1. There are no ways to measure stakeholder satisfaction with IT.
    2. Business strategies and IT strategies are misaligned.
    3. IT’s relationship with key stakeholders is unstable and there is a lack of mutual trust.

    A majority of organizations experience significant alignment gaps

    The majority of organizations and their key stakeholders experience highly visible gaps in the alignment of IT investments and organizational goals.

    There are two bars with percentages of their length marked out for different CXO responses. The possible responses are from '1, Critical Gap' to '7, No Gap'. The top bar says '57% of CXOs identify a major gap in IT's ability to support business goals', and shows 13% answered '1, Critical Gap', 22% answered '2', and 22% answered '3'. The bottom bar says '84% of CXOs often perceive that IT is investing in areas that do not support the business' and shows 38% answered '1, Critical Gap', 33% answered '2', and 13% answered '3'.

    88% of CIOs believe that their governance is not effective. (Info-Tech Diagnostics)

    Leverage governance as the catalyst for connecting IT and the business

    49% of firms are misaligned on current performance expectations for IT.

    • 49% Misaligned
    • 51% Aligned

    67% of firms are misaligned on the target role for IT.

    • 34% Highly Misaligned
    • 33% Somewhat Misaligned
    • 33% Aligned

    A well-designed IT governance framework will hep you to:

    1. Make sure IT keeps up with the evolving business context.
    2. Align IT with the mission and the vision of the organization.
    3. Optimize the speed and quality of decision making.
    4. Meet regulatory and compliance needs in the external environment.
    5. (Info-Tech Diagnostics)

    Align with business goals through governance to attain business-IT fusion

    Create a state of business-IT fusion, in which the two become one.

    Without business-IT fusion, IT will go in a different direction, leading to a divergence of purpose and outcomes. IT can transform into a fused partner of the business by ensuring that they govern toward the same goal.

    Firefighter
    • Delivers lower value
    • Duplication of effort
    • Unclear risk profile
    • High risk exposure
    Three sets of arrows, each pointing upward and arranged in an ascending stair pattern. The first, lowest set of arrows has a large blue arrow with a small green arrow veering off to the side, unaligned. The second, middle set of arrows has a large blue arrow with a medium green arrow overlaid on its center, somewhat aligned. The third, highest set of arrows has half of a large blue arrow, and the other half is a large green arrow, aligned. Business Partner
    • Increased speed of decision making
    • Aligned with business priorities
    • Optimized utility of people, financial, and time resources
    • Monitors and mitigates risk and compliance issues

    Redesign IT governance in accordance with COBIT and proven good practice

    Info-Tech’s approach to governance redesign is rooted in COBIT, the world-class and open-source IT governance standard.

    COBIT begins with governance, EDM – Evaluate, Direct, and Monitor.

    We build upon these standards with industry best practices and add a practical approach based on member feedback.

    This blueprint will help you optimize your governance framework.

    The upper image is a pyramid with 'Info-Tech Insights, Analysts, Experts, Clients' on top, 'IT Governance Best Practices' in the middle, and 'COBIT 5' on the bottom, indicating that Info-Tech's Governance guidance is based in COBIT 5. 'This project will focus on EDM01, Set/Maintain Governance Framework.'

    Use Info-Tech’s approach to implementing an IT governance redesign

    The four phases of Info-Tech’s governance redesign methodology will help you drive greater value for the business.

    1. Align IT With the Business Context
      Align IT’s direction with the business using the Statement of Business Context Template.
    2. Assess the Current Governance Framework
      Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of current governance using the Current State Assessment of IT Governance.
    3. Redesign the Governance Framework
      Build a redesign of the governance framework using the Future State Design for IT Governance tool.
    4. Implement Governance Redesign
      Create an IT Governance Implementation Plan to jumpstart the communication of the redesign and set it up for success.
    5. Continuously assess your governance framework to ensure alignment.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s insights for an optimal redesign process

    Common Pitfalls

    Info-Tech Solutions

    Phase 1

    There must be an active understanding of the current and future state of the business for governance to address the changing needs of the business. –›
    1. Make the case for a governance redesign.
    2. Create a custom communication plan to facilitate support.
    3. Establish a collectively agreed upon statement of business context.

    Phase 2

    Take a proactive approach to revising your governance framework. Understand why you are making decisions before actually making them. –›
    1. Conduct the IT governance current state assessment.
    2. Create governance guidelines for redesign.

    Phase 3

    Keep the current and future goals in sight to build an optimized governance framework that maintains the minimum bar of oversight required. –›
    1. Redesign the future state of IT governance in your organization.

    Phase 4

    Don’t overlook the politics and culture of your organization in redesigning your governance framework. –›
    1. Rationalize steps in an implementation plan.
    2. Outline a communication strategy to navigate culture and politics.
    3. Construct an executive presentation to facilitate transparency for the governing framework.

    Leverage both COBIT and Info-Tech-defined metrics to evaluate the success of your redesign

    These metrics will help you determine the extent to which your governance is supporting your business goals, and whether the governance in place promotes business-IT fusion.

    Benefits Realization

    1. Percent of IT-enabled investments where benefit realization is monitored through the full economic life. (COBIT-defined metric)
    2. Percent of enterprise strategic goals and requirements supported by IT strategic goals. (COBIT-defined metric)
    3. Percent of IT services where expected benefits are realized or exceeded. (COBIT-defined metric)

    Resources

    1. Satisfaction level of business and IT executives with IT-related costs and capabilities. (COBIT-defined metric)
    2. Average time to turn strategic IT objectives into an agreed-upon and approved initiative. (COBIT-defined metric)
    3. Number of deviations from resource utilization plan.

    Risks

    1. Number of security incidents causing financial loss, business disruption, or public embarrassment. (COBIT-defined metric)
    2. Number of issues related to non-compliance with policies. (COBIT-defined metric)
    3. Percentage of enterprise risk assessments that include IT-related risks. (COBIT-defined metric)
    4. Frequency with which the risk profile is updated. (COBIT-defined metric)

    Stakeholders

    1. Change in score of alignment with the scope of the planned portfolio of programs and services (using CIO-CXO Alignment Diagnostic).
    2. Percent of executive management roles with clearly defined accountabilities for IT decisions. (COBIT-defined metric)
    3. Percent of business stakeholders satisfied that IT service delivery meets agreed-upon service levels. (COBIT-defined metric)
    4. Percent of key business stakeholders involved in IT governance.

    Capture monetary value by establishing and monitoring key metrics

    While benefits of governance are often qualitative, the power of effective governance can be demonstrated through quantitative financial gains.

    Scenario 1 – Realizing Expected Gains

    Scenario 2 – Mitigating Unexpected Losses

    Metric

    Track the percentage of initiatives that provided expected ROI year over year. The optimization of the governance framework should generate an increase in this metric. Monitor this metric for continuous improvement opportunities. Track the financial losses related to non-compliance with policy or regulation. An optimized governance framework should better protect the organization against policy breach and mitigate the possibility and impact of “rogue” actions.

    Formula

    ROI of all initiatives / number of initiatives in year 2 – ROI of all initiatives / number of initiatives in year 1

    The expected result should be positive.

    Cost of non-compliance in year 2 – cost of non-compliance in year 1

    The expected result should be negative.

    Redesign IT governance to achieve optimal business outcomes

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Healthcare
    Source: Info-Tech

    Situation

    The IT governance had been structured based on regulations and had not changed much since it was put in place. However, a move to become an integration and service focused organization had moved the organization into the world of web services, Agile development, and service-oriented architecture.

    Complication

    The existing process was well defined and entrenched, but did not enable rapid decision making and Agile service delivery. This was due to the number of committees where initiatives were reviewed, made worse by their lack of approval authority. This led to issues moving initiatives forward in the timeframes required to meet clinician needs and committed governmental deadlines.

    In addition, the revised organizational mandate had created confusion regarding the primary purpose and function of the organization and impacted the ability to prioritize spend on a limited budget.

    To complicate matters further, there was political sensitivity tied to the membership and authority of different governing committees.

    Result:

    The CEO decided that a project would be initiated by the Enterprise Architecture Group, but managed by an external consultant to optimize and restructure the governance within the organization.

    The purpose of using the external consultant was to help remove internal politics from the discussion. This allowed the organization to establish a shared view of the organization’s revised mission and IT’s role in its execution.

    The exercise led to the removal of one governing committee and the merger of two others, modification to committee authority and membership, and a refined decision-making context that was agreed to by all parties.

    The redesigned governance process led to a 30% reduction in cycle time from intake to decision, and a 15% improvement in alignment of IT spend with strategic priorities.

    Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research

    Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.

    A small monochrome icon of a wrench and screwdriver creating an X.

    This icon denotes a slide where a supporting Info-Tech tool or template will help you perform the activity or step associated with the slide. Refer to the supporting tool or template to get the best results and proceed to the next step of the project.

    A small monochrome icon depicting a person in front of a blank slide.

    This icon denotes a slide with an associated activity. The activity can be performed either as part of your project or with the support of Info-Tech team members, who will come onsite to facilitate a workshop for your organization.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Redesign IT Governance – project overview

    Align IT With the Business Context

    Assess the Current State

    Redesign Governance

    Implement Redesign

    Supporting Tool icon

    Best-Practice Toolkit

    1.1 Identify Stakeholders
    1.2 Make the Case
    1.3 Present to Executives
    1.4 Customize Comm. Plan
    1.5 Review Documents
    1.6 Analyze Frameworks
    1.7 Conduct Brainstorming
    1.8 Finalize the SoBC
    2.1 Create Committee Profiles

    2.2 Build a Governance Structure Map

    2.3 Establish Governance Guidelines

    3.1 Build Governance Structure Map

    3.2 Create Committee Profiles

    3.3 Leverage Process Specific Governance Blueprints

    4.1 Identify Next Steps for the Redesign

    4.2 Establish Communication Plan

    4.3 Lead Executive Presentation

    Guided Implementations

    • Move towards gaining buy-in from the business if necessary. Then identify the major components of the SoBC.
    • Review SoBC and discuss a strategy to engage key stakeholders in the redesign.
    • Explore the process of identifying the four major elements of governance. Build guidelines for the future state.
    • Review the current state of governance and discuss the implications and guidelines.
    • Identify the changes that will need to be made.
    • Review redesigned structure and authority.
    • Review redesigned process and membership.
    • Discuss and review the implementation plan.
    • Prepare the presentation for the executives. Provide support on any final questions.
    Associated Activity icon

    Onsite Workshop

    Module 1:
    Align IT with the business context
    Module 2:
    Assess the current governance framework
    Module 3:
    Redesign the governance framework
    Module 4:
    Implement governance redesign
    Phase 1 Results:
    • Align IT’s direction with the business.
    Phase 2 Results:
    • Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of current governance and build guidelines.
    Phase 3 Results:
    • Establish a redesign of the governance framework.
    Phase 4 Results:
    • Create an implementation plan for the communication of the redesign.

    Workshop overview

    Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Workshop Day 1

    Workshop Day 2

    Workshop Day 3

    Workshop Day 4

    Workshop Day 5

    Task – Identify the Need for Governance Task – Align IT with the Business Context Task – Assess the Current State Task – Redesign Governance Framework Task – Implement Governance Redesign

    Activities

    • 1.1 Identify Stakeholders
    • 1.2 Make the Case
    • 1.3 Present to Executives
    • 1.4 Customize Communication Plan
    • 2.1 Review Documents
    • 2.2 Analyze Frameworks
    • 2.3 Conduct Brainstorming
    • 2.4 Finalize the Statement of Business Context
    • 3.1 Create Committee Profiles
    • 3.2 Build Governance Structure Map
    • 3.3 Establish Governance Guidelines
    • 4.1 Build Governance Structure Map
    • 4.2 Create Committee Profiles
    • 4.3 Leverage Process Specific Governance Blueprints
    • 5.1 Identify Next Steps for the Redesign
    • 5.2 Establish Communication Plan
    • 5.3 Lead Executive Presentation

    Deliverables

    1. Make the Case Presentation
    2. Stakeholder Power Map Template
    3. Communication Plan
    1. PESTLE Analysis
    2. SWOT Analysis
    3. Statement of Business Context
    1. Current State Assessment
    1. Future State Design Tool
    2. IT Governance Terms of Reference
    1. Implementation Plan
    2. Executive Presentation

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    PHASE 1

    Align IT With the Business Context

    Phase 1 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 1: Align IT With the Business Context

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2-4 weeks
    Step 1.1: Identify the Need for Governance Step 1.2: Create the Statement of Business Context
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Understand the core concepts of IT governance.
    • Create a strategy for key stakeholder support.
    • Identify key communication milestones.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Identify and discuss the process of engaging senior leadership.
    • Review findings from business analysis.
    • Review diagnostic and interview outcomes.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Identify stakeholders.
    • Make the case to executives.
    • Build a communication plan.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Review business documents.
    • Review the PESTLE and SWOT analyses.
    • Analyze outcomes of CIO-CEO Alignment Diagnostic.
    • Complete the Statement of Business Context.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Make the Case for an IT Governance Redesign
    • Stakeholder Power Map Template
    • IT Governance Stakeholder Communication Planning Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • PESTLE Analysis Template
    • Business SWOT Analysis Template
    • CIO-CEO Alignment Diagnostic
    • Statement of Business Context Template

    Phase 1: Align IT With the Business Context

    1 2 3 4
    Align IT With the Business Context Assess the Current Governance Framework Redesign the Governance Framework Implement Governance Redesign

    Activities:

    • 1.1 Identify Stakeholders
    • 1.2 Customize Make the Case Presentation
    • 1.3 Present to Executives
    • 1.4 Customize Communication Plan
    • 1.5 Review Business Documents
    • 1.6 Analyze Business Frameworks
    • 1.7 Conduct Brainstorming Efforts
    • 1.8 Finalize the SoBC

    Outcomes:

    • Make the case for a governance redesign.
    • Create a custom communication plan to facilitate support for the redesign process.
    • Establish a collectively agreed upon statement of business context.

    Set up business-driven governance by gaining an understanding of the business context

    Fuse IT with the business by establishing a common context of what the business is trying to achieve. Align IT with the business by developing an understanding of the business state, creating a platform to build a well-aligned governance framework.

    "IT governance philosophies can no longer be a ‘black box’ … IT governance can no longer be ignored by senior executives." (Iskandar and Mohd Salleh, University of Malaya, International Journal of Digital Society)

    Info-Tech Insight

    Get consensus on the changing state of business. There must be an active understanding of the current and future state of the business for governance to address the changing needs of the business.

    The source for the governance redesign directive will dictate the route for attaining leadership buy-in

    "Without an awareness of IT governance, there is no chance that it will be followed … The higher the percentage of managers who can describe your governance, the higher the governance performance." (Jeanne Ross, Director, MIT Center for Information Systems Research)

    The path you will choose for your governance buy-in tactics will be based on the original directive to redesign governance.

    Enterprise Directive.
    In the case that the redesign is an enterprise directive, jump directly to building a communication plan.

    IT Directive.
    In the case that the redesign is an IT directive, make the case to get the business on board.

    Use the Make the Case presentation template to get buy-in from the business

    Supporting Tool icon 1A Convince senior management to redesign governance

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Identify Stakeholders
      Determine which business stakeholders will be impacted or involved in the redesign process.
    2. Customize the Presentation
      Identify specific pain points regarding IT-business alignment.
    3. Present to Executives
      Present the make the case presentation.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Use the Make the Case customizable deliverable to lead a boardroom-quality presentation proving the specific need for senior executive involvement in the governance redesign.

    Determine which business stakeholders will be impacted or involved in the redesign process

    Associated Activity icon 1.1 Identify the stakeholders for the IT governance redesign

    It is vital to identify key business and IT stakeholders before the IT governance redesign has begun. Consider whose input and influence will be necessary in order to align with the business context and redesign the governance framework accordingly.

    Business

    • Shareholders
    • Board
    • Chief Executive Officer
    • –› Example: the CEO wants to know how IT will support the achievement of strategic corporate objectives.
    • Chief Financial Officer
    • Chief Operating Officer
    • Business Executives
    • Business Process Owners
    • Strategy Executive Committee
    • Chief Risk Officer
    • Chief Information Security Officer
    • Architecture Board
    • Enterprise Risk Committee
    • Head of Human Resources
    • Compliance
    • Audit

    IT

    • Chief Information Officer
    • –› Example: the CIO would like validation from the business with regards to prioritization criteria.
    • Head Architect
    • Head of Development
    • Head of IT Operations
    • Head of IT Administration
    • Service Manager
    • Information Security Manager
    • Business Continuity Manager
    • Privacy Officer

    External

    • Government Agency
    • –› Example: some governments mandate that organizations develop and implement an IT governance framework.
    • Audit Firm

    Build a power map to prioritize stakeholders

    Associated Activity icon 1.1 2-4 hours

    Stakeholders may have competing concerns – that is, concerns that cannot be addressed with one solution. The governance redesigner must prioritize their time to address the concerns of the stakeholders who have the most power and who are most impacted by the IT governance redesign.

    Draw a stakeholder power map to visualize the importance of various stakeholders and their concerns, and to help prioritize your time with those stakeholders.

    • Power: How much influence does the stakeholder have? Enough to drive the project forward or into the ground?
    • Involvement: How interested is the stakeholder? How much involvement does the stakeholder have in the project already?
    • Impact: To what degree will the stakeholder be impacted? Will this significantly change the job?
    • Support: Is the stakeholder a supporter of the project? Neutral? A resistor?
    A power map of stakeholders with two axes and four quadrants. The vertical axis is 'Low Power' on the bottom and 'High Power' on top. The horizontal axis is 'Low Involvement' on the left and 'High Involvement' on the right. The top left quadrant is labeled 'Keep satisfied' and contains 'CFO', a Strongly Impacted Resistor, and 'COO', a Weakly Impacted Resistor. The top right quadrant is labeled 'Key Players' and contains 'CIO' and 'CEO', both Strongly Impacted Supporters. The bottom left quadrant is labeled 'Minimal effort' and contains 'Marketing Head', a Weakly Impacted Neutral, and 'Production Head', a Moderately Impacted Neutral. The bottom right quadrant is labeled 'Keep informed' and contains 'Director of Ops', a Strongly Impacted Supporter, and 'Chief Architect', a Strongly Impacted Neutral.

    Download Info-Tech’s Stakeholder Power Map Template to help you visualize your key stakeholders.

    Build a power map to prioritize stakeholders

    Associated Activity icon 1.1

    It is important to identify who will be impacted and who has power, and the level of involvement they have in the governance redesign. If they have power, will be highly impacted, and are not involved in governance, you have already lost – because they will resist later. You need to get them involved early.

    • Focus on key players – relevant stakeholders who have high power, are highly impacted, and should have a high level of involvement.
    • Engage the stakeholders that are impacted most and have the power to impede the success of redesigning IT governance.
      • For example, if a CFO, who has the power to block project funding, is heavily impacted and not involved, the IT governance redesign success will be put at risk.
    • Some stakeholders may have influence over others so you should focus your efforts on the influencer rather than the influenced.
      • For example, if an uncooperative COO is highly influenced by the Director of Operations, it is recommended to engage the latter.

    The same power map of stakeholders with two axes and four quadrants, but with focus points and notes. The vertical axis is 'Low Power' on the bottom and 'High Power' on top. The horizontal axis is 'Low Involvement' on the left and 'High Involvement' on the right. The top left quadrant is labeled 'Keep satisfied' and contains 'CFO', a Strongly Impacted Resistor, and 'COO', a Weakly Impacted Resistor, as well as a dotted line moving 'CFO' to the top right quadrant with the note 'A) needs to be engaged'. The top right quadrant is labeled 'Key Players' and contains 'CIO' and 'CEO', both Strongly Impacted Supporters, as well as the new required position of 'CFO'. The bottom left quadrant is labeled 'Minimal effort' and contains 'Marketing Head', a Weakly Impacted Neutral, and 'Production Head', a Moderately Impacted Neutral. The bottom right quadrant is labeled 'Keep informed' and contains 'Director of Ops', a Strongly Impacted Supporter, and 'Chief Architect', a Strongly Impacted Neutral, as well as a line from 'Director of Ops' to 'COO' in the top left quadrant with a note that reads 'B) Influences'.

    Identify specific pain points regarding business-IT alignment

    Associated Activity icon 1.2 2-4 hours

    INPUT: Signal Questions, CIO-CXO Alignment Diagnostic

    OUTPUT: List of Categorized Pain Points

    Materials: Make the Case for an IT Governance Redesign

    Participants: Identified Key Business Stakeholders

    1. Consider Signals for Redesign
      Refer to the Executive Brief for questions to identify pain points related to governance.
      • Benefits Realization
      • Resources
      • Risks
      • Stakeholders
    2. Conduct CIO-CEO Alignment Diagnostic
      Assess the current state of alignment between the CIO and the major stakeholders of the organization.

    See the CEO-CIO Alignment Program for more information.

    Conduct the CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic

    Why CEO-CIO Alignment?

    The CEO-CIO Alignment Program helps you understand the gaps between what the CEO wants for IT and what the CIO wants for IT. The program will also evaluate the current state of IT, from a strategic and tactical perspective, based on the CEO’s opinion.

    The CEO-CIO Alignment Program helps to:

    • Evaluate how the executive leadership currently feels about the IT organization’s performance along the following dimensions:
      • IT budgeting and staffing
      • IT strategic planning
      • Degree of project success
      • IT-business alignment
    • Answer the question, “What does the CEO want from IT?”
    • Understand the CEO’s perception of and vision for IT in the business.
    • Define the current and target roles for IT. Understanding IT’s current and target roles, in the eyes of the CEO, is crucial to creating IT governance. By focusing the IT governance on achieving the target role, you will ensure that the senior leadership will support the implementation of the IT governance.

    To conduct the CEO-CIO Alignment Program, follow the steps outlined below.

    1. Select the senior business leader to participate in the program. While Info-Tech suggests that the CEO participate, you might have other senior stakeholders who should be involved.
    2. Send the survey link to your senior business stakeholder and ensure the survey’s completion.
    3. Complete your portion of the survey.
    4. Hold a meeting to discuss the results and document your findings.

    See the CEO-CIO Alignment Program for more information.

    Present the “Make the Case” for IT governance redesign

    Associated Activity icon 1.3 30 minutes

    1. Review Finalized Stakeholder List
      Consolidate a list of the most important and impactful stakeholders who need further convincing to participate in the governance redesign and implementation.
    2. Present the Deck
      Include the information gathered throughout the discovery into the presentation deck and hold a meeting to review the findings.

    Business

    • Shareholders
    • Board
    • Chief Executive Officer
    • Chief Financial Officer
    • Chief Operating Officer
    • Business Executives
    • Strategy Executive Committee
    • Chief Risk Officer
    • Architecture Board
    • Enterprise Risk Committee
    • Head of Human Resources
    • Compliance

    IT

    • Chief Information Officer

    External

    • Government Agency
    • Audit Firm

    Use the Make the Case for an IT Governance Redesign template for more information.

    Create a custom communication plan to facilitate support for the redesign process

    Supporting Tool icon 1B Create a plan to engage the key stakeholders

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Identify Stakeholders
      Determine which business stakeholders will be involved (refer to Activity 1.1).
    2. Customize Communication Plan
      Follow up with individual communication plans.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Create personal communication plans to provide individualized engagement, instead of assuming that everyone will respond to the same communication style.

    Download the IT Governance Stakeholder Communication Planning Tool for more information.

    Create a communication plan to engage key stakeholders

    Associated Activity icon 1.4 1 hour
    1. Input Stakeholders
      Determine which business stakeholders will be involved (refer to Activity 1.1). Then, insert their position on the power map, the rationale to inform them, the timing of communications, and what inputs they will be needed to provide.

      Stakeholder role

      Power map position

      Why inform them

      When to inform them

      What we need from them

      Chief Executive Officer
      Chief Financial Officer
      Chief Operating Officer
    2. Identify Communication Strategy
      Outline the most effective communication plan for that stakeholder. Identify how to best communicate to the stakeholders to make sure they are appropriately engaged in the redesign process.

      Vehicle

      Audience

      Purpose

      Frequency

      Owner

      Distribution

      Level of detail

      Status Report IT Managers Project progress and deliverable status Weekly CIO, John Smith Email Details for milestones, deliverables, budget, schedule, issues, next steps
      Status Report Marketing Manager Project progress Monthly CIO, John Smith Email High-level detail for major milestone update and impact to the marketing unit

    Establish a collectively agreed upon statement of business context (SoBC)

    Supporting Tool icon 1C Document the mutual understanding of the business context

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Review Business Documents
      Review business documents from broad areas of the business to assess the business context.
    2. Analyze Business Frameworks
      Analyze business frameworks to articulate the current and projected future business context.
    3. Brainstorm With Key Stakeholders
      Conduct stakeholder brainstorming efforts to gain insights from key business stakeholders.
    4. Finalize the SoBC
      Document and sign the SoBC with identified stakeholders.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Use the Statement of Business Context customizable deliverable as a point of reference that will guide the direction of the governance redesign.

    Use the Statement of Business Context to identify the critical information needed to guide governance

    Components of the SoBC

    1. Mission
      • Who are you as an organization?
      • Who are your internal and external customers?
      • What are your core business functions?

      Example (Higher Education)
      Nurture global leaders and provide avenues for intellectual exploration.
    2. Vision
      • Is your vision statement future-facing?
      • Is your vision statement concise?
      • Is your vision statement achievable?
      • Does your vision statement involve change?

      Example
      Be a catalyst for creating the future leaders of tomorrow through dynamic and immersive educational experiences. The university will be recognized for being a prestigious innovative research hub and educational institution.
    Sample of Info-Tech's Statement of Business Context Template with the Mission and Vision Statements.

    Use the Statement of Business Context to identify the critical information needed to guide governance (cont.)

    More Components of the SoBC

    1. Strategic Objectives
      • What are the strategic initiatives of the organization?
      • Do you have a roadmap to accomplish your mission?
      • What are the primary goals of senior leaders for the organization?

      Example
      1. Meeting government regulation
      2. Revenue generation
      3. Top research quality
      4. High teaching quality
    Sample of Info-Tech's Statement of Business Context Template with Strategic Objectives.
    1. State of Business
      • Consider what the current state and future state are.
      • How does the operating model used define the state?
      • How do industry trends shape the business?
      • What internal changes impact the business model?

      Example
      Our organization aims to make quick decisions and navigate the fast-paced industry with agility, uniting the development and operational sides of the business.
    Sample of Info-Tech's Statement of Business Context Template with State of the Business.

    Leverage core concepts to determine the direction of the organization’s state of the business

    1. Mission
    2. Vision
    3. Strategic Objectives
    –›
    1. State of Business

    2. Work through if your organization’s state is small vs. large, public vs. private, and lean vs. DevOps vs. traditional.

    Small

    IT team is 30 people or less.

    Large

    IT team is more than 30 people.

    Public

    Wholly or partly funded by the government.

    Private

    No government funding is provided.
    Lean: The business aims to eliminate any waste of resources (time, effort, or money) by removing steps in the business process that do not create value. Devops/Agile: Our organization aims to make quick decisions and navigate the fast-paced industry with agility. Uniting the development and operational sides of the business. Hierarchical: Departments in the organization are siloed by function. The organization is top-down and hierarchical, and takes more time with decision making.

    ‹– Multi-State (any combination) –›

    Review business documents to assess business context

    Associated Activity icon 1.5 2-4 hours

    INPUT: Strategic Documents, Financial Documents

    OUTPUT: Mission, Vision, Strategic Objectives

    Materials: Corporate Documents

    Participants: IT Governance Redesign Owner

    Start assessing the state of the business context by leveraging easily accessible information. Many organization have strategic plans, documents, and presentations that already include a large portion of the information for the SoBC – use these sources first.

    Instructions

    1. Strategic Documents
      Leverage your organization’s strategic documents to gain understanding of the business context.

    2. Documents to Review:
    • Corporate strategy document.
    • Business unit strategy documents.
    • Annual general reports.
  • Financial Documents
    Leverage your organization’s financial documents to gain understanding of the business context.

  • Documents to Review:
    • Look for large capital expenditures.
    • Review operating costs.
    • Business cases submitted.

    Review strategic planning documents

    Overview

    Some organizations (and business units) create an authoritative strategy document. These documents contain the organization’s corporate aspirations and outline initiatives, reorganizations, and shifts in strategy. Additionally, some documents contain strategic analysis (Porter’s Five Forces, etc.).

    Action

    • Read through any of the following:
      • Corporate strategy document
      • Business unit strategy documents
      • Annual general reports
    • Watch out for key future-looking words:
      • We will be…
      • We are planning to…

    Overt Statements

    • Corporate objectives and initiatives are often explicitly stated in these documents. Look for statements that begin with phrases such as “Our corporate objectives are…”
    • Remember that different organizations use different terminology – if you cannot find the word “goal” or “objective” then look for “pillar,” “imperative,” “theme,” etc.
    • Ask a business partner to assist if you need some help.

    Covert, Outdated, and Non-Existent Statements

    • Some corporate objectives and initiatives will be mentioned in passing and will require clarification, for example:
      “As we continue to penetrate new markets, we will be diversifying our manufacturing geography to simplify distribution.”
    • Some corporate strategies may be outdated and therefore of limited use for understanding the state of business – validate the statement to ensure it is up to date.
    • Some organizations lack a strategic plan altogether. Use stakeholder interviews to identify imperatives and validate conflicting statements before moving on.

    Review financial documentation

    Overview

    Departmental budgets highlight the new projects that will launch in the next fiscal year. The overwhelming majority of these projects will have IT implications. Additionally, identifying where the department is spending money will allow you to identify business unit initiatives and operational change.

    Action

    • Scan budgets:
      • Look for large capital expenditures
      • Review operating costs
      • Review business cases submitted
    • Look for abnormalities or changes:
      • What does an increase in spending mean?
      • Does IT need to change as a result?

    Capital Budgets

    • Capital expenditures are driven by projects, which map to corporate goals and initiatives.
    • Look for large capital expenditures and cross-reference the outflows with any project plans that have been collected.
    • If an expenditure cannot be explained by project plans, request additional information.

    Operating Budgets

    • Major changes to operating costs typically reflect changes to a business unit. Some of these changes affect IT capabilities and can be classified as corporate initiatives.
    • Changes that should be classified as corporate initiatives are expansion or contraction of a labor force, outsourcing initiatives, and significant process changes.
    • Changes that should not be classified as corporate initiatives are changes in third-party fees, consulting engagements, and changes caused by inflation or growth.

    Analyze business frameworks to articulate context

    Associated Activity icon 1.6 2-4 hours

    INPUT: Industry Research, Organizational Research, Analysis Templates

    OUTPUT: PESTLE and SWOT Analysis

    Materials: Computer or Whiteboards and Markers

    Participants: IT Governance Redesign Owner

    If corporate documents denoting the key components of the SoBC are not easily available, or do not provide all information required, refer to business analysis frameworks to discover internal and external trends that impact the mission, vision, strategic objectives, and state of the business.

    1. Conduct a PESTLE Analysis
      The PESTLE analysis will support the organization in identifying external factors that impact the business. Keep watch for trends and changes in the industry.
    2. Political

      Economic

      Social

      Technological

      Legal

      Environmental

    3. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
      The SWOT analysis will be more specific to the organization and the industry in which it operates. Identify the unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your organization.
    4. Strengths

      Weaknesses

      Opportunities

      Threats

    Conduct a PESTLE analysis

    Associated Activity icon 1.6 Conduct a PESTLE analysis
    • Break participants into teams and divide the categories amongst them:
      • Political trends
      • Economic trends
      • Social trends
      • Technological trends
      • Legal trends
      • Environmental trends
    • Have each group identify relevant trends under their respective categories. You must relate each trend back to the business by considering:
      • How does this affect my business?
      • Why do we care?
    • Use the prompt questions on the next slide to help the brainstorming process.
    • Have each team present its list and have remaining teams give feedback and additional suggestions.

    Political. Examine political factors such as taxes, environmental regulations, and zoning restrictions.

    Economic Examine economic factors such as interest rates, inflation rate, exchange rates, the financial and stock markets, and the job market.

    Social. Examine social factors such as gender, race, age, income, disabilities, educational attainment, employment status, and religion.

    Technological. Examine technological factors such as servers, computers, networks, software, database technologies, wireless capabilities, and availability of software as a service.

    Legal. Examine legal factors such as trade laws, labor laws, environmental laws, and privacy laws.

    Environmental. Examine environmental factors such as green initiatives, ethical issues, weather patterns, and pollution.

    Download Info-Tech’s PESTLE Analysis Template to help get started.

    Review these questions to help you conduct a PESTLE analysis

    For each prompt below, always try to answer the question: how does this affect my business?

    Political

    • Will a change in government (at any level) affect your organization?
    • Do inter-government or trade relations affect you?
    • Are there shareholder needs or demands that must be considered?

    Economical

    • How are your costs changing (moving off-shore, fluctuations in markets, etc.)?
    • Do currency fluctuations have an effect on your business?
    • Can you attract and pay for top-quality talent (e.g. desirable location, reasonable cost of living, changes to insurance requirements)?

    Social

    • What are the demographics of your customers or employees?
    • What are the attitudes of your customers or staff (do they require social media, collaboration, transparency of costs, etc.)?
    • What is the general lifecycle of an employee (i.e. is there high turnover)?
    • Is there a market of qualified staff?
    • Is your business seasonal?

    Technological

    • Do you require constant technology upgrades (faster network, new hardware, etc.)?
    • What is the appetite for innovation within your industry or business?
    • Are there demands for increasing data storage, quality, BI, etc.?
    • Are you looking at cloud technologies?
    • What is the stance on “bring your own device”?
    • Are you required to do a significant amount of development work in-house?

    Legal

    • Are there changes to trade laws?
    • Are there changes to regulatory requirements, e.g. data storage policies or privacy policies?
    • Are there union factors that must be considered?

    Environmental

    • Is there a push towards being environmentally friendly?
    • Does the weather have any effect on your business (hurricanes, flooding, etc.)?

    Conduct a SWOT analysis on the business

    Associated Activity icon 1.6 Conduct a business SWOT analysis

    Break the group into two teams.

    Assign team A internal strengths and weaknesses.

    Assign team B external opportunities and threats.

    • Have the teams brainstorm items that fit in their assigned grids. Use the prompt questions on the next slide to help you with your SWOT analysis.
    • Pick someone from each group to fill in the grids on the whiteboard.
    • Conduct a group discussion about the items on the list. Identify implications for IT and opportunities to innovate as you did for the other business and external drivers.
    Helpful
    to achieve the objective
    Harmful
    to achieve the objective
    Internal Origin
    attributes of the organization
    Strength Weaknesses
    External Origin
    attributes of the environment
    Opportunities Threats

    Download Info-Tech’s Business SWOT Analysis Template to help get started.

    Review these questions to help you conduct your SWOT analysis on the business

    Strengths (Internal)

    • What competitive advantage does your organization have?
    • What do you do better than anyone else?
    • What makes you unique (human resources, product offering, experience, etc.)?
    • Do you have location advantages?
    • Do you have price, cost, or quality advantages?
    • Does your organizational culture offer an advantage (hiring the best people, etc.)?

    Weaknesses (Internal)

    • What areas of your business require improvement?
    • Are there gaps in capabilities?
    • Do you have financial vulnerabilities?
    • Are there leadership gaps (succession, poor management, etc.)?
    • Are there reputational issues?
    • Are there factors that are making you lose sales?

    Opportunities (External)

    • Are there market developments or new markets?
    • Industry or lifestyle trends, e.g. move to mobile?
    • Are there geographical changes in the market?
    • Are there new partnerships or M&A opportunities?
    • Are there seasonal factors that can be used to the advantage of the business?
    • Are there demographic changes that can be used to the advantage of the business?

    Threats (External)

    • Are there obstacles that the organization must face?
    • Are there issues with respect to sourcing of staff or technologies?
    • Are there changes in market demand?
    • Are your competitors making changes that you are not making?
    • Are there economic issues that could affect your business?

    Conduct brainstorming efforts to gain insights from key business stakeholders

    Associated Activity icon 1.7 2-4 hours

    INPUT: SoBC Template

    OUTPUT: Completed SoBC

    Materials: Computer, Phone, or Other Mechanism of Connection

    Participants: CEO, CFO, COO, CMO, CHRO, and Business Unit Owners

    There are two ways to gather primary knowledge on the key components of the SoBC:

    1. Stakeholder Interviews
      Approach each individual to have a conversation about the key components of the SoBC. Go through the SoBC and fill it in together.
    2. Stakeholder Survey
      In the case that you are in a very large organization, create a stakeholder survey. Input the key components of the SoBC into an online survey maker and send it off the key stakeholders.

    Use the SoBC as the guide to both the interview and the survey. Be clear about the purpose of understanding the business context when connecting with key business stakeholders to participate in the brainstorming. This is a perfect opportunity to establish or develop a relationship with the stakeholders who will need to buy into the redesigned governance framework since it will involve and impact them significantly.

    Go directly to the information source – the key stakeholders

    Overview

    Talking to key stakeholders will allow you to get a holistic view of the business strategy. You will be able to ask follow-up questions to get a better understanding of abstract or complex concepts. Interviews also allow you to have targeted discussions with specific stakeholders who have in-depth subject-matter knowledge.

    Action

    • Talk to key stakeholders:
      • Structure focused, i.e. CEO or CFO
      • Customer focused, i.e. CMO or Head of Sales
      • Operational focused, i.e. COO
      • Lower-level employees or managers
    • Listen for key pains that IT could alleviate.

    Overcome the Unstructured Nature of Interviews

    • Interviewees will often explicitly state objectives and initiatives.
    • However, interviews are less formal and less structured than objective-oriented strategy documents. Objectives are often stated using informal language.
      “We’re talking rev gen here. That’s the name of the game. If we can get a foothold in India, there’s huge upside potential.” (VP Marketing)
    • Further analysis might translate this into a corporate imperative: increase revenue by growing our market share in India to 8% by January of next year.
    • If an imperative is unclear, ask the stakeholder for more detail.
    • Understand how key stakeholders evaluate, direct, and monitor their own areas of the business; this will give you insight as to their style.

    Receive final sign-off to proceed with developing the IT governance redesign

    Associated Activity icon 1.8 30 minutes

    Document any project assumptions or constraints. Before proceeding with the IT governance activities, validate the statement of business context with senior stakeholders. When consensus has been reached, have them sign the final page of the document.

    How to ensure sign-off:

    • Schedule a meeting with the senior stakeholders and conduct a review of the document. This meeting presents a great opportunity to deliver your interpretation of management expectations and make any modifications.
    • Obtaining stakeholder approval in person ensures there is no miscommunication or misunderstandings around the tasks that need to be accomplished to develop a successful IT governance.
    • This is an iterative process; if senior stakeholders have concerns over certain aspects of the document, revise and review again.
    • Final sign-off should only take place when mutual understanding has been reached.

    Download the SoBC Template and complete for final approval.

    Info-Tech Tip

    In most circumstances, you should have the SoBC validated with the following stakeholders:

    • CIO
    • CEO
    • CFO
    • Business Unit Leaders

    Understand the business context to set the foundation for governance redesign

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Healthcare
    Source: Info-Tech

    Challenge

    The new business direction to become an integrator shifted focus to faster software iteration and on enabling integration and translation technologies, while moving away from creating complete, top-to-bottom IT solutions to be leveraged by clinicians and patients.

    Internal to the IT organization, this created a different in perspective on what was important to prioritize: foundational elements, web services, development, or data compliance issues. There was no longer agreement on which initiatives should move forward.

    Solution

    A series of mandatory meetings were held with key decision makers and SMEs within the organization in order to re-orient everyone on the overall purpose, goals, and outcomes of the organization.

    All attendees were asked to identify what they saw as the mission and vision of the organization.

    Finally, clinicians and patient representatives were brought in to describe how they were going to use the services the organization was providing and how it would enable better patient outcomes.

    Results

    Identifying the purpose of the work the IT organization was doing and how the services were going to be used realigned the different perspectives in the context of the healthcare outcomes they enabled.

    This activity provided a unifying view of the purpose and the state of the business. Understanding the business context prepared the organization to move forward with the governance redesign.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of an Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    1.1

    Sample of activity 1.1 'Determine which business stakeholders will be impacted or involved in the redesign process'. Identify Relevant Stakeholders

    Build a list of relevant stakeholders and identify their position on the stakeholder power map.

    1.4

    Sample of activity 1.4 'Create a communication plan to engage key stakeholders'. Communication Plan

    Build customized communication plans to engage the key stakeholders in IT governance redesign.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    1.7

    Sample of activity 1.7 'Review business documents to assess business context'. Gather Business Information

    Review business documents, leverage business analysis tools, and brainstorm with key executives to document the Statement of Business Context.

    1.8

    Sample of activity 1.8 'Receive final sign-off to proceed with developing the IT Governance redesign'. Finalize the Statement of Business Context

    Get final approval and acceptance on the Statement of Business Context that will guide your redesign.

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    PHASE 2

    Assess the Current Governance Framework

    Phase 2 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 2: Assess the Current Governance Framework

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 2.1: Outline the Current State AssessmentStep 2.2: Review the Current State Assessment
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Connect the current business state identified in Phase 1 with the current state of governance.
    • Identify the key elements of current governance.
    • Begin building the structure and committee profiles.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Review the current governing bodies that were identified.
    • Review the current structure that was identified.
    • Determine the strengths, weaknesses, and guidelines from the implications in the current state assessment.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Identify stakeholders.
    • Make the case to executives.
    • Build a communication plan.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Create committee profiles.
    • Build governance structure map.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Current State Assessment of IT Governance
    With these tools & templates:
    • Current State Assessment of IT Governance

    Phase 2: Assess the Current Governance Framework

    1 2 3 4
    Align IT With the Business Context Assess the Current Governance Framework Redesign the Governance Framework Implement Governance Redesign

    Activities:

    • 2.1 Create Committee Profiles
    • 2.2 Build a Governance Structure Map
    • 2.3 Establish Governance Guidelines

    Outcomes:

    • Use the Current State Assessment of IT Governance to determine governance guidelines.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Don’t be passive; take action! Take an active approach to revising your governance framework. Understand why you are making decisions before actually making them.

    Explore the current governance that exists within your organization

    Your current governance framework will give you a strong understanding of the way the key stakeholders in your business currently view IT governance.

    "Much of the focus of governance today has been on the questions:
    • Are we doing [things] the right way?
    • And are we getting them done well?"
    –› "We need to shift to…
    • Are we doing the right things?
    • Are we getting the benefits?
    • What are the outcomes?
    • What do we want to achieve?
    • How do we make intelligent decisions about what will help us achieve those outcomes?"
    (John Thorp, Author of The Information Paradox)

    Leverage this understanding of IT governance to determine where governance is occurring and how it transpires.

    Conduct a current state assessment

    Supporting Tool icon 2A Assess the current governance framework

    Use this tool to critically assess each governing body to determine the areas of improvement that are necessary in order to achieve optimal business results.

    1. Identify All Governing Bodies
      Some bodies govern intentionally, and some govern through habit and practice. Outline all bodies that take on an element of governance.
    2. Create a Governance Structure Map
      Configure the structural relationships for the governing bodies using the structure map.
    3. Reveal Strengths and Weaknesses
      Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the governance structure, authority definitions, processes, and membership.
    4. Establish Governance Guidelines
      Based on the SoBC, express clear and applicable guidelines to improve on the weaknesses while retaining the strengths of your governance framework.

    Download the Current State Assessment of IT Governance to work toward these outcomes

    Conduct a current state assessment to identify governance guidelines

    Supporting Tool icon 2A Assess the current governance framework

    How to use the Current State Assessment of IT Governance deliverable: Follow the steps below to create a cohesive understanding of the current state of IT governance and the challenges that the current system poses.

    Part A – Committee Profiles

    1. Identify Governing Bodies
    2. Leverage Committee Templates
    3. Create Committee Profiles
      Use the Committee Profile Template

    Part B – Structure Map

    1. Assess Inputs and Outputs to Express Structural Relationships
    2. Create Structure Map
      Use the Governance Structure Map

    Part C – Governance Guidelines

    1. Choose Operating Model Template
    2. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
    3. Establish Governance Guidelines
      Use the Governance Guideline Template

    What makes up the “governance framework”?

    There are four major elements of the governance framework:

    1. Structure
      Structural relationships are shown by mapping the connections between committees.
    2. Authority
      Each committee will have a purpose and area of decision making that it is accountable for.
    3. Process
      The process includes the inputs, outputs, and activities required for the committee to function.
    4. Membership The individuals or roles who sit on each committee. Take into account members’ knowledge, capability, and political influence.

    Create governing board or committee profiles

    Supporting Tool icon 2A.1 Assess the current governance framework

    Part A – Committee Profiles

    1. Identify Governing Bodies

      Establish where governance happens and who is governing. For different organizations, the governance framework will contain a variety of governing bodies or people. Use a list format to identify governing bodies that exist in your organization.
    2. Leverage Committee Templates

      Use the templates provided. Create a profile for each governing body that currently operates in your IT governance framework as listed in step 1.
    3. Create Committee Profiles

      Identify what they are governing and how they are governing.
      Using the profiles created in step 2, identify each body’s membership roles, purpose, decision areas, inputs, and outputs. Refer to the example text in the template to guide you, but feel free to adjust the text to reflect the reality of your governing body. Screenshot of the 'Committee Template - Executive Management Committee'.
      Consider the following domains of governance:
      (refer to Executive Brief)
      • Benefits realization
      • Risks
      • Resources
      Refer to our examples for some common governing bodies.

    Consistently define the components of governance in the committee profiles

    Membership

    Membership Roles
    Insert information here that reflects who the individuals are that sit on that governing body and what their role is. Include other important information about the individuals’ knowledge, skills, or capabilities that are relevant.

    Authority

    Purpose
    Define why the committee was established in the first place.

    Decision Areas
    Explain the specific areas of decision making this group is responsible for overseeing.

    Process

    Inputs
    Consider the information and materials that are needed to make decisions.

    Outputs
    Describe the outcomes of the committee. Think about decisions that were made through the governance process.

    Screenshot of the components of governance section from the 'Committee Template'.

    Map out relationships on the Governance Map

    Supporting Tool icon 2A.2 Assess the current governance framework

    Part B – Structure Map

    Structure
    1. Assess Inputs and Outputs

      Governing Bodies

      Inputs

      Outputs

      Committee #1
      Committee #2
      Committee #3
      CFO
      IT Director
      CIO
      To understand relationships between governing bodies, list the inputs and outputs for each unique committee that rely on other committees in the table provided.
    2. Create Structure Map
      Sample of the 'Current State Structure Map'. Using the outline provided, create your own governance structure map to represent the way the governing bodies interact and feed into each other. This is crucial to ensure that the governing structure is streamlined. It will ensure that communication occurs efficiently and that there are no barriers to making decisions swiftly.

    Outline the governance structure in the governance structure map

    Associated Activity icon 2.2 30 minutes
    The 'Current State Structure Map' from the last slide, but with added description. There are three tiers of groups. At the bottom is 'Run', described as 'The lowest level of governance will be an oversight of more specific initiatives and capabilities within IT.' 'Design and Build', described as 'The second tier of groups will oversee prioritization of a certain area of governance as well as second-tier decisions that feed into strategic decisions.' At the top is 'Strategy', described as 'These groups will focus on decisions that directly connect to the strategic direction of the organization.' The specific groups laid out in the map are 'Risk and Compliance Committee' which straddle the line between 'Run' and 'Design and Build', 'Portfolio Review Board' and 'IT Steering Committee (ITSC)' both of which straddle the line between 'Design and Build' and 'Strategy', 'Executive Management Committee (EMC)' which is in 'Strategy', and 'Other' in all tiers.

    Identify strengths and weaknesses of the governance framework

    Supporting Tool icon 2A.3 Assess the current governance framework

    Part C – Governance Guidelines

    1. Choose Business State Template Choose the template that represents the identified future state of business in the Statement of Business Context. Mini sample of the 'State of Business' table from the 'Statement of Business Context'.
    2. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses Input the major strengths and weaknesses of your governance that were highlighted in the brainstorming activity. Mini sample of a Strengths and Weaknesses table.
    3. Establish Governance Guidelines Draw your own implications from the strength and weaknesses that will drive the design of your governance in its future state. These guidelines should be concise and easy to implement. Mini sample of an expanded Strengths and Weaknesses table including a row for 'Implication/Guideline'. Note: Refer to the example guidelines in the Current State Assessment of IT Governance after you have considered your own specific guidelines. The examples are supplementary for your convenience.

    Distinguish your business state from the others to ensure implications act as accurate guidelines

    Business State Options

    1

    Small

    IT team is 30 people or less.

    Large

    IT team is more than 30 people.

    2

    Public

    Wholly or partly funded by the government.

    Private

    No government funding is provided.

    3

    Lean: The business aims to eliminate any waste of resources (time, effort, or money) by removing steps in the business process that do not create value.Devops: Our organization aims to make quick decisions and navigate the fast-paced industry with agility. Uniting the development and operational sides of the business. Hierarchical: Departments in the organization are siloed by function. The organization is top-down and hierarchical, and takes more time with decision making.

    ‹– Multi-State (any combination) –›

    Multi-State Example A: If you are small organization that is publicly funded and you are shifting towards a lean methodology, combine the implications of all those groups in a way that fits your organization.

    Multi-State Example B: Your organization is shifting from a more traditional state of operating to combining the development and operations groups. Use hierarchical implications to govern one group and DevOps implications for the other.

    Identify strengths and weaknesses of the governance framework

    Associated Activity icon 2.3 2 hours

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Input Strengths of Governance
      Include useful components of the current framework; that may include elements that are operating well, fit the future state, or are required due to regulations or statutes.
    2. Determine Weaknesses and Challenges
      Discuss the pain points of the current governance framework by looking through the lenses of structure, authority, process, or membership.

    Consider:

    • Where is governance not meeting expectations?
    • Are we doing the right things?
    • Are we getting the benefits?
    • What are the outcomes?
    • What do we want to achieve?
    • How do we make intelligent decisions about what will help us achieve those outcomes?
    *Example

    Structure

    Authority

    Process

    Membership

    Strength

    • We must maintain a legal compliance committee due to the high level of legislation in the industry
    • The ITSC gathers and prioritizes investment options, saving time for the EMC
    • The EMC only make decisions on investments that are greater than $200,000
    • The legal board has a narrow focus, allowing it to maintain its necessary purpose efficiently
    • The information flow from ITSC to the EMC allows the EMC to spend their time effectively
    • The CIO sits on the EMC and the ITSC
    • The EMC is made up of senior leadership who have stakes in all areas of the business

    Weakness

    • Wrong number (too many/little groups)
    • Relationship is misaligned (input/output problems)
    • The tier it sits on the map is misguided
    • Duplication of the same tier of decisions in different groups
    • Approval for one specific topic occurs in more than one group
    • Lack of clarity in which group makes which decisions
    • Intake – where the information is coming from is the wrong source/inaccurate
    • Time to decision (too slow)
    • Poor results of governance (redoing projects, low value)
    • There is lack of knowledge in committee membership
    • Misplaced seniority (too Jr./Sr.)
    • Lack of representation in group (breadth across the business or depth of specific area)

    Derive governance implications from strengths and weaknesses

    Associated Activity icon 2.3 2-4 hours

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Copy and paste your strengths and weaknesses from part B into the template that reflects your business state.
    2. Draw your own implications from the strengths and weaknesses that will drive the design of your governance in its future state. These guidelines should be concise and practical.
    *Example

    Structure

    Authority

    Process

    Membership

    Strength

    Weakness

    Implication / Guideline

    • Make sure that the decision-making authority for most areas are at the lower tier
    • Governing bodies should be lower in the organization
    • One overarching governing body – directing priorities
    • High authority at a lower point of the organization
    • Highest tier is responsible for major budget shifts
    • High-level tier - reporting and feed in from lower level groups
    • Prioritization and sequencing occur at the mid-tier
    • Lowest governing tiers will have direct links to the customer to allow for interaction
    • Project or initiative owner as the leader of the body

    Note: Use the examples of guidelines provided in the Current State Assessment of IT Governance to help formulate your own.

    Conduct a current state assessment to identify guidelines for the future state of governance

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Healthcare
    Source: Anonymous

    Challenge

    Over time, the organization had to create a large amount of governing committees and subcommittees in order to comply with governance frameworks applied to them and to meet regulatory compliance requirements.

    The current structure was no longer optimal to meet the newly identified mandate of the organization. However, the organization did not want to start from scratch and scrap the elements that worked, such as the dates and times that had been embedded into the organization.

    Solution

    A current state assessment was planned and executed in order to review what was currently being done and identify what could be retained and what should be added, changed, or removed to improve the governance outcomes.

    The scope involved examining how current and near-term governance needs were, or were not, met through the existing structure, bodies, and their processes.

    The organization investigated governance approaches of organizations with similar governance needs and with similar constraints to model their own.

    Results

    The outputs of this exercise included:

    • A list of effective practices and committee guidelines that could be leveraged with little to no change in the future state.
    • A list of opportunities to streamline the structure and processes.

    These guidelines were used to drive recommendations for improvements to the governance structures and processes in the organization.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of an Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    2.1

    Sample of activity 2.1 'Outline the governance structure in the governance structure map'. Create Current State Structure and Profiles

    Take the time to clearly articulate the current governance framework of your organization. Outline the structure and build the committee profiles for the governing bodies in your organization.

    2.3

    Sample of activity 2.3 'Identify strengths and weaknesses of the governance framework'. Determine Strengths, Weaknesses, and Guidelines

    Evaluate the strengths of your governance framework, the weaknesses that it exhibits, and the guidelines that will help maintain the strengths and alleviate the pains.

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    PHASE 3

    Redesign the Governance Framework

    Phase 3 Guided Implementation

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 3: Redesign the Governance Framework

    Proposed Time to Completion: 4 weeks
    Step 3.1: Understand the Redesign Process Step 3.2: Review Governance Structure Step 3.3: Review Governance Committees
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Review the guidelines from the current state assessment.
    • Begin modifying the governance structure, authorities, processes, and memberships.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Determine the impact of the guidelines on the structural layout of the framework.
    • Determine the impact of the guidelines on the authority element of the framework.
    Finalize phase deliverable:
    • Determine the impact of the guidelines on the processes within the framework.
    • Determine the impact of the guidelines on the membership element of the framework.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Break down guidelines to make sure they are actionable and realistic.
    • Identify what to add, modify, or remove.
    • Review additional sources of information.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Build and review the governance structure map.
    • Identify additions, changes, or reductions in governing bodies and their areas of authority.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Use the template provided to build committee profiles for each identified committee.
    • Identify the membership, purpose, decision areas, inputs, and outputs of each.
    • Build committee charters if needed.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Current State Assessment
    • Future State Design for IT Governance
    With these tools & templates:
    • Future State Design for IT Governance
    With these tools & templates:
    • Future State Design for IT Governance
    • IT Governance Terms of Reference

    Phase 3: Redesign the Governance Framework

    1 2 3 4
    Align IT With the Business Context Assess the Current Governance Framework Redesign the Governance Framework Implement Governance Redesign

    Activities:

    • 3.1 Build a Governance Structure Map
    • 3.2 Create Committee Profiles
    • 3.3 Leverage Process-Specific Governance Blueprints

    Outcomes:

    • Use the Future State Design for IT Governance template to build the optimal governance framework for your organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Keep the current and future goals in sight to build an optimized governance framework that maintains the minimum bar of oversight required.

    Anticipate the outcomes of the Future State Design for IT Governance tool

    Supporting Tool icon 3A Redesign the governance frameworks

    Use this tool to guide your organization toward transformative outcomes gleaned from an optimized governance framework.

    1. Implement Structural Guidelines
      Determine what governing bodies to add, change, or remove from your governance structure.
    2. Create a Governance Structure Map
      Configure the structural relationships for the redesigned governing bodies using the structure map.
    3. Build Effective Committees
      Use the IT Governance Terms of Reference to build profiles for each newly created committee and to alter any existing committees.
    4. Determine Follow-up Governance Support
      Access external material on governance from other Info-Tech blueprints that will help with specific governance areas.

    Download the Future State Design for IT Governance template to work toward these outcomes.

    Use the Future State Design for IT Governance tool to create a custom governance framework for your organization

    Supporting Tool icon 3A Redesign the governance frameworks

    How to use the Future State Design for IT Governance deliverable: Follow the steps below to redesign the future state of IT governance. Use the guidelines to respond to challenges identified in the current governance framework based on the current state assessment.

    Part A – Structure Map

    Part B – Committee Profiles

    1a. Input Structural Guidelines 1b. Input Authority Guidelines 1a. Input Process Guidelines 1b. Input Member Guidelines
    2. Guiding Questions
    Do governing bodies operate at a tier that matches the guidelines?

    Do governing bodies focus on the decisions that align with the guidelines?
    2. Guiding Questions
    Do the process inputs and outputs reflect the structure and authority guidelines?

    Do governing bodies engage the right people who have the roles, capacity, and knowledge to govern?
    3. Add / Change (Tier/Authority) / Remove
    Governing Bodies – Structure
    3. Adapt / Refine
    Governing Bodies – Profiles
    4. Use the Structure Map to Show Redesign Use the IT Governance Terms of Reference for Redesign

    Connect key learnings to initiate governance redesign

    The future state design will reflect the state of business that was identified in Phase 1 along with the guidelines defined in Phase 2 to build a governance framework that promotes business-IT fusion.

    Statement of Business Context –› Current State Assessment

    Identified Future Business State

    Structure
    Authority

    Leverage the structure and authority guidelines to build the governance structure.

    Defined Governance Guidelines

    Process
    Membership

    Leverage the process and membership guidelines to build the governance committees.

    Future State Design

    Use structure and authority guidelines to build a new governance structure map

    Supporting Tool icon 3A.1 Redesign the governance frameworks

    Part A – Structure Map

    Structure
    Authority
    1a. Structural Guidelines1b. Authority Guidelines
    Input the guidelines from the current state assessment to guide the redesign.

    2. Leverage Guiding Questions

    Use the guiding questions provided to assess the needed changes.
    Guiding Questions


    Do governing bodies operate at a tier that matches the guidelines?


    Do governing bodies focus on the decisions that align with the guidelines?
    Build the “where/why” of governance. Consider at what tier each committee will reside and what area of governance will be part of its domain. Modify the current structure; do not start from scratch.

    3. Add / Change (Tier/Authority) / Remove

    Determine changes to structure or authority that will be occurring for each of the current governing bodies. Work within the current structure as much as possible.A mini sample of an 'Add/Change/Remove' table for governing bodies.

    4. Use the Structure Map to Show Redesign

    Create your own governance structure map to represent the way the governing bodies interact and feed into each other. A mini sample of the 'Current State Structure Map' from before.

    Maintain as much of the existing framework as possible in the redesign

    Associated Activity icon 3.1 2-4 hours

    Future State Design

    • Structure
    • Authority

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Keep the number of added or removed committees as low as possible, while still optimizing. The less change to the structure, the easier it will be to implement.

    Refer to the example to help guide your committee redesign.

      Determine:
    1. Do the guidelines impact committees you already have? Will you have to modify the tier or the authority of those committees?
    2. Do the guidelines require you to build a new committee to meet needs?
    3. Do the guidelines require you to remove a committee that isn’t necessary?

    All Governing Bodies

    Add

    Change

    Remove

    ITSC Structure

    Authority
    Delegate the authority of portfolio investment decisions over $200K to this body
    Portfolio Review Board This committee no longer needs to exist since its authority of portfolio investment decisions over $200K has been redelegated
    Risk and Compliance Committee Create a new governing body to address increasing risk and compliance issues that face the organization

    Outline the new governance structure in the governance structure map in the Future State Design for IT Governance tool

    Associated Activity icon 3.1 The 'Current State Structure Map' from before, but with some abbreviated terms. There are three tiers of groups. At the bottom is 'Run', described as 'The lowest level of governance will be an oversight of more specific initiatives and capabilities within IT.' 'Design and Build', described as 'The second tier of groups will oversee prioritization of a certain area of governance as well as second-tier decisions that feed into strategic decisions.' At the top is 'Strategy', described as 'These groups will focus on decisions that directly connect to the strategic direction of the organization.' The specific groups laid out in the map are 'Risk and Compliance Committee' which straddle the line between 'Run' and 'Design and Build', 'Portfolio Review Board' and 'ITSC' both of which straddle the line between 'Design and Build' and 'Strategy', 'EMC' which is in 'Strategy', and 'Other' in all tiers.

    Use process and membership guidelines along with the IT Governance Terms of Reference to build committees

    Supporting Tool icon 3A.2 Redesign the governance frameworks

    Part B – Committee Profiles

    Process
    Membership
    1a. Process Guidelines 1b. Authority Guidelines
    Input the guidelines from the current state assessment to guide the redesign.

    2. Leverage Guiding Questions

    Use the guiding questions provided to assess the needed changes.
    Guiding Questions
    Do the process inputs and outputs reflect the structure and authority guidelines?

    Do governing bodies engage the right people who have the roles, capacity, and knowledge to govern?
    Build the “what/how” of governance. Build out the process and procedures that each committee will use.

    3. Adapt / Refine Governing Body Profiles

    Using your customized guidelines, create a profile for each committee.

    We have provided templates for some common committees. To make these committee profiles reflective of your organization, use the information you have gathered in your Current State Assessment of IT Governance guidelines.

    For a more detailed approach to building out specific charters for each committee refer to the IT Governance Terms of Reference.

    A mini sample of the 'Committee Template - Executive Management Committee'.

    A mini sample of the 'IT Governance Terms of Reference'.

    Use the IT Governance Terms of Reference to establish operational procedures for governing bodies

    Associated Activity icon 3.2 3-6 hours

    Future State Design

    • Process
    • Membership

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    The people on the committee matter. Governance committee membership does not have to correspond with the organizational structure, but it should correspond with the purpose and decision areas of the governance structure.

    Refer to the example to help guide your committee redesign.

      Determine:
    1. Do the guidelines alter the members needed to achieve the outcomes?
    2. Do the guidelines change the purpose and decision areas of the committee?
    3. How do the new structure’s guidelines impact the inputs and outputs of the governing body?

    Screenshot of the 'Committee Template - Executive Management Committee'.

    Add depth to the committee profiles using the IT Governance Terms of Reference

    Supporting Tool icon 3A.3 Redesign the governance frameworks

    Refer to the sections outlined below to build a committee charter for your governance committees. Four examples are provided in the tool and can be edited for your convenience. They are: Executive Management Committee, IT Steering Committee, Portfolio Review Board, and Risk and Compliance Committee.

    1. Purpose
    2. Goals
    3. Responsibilities
    4. Committee Members
    5. RACI
    6. Procedures
    7. Agenda

    Be sure to embed the domains of governance in the charters so that committees focus on the appropriate elements of benefits realization, risk optimization, and resource optimization.

    Download the IT Governance Terms of Reference for more in-depth committee charters.

    Three pillars of planning effective governance meetings

    The effectiveness of the governance is reliant on the ability to work within operational dependencies that will exist in the governance framework. Consider these questions to guide the duration, frequency, and sequencing of your governing body meetings.

    Frequency

    • What is the quantity of decisions that must be made?
    • Is a rapid or urgent response typically required?

    Duration

    • How long should your meeting run based on your meeting frequency and the volume of work to be accomplished?

    Sequencing

    • Are there other decisions that rely on the outcomes of this meeting?
    • Are there any decisions that must be made first for others to occur?
    A venn diagram of the three pillars of planning effective governance meetings, 'Frequency', 'Duration', and 'Sequencing'.

    Leverage process-specific governance blueprints

    Associated Activity icon 3.3

    If there are specific areas of IT governance that you require further support on, refer to Info-Tech’s library of DIY blueprints, Guided Implementations, and workshops for further support. We cover IT governance in the following areas:

    Enterprise Architecture Governance

    Service Portfolio Governance

    Security Governance

    Titlecard of 'Create a Right-Sized Enterprise Architecture Governance Framework' blueprint. Titlecard of 'Lead Strategic Decision Making With Service Portfolio Management' blueprint. Titlecard of 'Build a Security Governance and Management Plan' blueprint.

    Consider the challenges and solutions when identifying a multi-state reality for your business state

    A multi-state business will face unique challenges in navigating the redesign process with the goal of combining all related business states in governance.

    1. Divergent Governance Models
      Separate the governance groups that need to function differently, and bring them back together at the highest level.
    2. Reflecting the Organizational Structure
      Unlike single-state governance, multi-state organizations should model the governance framework in reflection of the organizational structure.
    3. Combining Implications
      Prioritize which implications are the most important and make sure they work first, then see what else fits (e.g. start with regulation, then insert lean guidelines).

    The multi-state business will not fit into one “box” – consider implications from the overlapping business states.

    As business needs change, ensure that you establish triggers to reassess the design of your governance framework.

    Leverage the outcomes of the Current State Assessment and Statement of Business Context to build the future state

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Healthcare
    Source: Info-Tech

    Challenge

    Identifying the committees and processes that should be in place in the target state required a lot of different inputs.

    A number of high-profile senior management team members were still resistant to the overall idea of applying governance to their initiatives since they were clinician driven.

    The approach and target state, including the implementation plan, had to be approved and built out.

    Solution

    The information pulled together from the current state assessment, including best practices and jurisdictional scans, were tied together with the updated mandate and future state, and a list of recommended improvements were documented.

    The improvements were presented to the optimization committee and the governance committee members to ensure agreement on the approach and confirm the timeline for agreed improvements.

    Results

    A future state mapping of the new committee structure was created, as well as the revised membership requirements, responsibilities, and terms of reference.

    The approved recommendations were prioritized and turned into an implementation plan, with each improvement being assigned an owner who would be responsible for driving the effort to completion.

    Integration points in other processes, like SDLC, where change would be required were highlighted and included in the implementation plan.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of an Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    3.1

    Sample of activity 3.1 'Maintain as much of the existing framework as possible in the redesign'. Redesign the Governance Structure

    Identify committees that need to be added, ones that must be changed, and the no-longer-needed governing bodies in an optimized and streamlined structure. Draw it out in the governance structure map.

    3.2

    Sample of activity 3.2 'Utilize the IT Governance Terms of Reference to establish operational procedures for governing bodies'. Redesign the Governing Bodies

    Use the IT Governance Terms of Reference and the Committee Template to build a committee profile for each governing body identified. Use these activities to build out and establish the processes of the modified governing groups.

    Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results

    PHASE 4

    Implement Governance Redesign

    Phase 4 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 4: Implement Governance Redesign

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2-3 weeks
    Step 4.1: Identify Steps for Implementation Step 4.2: Finalized Implementation Plan
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Identify major steps required to implement the governance redesign.
    • Outline the components and milestones of the implementation plan.
    • Review materials needed for the executive presentation.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Review the major milestones identified in the implementation plan.
    • Discuss potential challenges and stakeholder objections.
    • Strategize for the executive presentation.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Then complete these activities…
    • Identify next steps for the redesign.
    • Establish a communication plan.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Review the implementation plan.
    • Assess any challenging milestones and build implementation strategies.
    • Finalize the executive presentation.
    With these tools & templates:
    • IT Governance Implementation Plan
    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results Executive Presentation Template
    With these tools & templates:
    • IT Governance Implementation Plan
    • Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results Executive Presentation Template

    Phase 4: Implement Governance Redesign

    1 2 3 4
    Align IT With the Business Context Assess the Current Governance Framework Redesign the Governance Framework Implement Governance Redesign

    Activities:

    • 4.1 Identify Next Steps for the Redesign
    • 4.2 Establish a Communication Plan
    • 4.3 Lead the Executive Presentation

    Outcomes:

    • Rationalize steps in the Implementation Plan tool.
    • Construct an executive presentation to facilitate transparency for the governing framework.

    Anticipate and overcome implementation obstacles for the redesign

    Often high-level organizational changes create challenges. We will help you break down the barriers to optimal IT governance by addressing key obstacles.

    Key Obstacles

    Solutions

    Identifying Steps The prioritization must be driven by the common view of what is important for the organization to succeed. Prioritize the IT governance next steps according to the value they are anticipated to provide to the business.
    Communicating the Redesign The redesign of IT governance will bring impactful changes to diverse stakeholders across the organization. This phase will help you plan communication strategies for the different stakeholders.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Don’t overlook the politics and culture of your organization while redesigning your governance framework.

    Create an implementation roadmap to organize a plan for the redesign

    Supporting Tool icon 4A Create an implementation and communication plan

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Identify Tasks
      Decide on the order of tasks for your implementation plan. Consider the dependencies of actions and plan the sequence accordingly.
    2. Determine Communication Method
      Identify the most appropriate and impactful method of communicating at each milestone identified in step 1.

    Download the IT Governance Implementation Plan to organize your customized implementation and communication plan.

    Screenshot of a table in the 'IT Governance Implementation Plan'.

    Outline next steps for governance redesign

    Associated Activity icon 4.1

    INPUT: Tasks Identified in the Future State Design

    OUTPUT: Identified Tasks for Implementation as Well as the Audience

    Materials: N/A

    Participants: IT Governance Redesign Owner

    INSTRUCTIONS

    Keep these questions in mind as you analyze and assess what steps to take first in the redesign implementation.

    1. What needs to happen?
      Use the identified changes from the redesign as your guiding list of tasks that need to occur. If they are larger tasks, break them down into smaller parts to make the milestones more achievable.
    2. What are the dependencies?
      Throughout the implementation of the redesign, certain tasks will need to occur to enable other tasks to be performed. Make sure to clearly identify what dependencies exist in the implementation process and clearly identify the order of the tasks.
    3. Who do the changes impact?
      Consider the groups and individuals that will be impacted by changes to the governance framework. This includes key business stakeholders, IT leaders, members of governing boards, and anyone who provides an input or requires an output from one of the committees.

    Use a big-bang approach to implement the IT governance redesign

    While there are other methods to implementing change, the big-bang approach is the most effective for governance redesign and will maintain the momentum of the change as well as the support needed to make it successful.

    Phased

    Parallel

    Big Bang

    Implementation of redesign occurs in steps over a significant period of time.

    Three arrows, each beginning where the previous one ends, separated.

    Components of the redesign are brought into the governance framework, while maintaining some of the old components.

    Three arrows, each beginning slightly after the previous one begins, overlapping.

    Implementation of redesign occurs all at once. This requires significant preparation.

    One large arrow, spanning the length of the other grouped arrows, circled to emphasize.
    • Some committees will be operating under a new structure while others are not, which will undermine the changes being made.
    • This method proliferates a lack of transparency and trust.
    • Releasing IT governance in parallel leads to members sitting on too many boards and spending too much time on governance.
    • There will be a lack of clarity on a committee’s authority.
    • This approach will lead to consistency and transparency in the new process.
    • The change will be clear and fully embedded in the organization with stronger boundaries and well-defined expectations.

    Determine the most effective and impactful communication mediums for relevant stakeholders

    Associated Activity icon 4.2 1 hour

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Consider the Individual or Group
      Consider the group and individuals identified in step 4.1. Determine the most appropriate mechanism for communicating with that person or group. Keep in mind: If they are local, how much influence they have and if they are already engaged in the redesign process.
    2. Consider the Message
      The type of message that you are communicating will vary in impact and importance depending on the task. Make sure that the communication medium reflects your message. Keep in mind: If the you are communicating an important or more personal issue, the medium should be more personal as well.

    Screenshot of the same table in the 'IT Governance Implementation Plan'.

    Communicate the changes that result from the redesign

    Plan the message first, then deliver it to your stakeholders through the most appropriate medium to avoid message avoidance or confusion.

    Communication Medium

    Face-to-Face Communication

    Face-to-face communication helps to ensure that the audience is receiving and understanding a clear message, and allows them to voice their concerns and clarify any confusion or questions.

    • Use one-on-one meetings for key stakeholders and large organizational meetings to introduce large changes in the redesign.
    Emails

    Use email to communicate information to broad audiences. In addition, use email as the mass feedback mechanism.

    • Use email to follow up on meetings, or to invite people to next ones, but not as the sole medium of communication.
    Internal Website or Drive

    Use an internal website or drive as an information repository.

    • Store meeting minutes, policies, procedures, terms of reference, and feedback online to ensure transparency.

    Message Delivery

    1. Plan Your Message
      Emphasize what the audience really needs to know and how the change will impact them.
    2. Test Your Message
      If possible, test your communications with a small audience (2-3 people) first to get feedback and adjust messages before delivering them more broadly.
    3. Deliver and Repeat Your Message
      “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.”
    4. Gather Feedback and Evaluate Communications
      Evaluate the effectiveness of the communications (through surveys, stakeholder interviews, or metrics) to ensure the message was delivered and received successfully and communication goals were met.

    Construct an executive presentation to facilitate transparency for the governing framework

    Supporting Tool icon 4B Present the redesign to the key business stakeholders

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Identify Stakeholders
      Determine which business stakeholders have been the most involved in the redesign process.
    2. Customize Presentation
      Use the deliverables that you have built throughout this redesign to communicate the changes to the structure, authority, processes, and memberships in the governance framework.
    3. Present to Executives
      Present the executive presentation to the key business stakeholders who have been involved in the redesign process.

    Info-Tech best Practice

    Use the Executive Presentation customizable deliverable to lead a boardroom-quality presentation outlining the process and outcomes of the IT governance redesign.

    Present the executive presentation

    Associated Activity icon 4.3 1 hour

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Input SoBC Outcomes
      Input the outcomes of the SoBC. Specify the state of the business you have identified through the process of Phase 1.
    2. Input Current State Framework and Guidelines
      Input the outcomes of the current state assessment. Explain the process you used to identify the current governance framework and how you determined the strengths, weaknesses, and guidelines.
    3. Input Redesigned Governance Framework
      Input the governance redesign outcomes. Explain the process you used to modify and reconstruct the governance framework to drive optimal business results. Show the new structure and committee profiles.

    Use the Redesign IT Governance to Drive Optimal Business Results Executive Presentation Template for more information.

    Implement the governance redesign to optimize governance and, in turn, business results

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Healthcare
    Source: Info-Tech

    Challenge

    Members of the project management group and in the larger SDLC process identified a lack of clarity on how to best govern active projects and initiatives that were moving through the governance process during the changes to the governance framework.

    These projects had already begun under the old frameworks and applying the redesigned governance framework would lead to work duplication and wasted time.

    Solution

    The organization decided that instead of applying the redesign to all initiatives across the organization, it would only be applied to new initiatives and ones that were still working within the first part of the “gating” process, where revised intake information could still be provided.

    Active initiatives that fell into the grandfathered category were identified and could proceed based on the old process. Yet, those that did not receive this status were provided carry-over lead time to revise their documentation during the changes.

    Results

    The implementation plan and timeframes were approved and an official change-over date identified.

    A communication plan was provided, including the grandfathered approach to be used with in-flight initiatives.

    A review cycle was also established for three months after launch to ensure the process was working as expected and would be repeated annually.

    The revised process improved the cycle time by 30% and improved the ability of the organization to govern high-speed requests and decisions.

    Summary of accomplishment

    Insights

    • IT governance requires business leadership.
      Instead of IT managing and governing IT, engage business leaders to take responsibility for governing IT.
    • With great governance comes great responsibility.
      Involve relevant business leaders, who will be impacted by IT outcomes, to share governing authority of IT.
    • Establish IT-business fusion.
      In governance, alignment is not enough. Merge IT and the business through governance to ensure business success.

    Knowledge Gained

    • There must be an active understanding of the current and future state of the business for governance to address the changing needs of the business.
    • Take a proactive approach to revising your governance framework. Understand why you are making decisions before actually making them.
    • Keep the current and future goals in sight to build an optimized governance framework that maintains the minimum bar of oversight required.

    Processes Optimized

    • EDM01 – Establishing a Governance Framework
    • Understanding the four elements of governance:
      • Structure
      • Authority
      • Process
      • Members
    • Embedding the benefits realization criteria, risk optimization, and resource optimization in governance.

    Deliverables Completed

    • Statement of Business Context
    • Current State Assessment of IT Governance
    • Future State Design for IT Governance
    • IT Governance Implementation Plan

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of an Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    4.1

    Sample of activity 4.1 'Outline next steps for governance redesign'. Build and Deploy the Implementation Plan

    Construct a list of tasks and consider the individuals or groups that those tasks will impact when implementing the governance redesign. Ensure consistent and transparent communication for successful outcomes.

    4.3

    Sample of activity 4.3 'Present the Executive Presentation'. Build the Executive Presentation

    Insert the state of business, current state, and future state design outcomes into a presentation to inform the key business stakeholders on the process and outcomes of the governance redesign.

    Research contributors and experts

    Deborah Eyzaguirre, IT Business Relationship Manager, UNT System

    Herbert Kraft, MIS Manager, Prairie Knights Casino

    Roslyn Kaman, CFO, Miles Nadal JCC

    Nicole Haggerty, Associate Professor of Information Systems, Ivey Business School

    Chris Austin, CTO, Ivey Business School

    Adriana Callerio, IT Director Performance Management, Molina Healthcare Inc.

    Joe Evers, Consulting Principal, JcEvers Consulting Corp

    Huw Morgan, IT Research Executive

    Joy Thiele, Special Projects Manager, Dunns Creek Baptist Church

    Rick Daoust, CIO, Cambrian College

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Bibliography

    A.T. Kearney. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Governance.” A.T. Kearney, 2008. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Bertolini, Phil. “The Transformational Effect of IT Governance.” Government Finance Review, Dec. 2012. Web. Nov. 2016.

    CGI. “IT Governance and Managed Services – Creative a win-win relationship” CGI Group Inc., 2015. Web. Dec. 2016.

    De Haes, Steven, and Wim Van Grembergen. “An Exploratory Study into the Design of an IT Governance Minimum Baseline through Delphi Research.” Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 22 , Article 24. 2008. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Deloitte LLP. “The Role of Senior Leaders in IT Governance.” The Wall Street Journal, 22 Jun. 2015. Web. Oct. 2016.

    Dragoon, Alice. “Four Governance Best Practices.” CIO From IDG, 15 Aug. 2003. Web. Dec. 2016.

    du Preez, Gert. “Company Size Matters: Perspectives on IT Governance.” PricewaterhouseCoopers, Aug. 2011. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Hagen, Christian, et. al. “Building a Capability-Driven IT Organization.” A.T. Kearney, Jun. 2011. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Heller, Martha. “Five Best Practices for IT Governance.” CFO.com, 27 Aug. 2012. Web. Oct. 2016.

    Hoch, Detlev, and Payan, Miguel. “Establishing Good IT Governance in the Public Sector.” McKinsey Dusseldorf, Mar. 2008. Web. Oct. 2016.

    Horne, Andrew, and Brian Foster. “IT Governance Is Killing Innovation.” Harvard Business Review, 22 Aug. 2013. Web. Dec. 2016.

    ISACA. “COBIT 5: Enabling Processes.” ISACA, 2012. Web. Oct. 2016.

    IT Governance Institute. “An Executive View of IT Governance.” IT Governance Institute, in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers. 2009. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Bibliography continued

    IT Governance Institute. “IT Governance Roundtable: Defining IT Governance.” IT Governance Institute, 2009. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Macgregor, Stuart. “The linchpin between Corporate Governance and IT Governance.” The Open Group’s EA Forum Johannesburg and Cape Town, Nov. 2013. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Mallette, Debra. “Implementing IT Governance An Introduction.” ISACA San Francisco Chapter, 23 Sep. 2009. Web. Oct. 2016.

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “IT Governance Introduction.” MIT Centre for Information System Research, 2016. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Mueller, Lynn, et. al. “IBM IT Governance Approach – Business Performance through IT Execution.” IBM Redbooks, Feb. 2008. Web. Nov. 2016.

    National Computing Centre. “IT Governance: Developing a successful governance strategy.” The National Computing Centre, Nov. 2005. Web. Oct. 2016.

    Pittsburgh ISACA Chapter. “Practical Approach to COBIT 5.0.” Pittsburgh ISACA Chapter, 17 Sep. 2012. Web. Nov. 2016.

    PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Great by governance: Improve IT performance and Value While Managing Risks.” PricewaterhouseCoopers, Nov. 2014. Web. Dec. 2016.

    PricewaterhouseCoopers. “IT Governance in Practice: Insights from leading CIOs.” PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2006. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Routh, Richard L. “IT Governance Part 1 of 2.” Online video clip. YouTube. The Institute of CIO Excellence, 01 Aug. 2012. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Salleh, Noor Akma Mohd, et. al. “IT Governance in Airline Industry: A Multiple Case Study.” International Journal of Digital Society, Dec. 2010. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Bibliography continued

    Speckert, Thomas, et. al. “IT Governance in Organizations Facing Decentralization – Case Study in Higher Education.” Department of Computer and Systems Sciences. Stockholm University, 2014. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Thorp, John. The Information Paradox—Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology. Revised Edition, McGraw Hill, 2003 (written jointly with Fujitsu).

    Vandervost, Guido, et. al. “IT Governance for the CxO.” Deloitte, Nov. 2013. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Weill, Peter, and Jeanne W. Ross. “IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.” Boston: Harvard Business School, 2004. Print. Oct. 2016.

    Wong, Daron, et. al. “IT Governance in Oil and Gas: CIO Roundtable, Priorities for Surviving and Thriving in Lean Times.” Online video clip. YouTube. IT Media Group, Jun. 2016. Web. Nov. 2016.

    Improve Requirements Gathering

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}523|cart{/j2store}
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    • Parent Category Name: Requirements & Design
    • Parent Category Link: /requirements-and-design
    • Poor requirements are the number one reason that projects fail. Requirements gathering and management has been an ongoing issue for IT professionals for decades.
    • If proper due diligence for requirements gathering is not conducted, then the applications that IT is deploying won’t meet business objectives and will fail to deliver adequate business value.
    • Inaccurate requirements definition can lead to significant amounts of project rework and hurt the organization’s financial performance. It will also create significant damage to the working relationship between IT and the business.
    • Often, business analysts haven’t developed the right competencies to successfully execute requirements gathering processes, even when they are in place.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • To avoid makeshift solutions, an organization needs to gather requirements with the desired future state in mind.
    • Creating a unified set of standard operating procedures is essential for effectively gathering requirements, but many organizations fail to do it.
    • Centralizing governance of requirements processes with a requirements gathering steering committee or requirements gathering center of excellence can bring greater uniformity and cohesion when gathering requirements across projects.
    • Business analysts must be targeted for competency development to ensure that the processes developed above are being successfully executed and the right questions are being asked of project sponsors and stakeholders.

    Impact and Result

    • Enhanced requirements analysis will lead to tangible reductions in cycle time and reduced project overhead.
    • An improvement in requirements analysis will strengthen the relationship between business and IT, as more and more applications satisfy stakeholder needs.
    • More importantly, the applications delivered by IT will meet all of the must-have and at least some of the nice-to-have requirements, allowing end users to successfully execute their day-to-day responsibilities.

    Improve Requirements Gathering Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should invest in optimizing your requirements gathering processes.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Build the target state for the requirements gathering process

    Capture a clear understanding of the target needs for the requirements process.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 1: Build the Target State for the Requirements Gathering Process
    • Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook
    • Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment
    • Project Level Selection Tool
    • Business Requirements Analyst
    • Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    2. Define the elicitation process

    Develop best practices for conducting and structuring elicitation of business requirements.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 2: Define the Elicitation Process
    • Business Requirements Document Template
    • Scrum Documentation Template

    3. Analyze and validate requirements

    Standardize frameworks for analysis and validation of business requirements.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 3: Analyze and Validate Requirements
    • Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool
    • Requirements Gathering Testing Checklist

    4. Create a requirements governance action plan

    Formalize change control and governance processes for requirements gathering.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 4: Create a Requirements Governance Action Plan
    • Requirements Traceability Matrix
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Improve Requirements Gathering

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Define the Current State and Target State for Requirements Gathering

    The Purpose

    Create a clear understanding of the target needs for the requirements gathering process.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A comprehensive review of the current state for requirements gathering across people, processes, and technology.

    Identification of major challenges (and opportunity areas) that should be improved via the requirements gathering optimization project.

    Activities

    1.1 Understand current state and document existing requirement process steps.

    1.2 Identify stakeholder, process, outcome, and training challenges.

    1.3 Conduct target state analysis.

    1.4 Establish requirements gathering metrics.

    1.5 Identify project levels 1/2/3/4.

    1.6 Match control points to project levels 1/2/3/4.

    1.7 Conduct project scoping and identify stakeholders.

    Outputs

    Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment

    Project Level Selection Tool

    Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool

    2 Define the Elicitation Process

    The Purpose

    Create best practices for conducting and structuring elicitation of business requirements.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A repeatable framework for initial elicitation of requirements.

    Prescribed, project-specific elicitation techniques.

    Activities

    2.1 Understand elicitation techniques and which ones to use.

    2.2 Document and confirm elicitation techniques.

    2.3 Create a requirements gathering elicitation plan for your project.

    2.4 Build the operating model for your project.

    2.5 Define SIPOC-MC for your selected project.

    2.6 Practice using interviews with business stakeholders to build use case models.

    2.7 Practice using table-top testing with business stakeholders to build use case models.

    Outputs

    Project Elicitation Schedule

    Project Operating Model

    Project SIPOC-MC Sub-Processes

    Project Use Cases

    3 Analyze and Validate Requirements

    The Purpose

    Build a standardized framework for analysis and validation of business requirements.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Policies for requirements categorization, prioritization, and validation.

    Improved project value as a result of better prioritization using the MOSCOW model.

    Activities

    3.1 Categorize gathered requirements for use.

    3.2 Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies.

    3.3 Practice prioritizing requirements.

    3.4 Build the business process model for the project.

    3.5 Rightsize the requirements documentation template.

    3.6 Present the business requirements document to business stakeholders.

    3.7 Identify testing opportunities.

    Outputs

    Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool

    Requirements Gathering Testing Checklist

    4 Establish Change Control Processes

    The Purpose

    Create formalized change control processes for requirements gathering.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Reduced interjections and rework – strengthened formal evaluation and control of change requests to project requirements.

    Activities

    4.1 Review existing CR process.

    4.2 Review change control process best practices and optimization opportunities.

    4.3 Build guidelines for escalating changes.

    4.4 Confirm your requirements gathering process for project levels 1/2/3/4.

    Outputs

    Requirements Traceability Matrix

    Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    5 Establish Ongoing Governance for Requirements Gathering

    The Purpose

    Establish governance structures and ongoing oversight for business requirements gathering.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Consistent governance and oversight of the requirements gathering process, resulting in fewer “wild west” scenarios.

    Better repeatability for the new requirements gathering process, resulting in less wasted time and effort at the outset of projects.

    Activities

    5.1 Define RACI for the requirements gathering process.

    5.2 Define the requirements gathering steering committee purpose.

    5.3 Define RACI for requirements gathering steering committee.

    5.4 Define the agenda and cadence for the requirements gathering steering committee.

    5.5 Identify and analyze stakeholders for communication plan.

    5.6 Create communication management plan.

    5.7 Build the action plan.

    Outputs

    Requirements Gathering Action Plan

    Further reading

    Improve Requirements Gathering

    Back to basics: great products are built on great requirements.

    Analyst Perspective

    A strong process for business requirements gathering is essential for application project success. However, most organizations do not take a strategic approach to optimizing how they conduct business analysis and requirements definition.

    "Robust business requirements are the basis of a successful project. Without requirements that correctly articulate the underlying needs of your business stakeholders, projects will fail to deliver value and involve significant rework. In fact, an Info-Tech study found that of projects that fail over two-thirds fail due to poorly defined business requirements.

    Despite the importance of good business requirements to project success, many organizations struggle to define a consistent and repeatable process for requirements gathering. This results in wasted time and effort from both IT and the business, and generates requirements that are incomplete and of dubious value. Additionally, many business analysts lack the competencies and analytical techniques needed to properly execute the requirements gathering process.

    This research will help you get requirements gathering right by developing a set of standard operating procedures across requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation. It will also help you identify and fine-tune the business analyst competencies necessary to make requirements gathering a success."

    – Ben Dickie, Director, Enterprise Applications, Info-Tech Research Group

    Our understanding of the problem

    This Research is Designed For:

    • The IT applications director who has accountability for ensuring that requirements gathering procedures are both effective and efficient.
    • The designated business analyst or requirements gathering professional who needs a concrete understanding of how to execute upon requirements gathering SOPs.

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Diagnose your current state and identify (and prioritize) gaps that exist between your target requirements gathering needs and your current capabilities and processes.
    • Build a requirements gathering SOP that prescribes a framework for requirements governance and technology usage, as well as techniques for elicitation, analysis, and validation.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • The business partner/stakeholder who is interested in ways to work with IT to improve upon existing procedures for requirements gathering.
    • Systems analysts and developers who need to understand how business requirements are effectively gathered upstream.

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Understand the significance and importance of business requirements gathering on overall project success and value alignment.
    • Create rules of engagement for assisting IT with the collection of requirements from the right stakeholders in a timely fashion.

    Executive summary

    Situation

    • Strong business requirements are essential to project success – inadequate requirements are the number one reason that projects fail.
    • Organizations need a consistent, repeatable, and prescriptive set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) that dictate how business requirements gathering should be conducted.

    Complication

    • If proper due diligence for requirements gathering is not conducted, then the applications that IT is deploying won’t meet business objectives, and they will fail to deliver adequate business value.
    • Inaccurate requirements definition can lead to significant amounts of project rework and hurt the organization’s financial performance. It will also damage the relationship between IT and the business.

    Resolution

    • To avoid delivering makeshift solutions (paving the cow path), organizations need to gather requirements with the desired future state in mind. Organizations need to keep an open mind when gathering requirements.
    • Creating a unified set of SOPs is essential for effectively gathering requirements; these procedures should cover not just elicitation, analysis, and validation, but also include process governance and documentation.
    • BAs who conduct requirements gathering must demonstrate proven competencies for stakeholder management, analytical techniques, and the ability to speak the language of both the business and IT.
    • An improvement in requirements analysis will strengthen the relationship between business and IT, as more and more applications satisfy stakeholder needs. More importantly, the applications delivered by IT will meet all of the must-have and at least some of the nice-to-have requirements, allowing end users to execute their day-to-day responsibilities.

    Info-Tech Insight

    1. Requirements gathering SOPs should be prescriptive based on project complexity. Complex projects will require more analytical rigor. Simpler projects can be served by more straightforward techniques like user story development.
    2. Business analysts (BA) can make or break the execution of the requirements gathering process. A strong process still needs to be executed well by BAs with the right blend of skills and knowledge.

    Understand what constitutes a strong business requirement

    A business requirement is a statement that clearly outlines the functional capability that the business needs from a system or application. There are several attributes to look at in requirements:

    Verifiable
    Stated in a way that can be easily tested

    Unambiguous
    Free of subjective terms and can only be interpreted in one way

    Complete
    Contains all relevant information

    Consistent
    Does not conflict with other requirements

    Achievable
    Possible to accomplish with budgetary and technological constraints

    Traceable
    Trackable from inception through to testing

    Unitary
    Addresses only one thing and cannot be decomposed into multiple requirements

    Agnostic
    Doesn’t pre-suppose a specific vendor or product

    Not all requirements will meet all of the attributes.

    In some situations, an insight will reveal new requirements. This requirement will not follow all of the attributes listed above and that’s okay. If a new insight changes the direction of the project, re-evaluate the scope of the project.

    Attributes are context specific.

    Depending on the scope of the project, certain attributes will carry more weight than others. Weigh the value of each attribute before elicitation and adjust as required. For example, verifiable will be a less-valued attribute when developing a client-facing website with no established measuring method/software.

    Build a firm foundation: requirements gathering is an essential step in any project, but many organizations struggle

    Proper requirements gathering is critical for delivering business value from IT projects, but it remains an elusive and perplexing task for most organizations. You need to have a strategy for end-to-end requirements gathering, or your projects will consistently fail to meet business expectations.

    50% of project rework is attributable to problems with requirements. (Info-Tech Research Group)

    45% of delivered features are utilized by end users. (The Standish Group)

    78% of IT professionals believe the business is “usually” or “always” out of sync with project requirements. (Blueprint Software Systems)

    45% of IT professionals admit to being “fuzzy” about the details of a project’s business objectives. (Blueprint Software Systems)

    Requirements gathering is truly an organization-spanning issue, and it falls directly on the IT directors who oversee projects to put prudent SOPs in place for managing the requirements gathering process. Despite its importance, the majority of organizations have challenges with requirements gathering.

    What happens when requirements are no longer effective?

    • Poor requirements can have a very visible and negative impact on deployed apps.
    • IT receives the blame for any project shortcomings or failures.
    • IT loses its credibility and ability to champion future projects.
    • Late projects use IT resources longer than planned.

    Requirements gathering is a core component of the overall project lifecycle that must be given its due diligence

    PMBOK’s Five Phase Project Lifecycle

    Initiate – Plan: Requirements Gathering Lives Here – Execute – Control – Close

    Inaccurate requirements is the 2nd most common cause of project failure (Project Management Institute ‒ Smartsheet).

    Requirements gathering is a critical stage of project planning.

    Depending on whether you take an Agile or Waterfall project management approach, it can be extended into the initiate and execute phases of the project lifecycle.

    Strong stakeholder satisfaction with requirements gathering results in higher satisfaction in other areas

    Organizations that had high satisfaction with requirements gathering were more likely to be highly satisfied with the other areas of IT. In fact, 72% of organizations that had high satisfaction with requirements gathering were also highly satisfied with the availability of IT capacity to complete projects.

    A bar graph measuring % High Satisfaction when projects have High Requirements Gathering vs. Not High Requirements Gathering. The graph shows a substantially higher percentage of high satisfaction on projects with High Requirements Gathering

    Note: High satisfaction was classified as organizations with a score greater or equal to 8. Not high satisfaction was every other organization that scored below 8 on the area questions.

    N=395 organizations from Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision diagnostic

    Requirements gathering efforts are filled with challenges; review these pitfalls to avoid in your optimization efforts

    The challenges that afflict requirements gathering are multifaceted and often systemic in nature. There isn’t a single cure that will fix all of your requirements gathering problems, but an awareness of frequently encountered challenges will give you a basis for where to consider establishing better SOPs. Commonly encountered challenges include:

    Process Challenges

    • Requirements may be poorly documented, or not documented at all.
    • Elicitation methods may be inappropriate (e.g. using a survey when collaborative whiteboarding is needed).
    • Elicitation methods may be poorly executed.
    • IT and business units may not be communicating requirements in the same terms/language.
    • Requirements that conflict with one another may not be identified during analysis.
    • Requirements cannot be traced from origin to testing.

    Stakeholder Challenges

    • Stakeholders may be unaware of the requirements needed for the ideal solution.
    • Stakeholders may have difficulty properly articulating their desired requirements.
    • Stakeholders may have difficulty gaining consensus on the ideal solution.
    • Relevant stakeholders may not be consulted on requirements.
    • Sign-off may not be received from the proper stakeholders.

    70% of projects fail due to poor requirements. (Info-Tech Research Group)

    Address the root cause of poor requirements to increase project success

    Root Causes of Poor Requirements Gathering:

    • Requirements gathering procedures don’t exist.
    • Requirements gathering procedures exist but aren’t followed.
    • There isn't enough time allocated to the requirements gathering phase.
    • There isn't enough involvement or investment secured from business partners.
    • There is no senior leadership involvement or mandate to fix requirements gathering.
    • There are inadequate efforts put towards obtaining and enforcing sign-off.

    Outcomes of Poor Requirements Gathering:

    • Rework due to poor requirements leads to costly overruns.
    • Final deliverables are of poor quality.
    • Final deliverables are implemented late.
    • Predicted gains from deployed applications are not realized.
    • There are low feature utilization rates by end users.
    • There are high levels of end-user dissatisfaction.
    • There are high levels of project sponsor dissatisfaction.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Requirements gathering is the number one failure point for most development or procurement projects that don’t deliver value. This has been and continues to be the case as most organizations still don't get requirements gathering right. Overcoming organizational cynicism can be a major obstacle when it is time to optimize the requirements gathering process.

    Reduce wasted project work with clarity of business goals and analysis of requirements

    You can reduce the amount of wasted work by making sure you have clear business goals. In fact, you could see an improvement of as much as 50% by going from a low level of satisfaction with clarity of business goals (<2) to a high level of satisfaction (≥5).

    A line graph demonstrating that as the amount of wasted work increases, clarity of business goals satisfaction decreases.

    Likewise, you could see an improvement of as much as 43% by going from a low level of satisfaction with analysis of requirements (less than 2) to a high level of satisfaction (greater than or equal to 5).

    A line graph demonstrating that as the Amount of Wasted Work decreases, the level of satisfaction with analysis of requirements shifts from low to high.

    Note: Waste is measured by the amount of cancelled projects; suboptimal assignment of resources; analyzing, fixing, and re-deploying; inefficiency, and unassigned resources.

    N=200 teams from the Project Portfolio Management diagnostic

    Effective requirements gathering supports other critical elements of project management success

    Good intentions and hard work aren’t enough to make a project successful. As you proceed with a project, step back and assess the critical success factors. Make sure that the important inputs and critical activities of requirements gathering are supporting, not inhibiting, project success.

    1. Streamlined Project Intake
    2. Strong Stakeholder Management
    3. Defined Project Scope
    4. Effective Project Management
    5. Environmental Analysis

    Don’t improvise: have a structured, end-to-end approach for successfully gathering useful requirements

    Creating a unified SOP guide for requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation is a critical step for requirements optimization; it gives your BAs a common frame of reference for conducting requirements gathering.

    • The key to requirements optimization is to establish a strong set of SOPs that provide direction on how your organization should be executing requirements gathering processes. This SOP guide should be a holistic document that walks your BAs through a requirements gathering project from beginning to end.
    • An SOP that is put aside is useless; it must be well communicated to BAs. It should be treated as the veritable manifesto of requirements management in your organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Having a standardized approach to requirements management is critical, and SOPs should be the responsibility of a group. The SOP guide should cover all of the major bases of requirements management. In addition to providing a walk-through of the process, an SOP also clarifies requirements governance.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s proven Requirements Gathering Framework as the basis for building requirements processes

    A graphic with APPLICATIONS THAT DELIVER BUSINESS VALUE written in the middle. Three steps are named: Elicit; Analyze; Validate. Around the outer part of the graphic are 4 arrows arranged in a circle, with the labels: Plan; Monitor; Communicate; Manage.

    Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering Framework is a comprehensive approach to requirements management that can be scaled to any size of project or organization. This framework has been extensively road-tested with our clients to ensure that it balances the needs of IT and business stakeholders to give a holistic, end-to-end approach for requirements gathering. It covers the foundational issues (elicitation, analysis, and validation) and prescribes techniques for planning, monitoring, communicating, and managing the requirements gathering process.

    Don’t forget resourcing: the best requirements gathering process will still fail if you don’t develop BA competencies

    When creating the process for requirements gathering, think about how it will be executed by your BAs, and what the composition of your BA team should look like. A strong BA needs to serve as an effective translator, being able to speak the language of both the business and IT.

    1. To ensure alignment of your BAs to the requirements gathering process, undertake a formal skills assessment to identify areas where analysts are strong, and areas that should be targeted for training and skills development.
    2. Training of BAs on the requirements gathering process and development of intimate familiarity with SOPs is essential; you need to get BAs on the same page to ensure consistency and repeatability of the requirements process.
    3. Consider implementing a formal mentorship and/or job shadowing program between senior and junior BAs. Many of our members report that leveraging senior BAs to bootstrap the competencies of more junior team members is a proven approach to building skillsets for requirements gathering.

    What are some core competencies of a good BA?

    • Strong stakeholder management.
    • Proven track record in facilitating elicitation sessions.
    • Ability to bridge the gulf between IT and the business by speaking both languages.
    • Ability to ask relevant probing questions to uncover latent needs.
    • Experience with creating project operating models and business process diagrams.
    • Ability to set and manage expectations throughout the process.

    Throughout this blueprint, look for the “BA Insight” box to learn how steps in the requirements gathering process relate to the skills needed by BAs to facilitate the process effectively.

    A mid-sized local government overhauls its requirements gathering approach and sees strong results

    CASE STUDY

    Industry

    Government

    Source

    Info-Tech Research Group Workshop

    The Client

    The organization was a local government responsible for providing services to approximately 600,000 citizens in the southern US. Its IT department is tasked with deploying applications and systems (such as HRIS) that support the various initiatives and mandate of the local government.

    The Requirements Gathering Challenge

    The IT department recognized that a strong requirements gathering process was essential to delivering value to its stakeholders. However, there was no codified process in place – each BA unilaterally decided how they would conduct requirements gathering at the start of each project. IT recognized that to enhance both the effectiveness and efficiency of requirements gathering, it needed to put in place a strong, prescriptive set of SOPs.

    The Improvement

    Working with a team from Info-Tech, the IT leadership and BA team conducted a workshop to develop a new set of SOPs that provided clear guidance for each stage of the requirements process: elicitation, analysis, and validation. As a result, business satisfaction and value alignment increased.

    The Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook offers a codified set of SOPs for requirements gathering gave BAs a clear playbook.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – project overview

    1. Build the Target State for Requirements Gathering 2. Define the Elicitation Process 3. Analyze and Validate Requirements 4. Create a Requirements Governance Action Plan
    Best-Practice Toolkit

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    Guided Implementations
    • Review Info-Tech’s requirements gathering methodology.
    • Assess current state for requirements gathering – pains and challenges.
    • Determine target state for business requirements gathering – areas of opportunity.
    • Assess elicitation techniques and determine best fit to projects and business environment.
    • Review options for structuring the output of requirements elicitation (i.e. SIPOC).
    • Create policies for requirements categorization and prioritization.
    • Establish best practices for validating the BRD with project stakeholders.
    • Discuss how to handle changes to requirements, and establish a formal change control process.
    • Review options for ongoing governance of the requirements gathering process.
    Onsite Workshop Module 1: Define the Current and Target State Module 2: Define the Elicitation Process Module 3: Analyze and Validate Requirements Module 4: Governance and Continuous Improvement Process
    Phase 1 Results: Clear understanding of target needs for the requirements process. Phase 2 Results: Best practices for conducting and structuring elicitation. Phase 3 Results: Standardized frameworks for analysis and validation of business requirements. Phase 4 Results: Formalized change control and governance processes for requirements.

    Workshop overview

    Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Workshop Day 1 Workshop Day 2 Workshop Day 3 Workshop Day 4 Workshop Day 5
    Activities

    Define Current State and Target State for Requirements Gathering

    • Understand current state and document existing requirement process steps.
    • Identify stakeholder, process, outcome, and reigning challenges.
    • Conduct target state analysis.
    • Establish requirements gathering metrics.
    • Identify project levels 1/2/3/4.
    • Match control points to project levels 1/2/3/4.
    • Conduct project scoping and identify stakeholders.

    Define the Elicitation Process

    • Understand elicitation techniques and which ones to use.
    • Document and confirm elicitation techniques.
    • Create a requirements gathering elicitation plan for your project.
    • Practice using interviews with business stakeholders to build use case models.
    • Practice using table-top testing with business stakeholders to build use case models.
    • Build the operating model for your project

    Analyze and Validate Requirements

    • Categorize gathered requirements for use.
    • Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies.
    • Practice prioritizing requirements.
    • Rightsize the requirements documentation template.
    • Present the business requirements document (BRD) to business stakeholders.
    • Identify testing opportunities.

    Establish Change Control Processes

    • Review existing CR process.
    • Review change control process best practices & optimization opportunities.
    • Build guidelines for escalating changes.
    • Confirm your requirements gathering process for project levels 1/2/3/4.

    Establish Ongoing Governance for Requirements Gathering

    • Define RACI for the requirements gathering process.
    • Define the requirements gathering governance process.
    • Define RACI for requirements gathering governance.
    • Define the agenda and cadence for requirements gathering governance.
    • Identify and analyze stakeholders for communication plan.
    • Create communication management plan.
    • Build the action plan.
    Deliverables
    • Requirements gathering maturity assessment
    • Project level selection tool
    • Requirements gathering documentation tool
    • Project elicitation schedule
    • Project operating model
    • Project use cases
    • Requirements gathering documentation tool
    • Requirements gathering testing checklist
    • Requirements traceability matrix
    • Requirements gathering communication tracking template
    • Requirements gathering action plan

    Phase 1: Build the Target State for the Requirements Gathering Process

    Phase 1 outline

    Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 1: Build the Target State

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks

    Step 1.1: Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    Start with an analyst kick off call:

    • Review Info-Tech’s requirements gathering methodology.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Hold a fireside chat.

    With these tools & templates:

    Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook

    Step 1.2: Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Review findings with analyst:

    • Assess current state for requirements gathering – pains and challenges.
    • Determine target state for business requirements gathering – areas of opportunity.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Identify your business process model.
    • Define project levels.
    • Match control points to project level.
    • Identify and analyze stakeholders.

    With these tools & templates:

    • Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment
    • Project Level Selection Tool
    • Business Requirements Analyst job description
    • Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    Phase 1 Results & Insights:

    Clear understanding of target needs for the requirements process.

    Step 1.1: Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Identifying challenges with requirements gathering and identifying objectives for the workshop.
    This step involves the following participants:
    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs
    Outcomes of this step
    • Stakeholder objectives identified.

    Requirements optimization is powerful, but it’s not free; gauge the organizational capital you’ll need to make it a success

    Optimizing requirements management is not something that can be done in isolation, and it’s not necessarily going to be easy. Improving your requirements will translate into better value delivery, but it takes real commitment from IT and its business partners.

    There are four “pillars of commitment” that will be necessary to succeed with requirements optimization:

    1. Senior Management Organizational Capital
      • Before organizations can establish revised SOPs for requirements gathering, they’ll need a strong champion in senior management to ensure that updated elicitation and sign-off techniques do not offend people. A powerful sponsor can lead to success, especially if they are in the business.
    2. End-User Organizational Capital
      • To overcome cynicism, you need to focus on convincing end users that there is something to be gained from participating in requirements gathering (and the broader process of requirements optimization). Frame the value by focusing on how good requirements mean better apps (e.g. faster, cheaper, fewer errors, less frustration).
    3. Staff Resourcing
      • You can have a great SOP, but if you don’t have the right resources to execute on it you’re going to have difficulty. Requirements gathering needs dedicated BAs (or equivalent staff) who are trained in best practices and can handle elicitation, analysis, and validation successfully.
    4. Dedicated Cycle Time
      • IT and the business both need to be willing to demonstrate the value of requirements optimization by giving requirements gathering the time it needs to succeed. If these parties are convinced by the concept in theory, but still try to rush moving to the development phase, they’re destined for failure.

    Rethink your approach to requirements gathering: start by examining the business process, then tackle technology

    When gathering business requirements, it’s critical not to assume that layering on technology to a process will automatically solve your problems.

    Proper requirements gathering views projects holistically (i.e. not just as an attempt to deploy an application or technology, but as an endeavor to enable new or re-engineered business processes). Neglecting to see requirements gathering in the context of business process enablement leads to failure.

    • Far too often, organizations automate an existing process without putting much thought into finding a better way to do things.
    • Most organizations focus on identifying a series of small improvements to make to a process and realize limited gains.
    • The best way to generate transformational gains is to reinvent how the process should be performed and work backwards from there.
    • You should take a top-down approach and begin by speaking with senior management about the business case for the project and their vision for the target state.
    • You should elicit requirements from the rank-and-file employees while centering the discussion and requirements around senior management’s target state. Don’t turn requirements gathering into a griping session about deficiencies with a current application.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s proven Requirements Gathering Framework as the basis for building requirements processes

    A graphic with APPLICATIONS THAT DELIVER BUSINESS VALUE written in the middle. Three steps are named: Elicit; Analyze; Validate. Around the outer part of the graphic are 4 arrows arranged in a circle, with the labels: Plan; Monitor; Communicate; Manage.

    Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering Framework is a comprehensive approach to requirements management that can be scaled to any size of project or organization. This framework has been extensively road-tested with our clients to ensure that it balances the needs of IT and business stakeholders to give a holistic, end-to-end approach for requirements gathering. It covers both the foundational issues (elicitation, analysis, and validation) as well as prescribing techniques for planning, monitoring, communicating, and managing the requirements gathering process.

    Requirements gathering fireside chat

    1.1.1 – 45 minutes

    Output
    • Stakeholder objectives
    Materials
    • Whiteboard, markers, sticky notes
    Participants
    • BAs

    Identify the challenges you’re experiencing with requirements gathering, and identify objectives.

    1. Hand out sticky notes to participants, and ask the group to work independently to think of challenges that exist with regards to requirements gathering. (Hint: consider stakeholder challenges, process challenges, outcome challenges, and training challenges.) Ask participants to write their current challenges on sticky notes, and place them on the whiteboard.
    2. As a group, review all sticky notes and group challenges into themes.
    3. For each theme you uncover, work as a group to determine the objective that will overcome these challenges throughout the workshop and write this on the whiteboard.
    4. Discuss how these challenges will be addressed in the workshop.

    Don’t improvise: have a structured, prescriptive end-to-end approach for successfully gathering useful requirements

    Creating a unified SOP guide for requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation is a critical step for requirements optimization; it gives your BAs a common frame of reference for conducting requirements gathering.

    • The key to requirements optimization is to establish a strong set of SOPs that provide direction on how your organization should be executing requirements gathering processes. This SOP guide should be a holistic document that walks your BAs through a requirements gathering project from beginning to end.
    • An SOP that is put aside is useless; it must be well communicated to BAs. It should be treated as the veritable manifesto of requirements management in your organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Having a standardized approach to requirements management is critical, and SOPs should be the responsibility of a group. The SOP guide should cover all of the major bases of requirements management. In addition to providing a walk-through of the process, an SOP also clarifies requirements governance.

    Use Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook to assist with requirements gathering optimization

    Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook template forms the basis of this blueprint. It’s a structured document that you can fill out with defined procedures for how requirements should be gathered at your organization.

    Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook template provides a number of sections that you can populate to provide direction for requirements gathering practitioners. Sections provided include: Organizational Context Governance Procedures Resourcing Model Technology Strategy Knowledge Management Elicitation SOPs Analysis SOPs Validation SOPs.

    The template has been pre-populated with an example of requirements management procedures. Feel free to customize it to fit your specific needs.

    Download the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook template.

    Step 1.2: Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Conduct a current and target state analysis.
    • Identify requirements gathering business process model.
    • Establish requirements gathering performance metrics.
    • Define project levels – level 1/2/3/4.
    • Match control points to project level.
    • Conduct initial brainstorming on the project.
    This step involves the following participants:
    • BAs
    Outcomes of this step:
    • Requirements gathering maturity summary.
    • Requirements gathering business process model.
    • Identification of project levels.
    • Identification of control points.

    Plan for requirements gathering

    The image is the Requirements Gathering Framework from earlier slides, but with all parts of the graphic grey-out, except for the arrows containing Plan and Monitor, at the top.

    Establishing an overarching plan for requirements governance is the first step in building an SOP. You must also decide who will actually execute the requirements gathering processes, and what technology they will use to accomplish this. Planning for governance, resourcing, and technology is something that should be done repeatedly and at a higher strategic level than the more sequential steps of elicitation, analysis, and validation.

    Establish your target state for requirements gathering processes to have a cogent roadmap of what needs to be done

    Visualize how you want requirements to be gathered in your organization. Do not let elements of the current process restrict your thinking.

    • First, articulate the impetus for optimizing requirements management and establish clear goals.
    • Use these goals to drive the target state.

    For example:

    • If the goal is to improve the accuracy of requirements, then restructure the validation process.
    • If the goal is to improve the consistency of requirements gathering, then create SOPs or use electronic templates and tools.

    Refrain from only making small changes to improve the existing process. Think about the optimal way to structure the requirements gathering process.

    Define the attributes of a good requirement to help benchmark the type of outputs that you’re looking for

    Attributes of Good Requirements

    Verifiable – It is stated in a way that can be tested.

    Unambiguous – It is free of subjective terms and can only be interpreted in one way.

    Complete – It contains all relevant information.

    Consistent – It does not conflict with other requirements.

    Achievable – It is possible to accomplish given the budgetary and technological constraints.

    Traceable – It can tracked from inception to testing.

    Unitary – It addresses only one thing and cannot be decomposed into multiple requirements.

    Accurate – It is based on proven facts and correct information.

    Other Considerations:

    Organizations can also track a requirement owner, rationale, priority level (must have vs. nice to have), and current status (approved, tested, etc.).

    Info-Tech Insight

    Requirements must be solution agnostic – they should focus on the underlying need rather than the technology required to satisfy the need as it can be really easy to fall into the technology solution trap.

    Use Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment tool to help conduct current and target state analysis

    Use the Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment tool to help assess the maturity of your requirements gathering function in your organization, and identify the gaps between the current state and the target state. This will help focus your organization's efforts in closing the gaps that represent high-value opportunities.

    • On tab 2. Current State, use the drop-down responses to provide the answer that best matches your organization, where 1= Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree. On tab 3. Target State, answer the same questions in relation to where your organization would like to be.
    • Based on your responses, tab 4. Maturity Summary will display a visual of the gap between the current and target state.

    Conduct a current and target state analysis

    1.2.1 – 1 hour

    Complete the Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment tool to define your target state, and identify the gaps in your current state.

    Input
    • Current and target state maturity rating
    Output
    • Requirements gathering maturity summary
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs
    1. For each component of requirements gathering, write out a series of questions to evaluate your current requirements gathering practices. Use the Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment tool to assist you in drafting questions.
    2. Review the questions in each category, and agree on a rating from 1-5 on their current maturity: 1= Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree. (Note: it will likely be very rare that they would score a 5 in any category, even for the target state.)
    3. Once the assigned categories have been completed, have groups present their assessment to all, and ensure that there is consensus. Once consensus has been reached, input the information into the Current State tab of the tool to reveal the overall current state of maturity score for each category.
    4. Now that the current state is complete, go through each category and define the target state goals.
    5. Document any gaps or action items that need to be addressed.

    Example: Conduct a current and target state analysis

    The Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment - Target State, with example data inputted.

    Select the project-specific KPIs that will be used to track the value of requirements gathering optimization

    You need to ensure your requirements gathering procedures are having the desired effect and adjust course when necessary. Establishing an upfront list of key performance indicators that will be benchmarked and tracked is a crucial step.

    • Without following up on requirements gathering by tracking project metrics and KPIs, organizations will not be able to accurately gauge if the requirements process re-engineering is having a tangible, measurable effect. They will also not be able to determine what changes (if any) need to be made to SOPs based on project performance.
    • This is a crucial step that many organizations overlook. Creating a retroactive list of KPIs is inadequate, since you must benchmark pre-optimization project metrics in order to assess and isolate the value generated by reducing errors and cycle time and increasing value of deployed applications.

    Establish requirements gathering performance metrics

    1.2.2 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Historical metrics
    Output
    • Target performance metrics
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Paper
    Participants
    • BAs
    1. Identify the following information for the last six months to one year:
      1. Average number of reworks to requirements.
      2. Number of change requests.
      3. Percent of feature utilization by end users.
      4. User adoption rate.
      5. Number of breaches in regulatory requirements.
      6. Percent of final deliverables implemented on time.
      7. End-user satisfaction score (if possible).
    2. As a group, look at each metric in turn and set your target metrics for six months to one year for each of these categories.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 2.2 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Visualize your current and target state process for requirements gathering with a business process model

    A business process model (BPM) is a simplified depiction of a complex process. These visual representations allow all types of stakeholders to quickly understand a process, how it affects them, and enables more effective decision making. Consider these areas for your model:

    Stakeholder Analysis

    • Identify who the right stakeholders are
    • Plan communication
    • Document stakeholder responsibilities in a RACI

    Elicitation Techniques

    • Get the right information from stakeholders
    • Document it in the appropriate format
    • Define business need
    • Enterprise analysis

    Documentation

    • How are outputs built?
    • Process flows
    • Use cases
    • Business rules
    • Traceability matrix
    • System requirements

    Validation & Traceability

    • Make sure requirements are accurate and complete
    • Trace business needs to requirements

    Managing Requirements

    • Organizing and prioritizing
    • Gap analysis
    • Managing scope
    • Communicating
    • Managing changes

    Supporting Tools

    • Templates to standardize
    • Checklists
    • Software to automate the process

    Your requirements gathering process will vary based on the project level

    It’s important to determine the project levels up front, as each project level will have a specific degree of elicitation, analysis, and validation that will need to be completed. That being said, not all organizations will have four levels.

    Level 4

    • Very high risk and complexity.
    • Projects that result in a transformative change in the way you do business. Level 4 projects affect all lines of business, multiple technology areas, and have significant costs and/or risks.
    • Example: Implement ERP

    Level 3

    • High risk and complexity.
    • Projects that affect multiple lines of business and have significant costs and/or risks.
    • Example: Implement CRM

    Level 2

    • Medium risk and complexity.
    • Projects with broader exposure to the business that present a moderate level of risk to business operations.
    • Example: Deploy Office 365

    Level 1

    • Low risk and complexity.
    • Routine/straightforward projects with limited exposure to the business and low risk of negative business impact.
    • Example: SharePoint Update

    Use Info-Tech’s Project Level Selection Tool to classify your project level and complexity

    1.3 Project Level Selection Tool

    The Project Level Selection Tool will classify your projects into four levels, enabling you to evaluate the risk and complexity of a particular project and match it with an appropriate requirements gathering process.

    Project Level Input

    • Consider the weighting criteria for each question and make any needed adjustments to better reflect how your organization values each of the criterion.
    • Review the option levels 1-4 for each of the six questions, and make any modifications necessary to better suit your organization.
    • Review the points assigned to each of the four buckets for each of the six questions, and make any modifications needed.

    Project Level Selection

    • Use this tab to evaluate the project level of each new project.
    • To do so, answer each of the questions in the tool.

    Define project levels – Level 1/2/3/4

    1.2.3 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Project level assessment criteria
    Output
    • Identification of project levels
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs

    Define the project levels to determine the appropriate requirements gathering process for each.

    1. Begin by asking participants to review the six criteria for assessing project levels as identified in the Project Level Selection Tool. Have participants review the list and ensure agreement around the factors. Create a chart on the board using Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4 as column headings.
    2. Create a row for each of the chosen factors. Begin by filling in the chart with criteria for a level 4 project: What constitutes a level 4 project according to these six factors?
    3. Repeat the exercise for Level 3, Level 2, and Level 1. When complete, you should have a chart that defines the four project levels at your organization.
    4. Input this information into the tool, and ask participants to review the weighting factors and point allocations and make modifications where necessary.
    5. Input the details from one of the projects participants had selected prior to the workshop beginning and determine its project level. Discuss whether this level is accurate, and make any changes needed.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 2.3 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Define project levels

    1.2.3 – 1 hour

    Category Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1
    Scope of Change Full system update Full system update Multiple modules Minor change
    Expected Duration 12 months + 6 months + 3-6 months 0-3 months
    Impact Enterprise-wide, globally dispersed Enterprise-wide Department-wide Low users/single division
    Budget $1,000,000+ $500,000-1,000,000 $100,000-500,000 $0-100,000
    Services Affected Mission critical, revenue impacting Mission critical, revenue impacting Pervasive but not mission critical Isolated, non-essential
    Confidentiality Yes Yes No No

    Define project levels

    1.2.3 – 1 hour

    The tool is comprised of six questions, each of which is linked to at least one type of project risk.

    Using the answers provided, the tool will calculate a level for each risk category. Overall project level is a weighted average of the individual risk levels, based on the importance weighting of each type of risk set by the project manager.

    This tool is an excerpt from Info-Tech’s exhaustive Project Level Assessment Tool.

    The image shows the Project Level Tool, with example data filled in.

    Build your initial requirements gathering business process models: create different models based on project complexity

    1.2.4 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Current requirements gathering process flow
    Output
    • Requirements gathering business process model
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs

    Brainstorm the ideal target business process flows for your requirements gathering process (by project level).

    1. As a group, create a process flow on the whiteboard that covers the entire requirements gathering lifecycle, incorporating the feedback from exercise 1.2.1. Draw the process with input from the entire group.
    2. After the process flow is complete, compare it to the best practice process flow on the following slide. You may want to create different process flows based on project level (i.e. a process model for Level 1 and 2 requirements gathering, and a process model for how to collect requirements for Level 3 and 4). As you work through the blueprint, revisit and refine these models – this is the initial brainstorming!

    Document the output from this exercise in section 2.4 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Example: requirements gathering business process model

    An example of the requirements gathering business process model. The model depicts the various stages of the requirements gathering process.

    Develop your BA team to accelerate collecting, analyzing, and translating requirements

    Having an SOP is important, but it should be the basis for training the people who will actually execute the requirements gathering process. Your BA team is critical for requirements gathering – they need to know the SOPs in detail, and you need to have a plan for recruiting those with an excellent skill set.

    • The designated BA(s) for the project have responsibility for end-to-end requirements management – they are responsible for executing the SOPs outlined in this blueprint, including elicitation, analysis, and validation of requirements during the project.
    • Designated BAs must work collaboratively with their counterparts in the business and IT (e.g. developer teams or procurement professionals) to ensure that the approved requirements are met in a timely and cost-effective manner.

    The ideal candidates for requirements gathering are technically savvy analysts (but not necessarily computer science majors) from the business who are already fluent with the business’ language and cognizant of the day-to-day challenges that take place. Organizationally, these BAs should be in a group that bridges IT and the business (such as an RGCOE or PMO) and be specialists rather than generalists in the requirements management space.

    A BA resourcing strategy is included in the SOP. Customize it to suit your needs.

    "Make sure your people understand the business they are trying to provide the solution for as well if not better than the business folks themselves." – Ken Piddington, CIO, MRE Consulting

    Use Info-Tech’s Business Requirements Analyst job description template for sourcing the right talent

    1.4 Business Requirements Analyst

    If you don’t have a trained group of in-house BAs who can execute your requirements gathering process, consider sourcing the talent from internal candidates or calling for qualified applicants. Our Business Requirements Analyst job description template can help you quickly get the word out.

    • Sometimes, you will have a dedicated set of BAs, and sometimes you won’t. In the latter case, the template covers:
      • Job Title
      • Description of Role
      • Responsibilities
      • Target Job Skills
      • Target Job Qualifications
    • The template is primarily designed for external hiring, but can also be used to find qualified internal candidates.

    Info-Tech Deliverable
    Download the Business Requirements Analyst job description template.

    Standardizing process begins with establishing expectations

    CASE STUDY

    Industry Government

    Source Info-Tech Workshop

    Challenge

    A mid-sized US municipality was challenged with managing stakeholder expectations for projects, including the collection and analysis of business requirements.

    The lack of a consistent approach to requirements gathering was causing the IT department to lose credibility with department level executives, impacting the ability of the team to engage project stakeholders in defining project needs.

    Solution

    The City contracted Info-Tech to help build an SOP to govern and train all BAs on a consistent requirements gathering process.

    The teams first set about establishing a consistent approach to defining project levels, defining six questions to be asked for each project. This framework would be used to assess the complexity, risk, and scope of each project, thereby defining the appropriate level of rigor and documentation required for each initiative.

    Results

    Once the project levels were defined, the team established a formalized set of steps, tools, and artifacts to be created for each phase of the project. These tools helped the team present a consistent approach to each project to the stakeholders, helping improve credibility and engagement for eliciting requirements.

    The project level should set the level of control

    Choose a level of control that facilitates success without slowing progress.

    No control Right-sized control Over-engineered control
    Final deliverable may not satisfy business or user requirements. Control points and communication are set at appropriate stage-gates to allow for deliverables to be evaluated and assessed before proceeding to the next phase. Excessive controls can result in too much time spent on stage-gates and approvals, which creates delays in the schedule and causes milestones to be missed.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Throughout the requirements gathering process, you need checks and balances to ensure that the projects are going according to plan. Now that we know our stakeholder, elicitation, and prioritization processes, we will set up the control points for each project level.

    Plan your communication with stakeholders

    Determine how you want to receive and distribute messages to stakeholders.

    Communication Milestones Audience Artifact Final Goal
    Project Initiation Project Sponsor Project Charter Communicate Goals and Scope of Project
    Elicitation Scheduling Selected Stakeholders (SMEs, Power Users) Proposed Solution Schedule Elicitation Sessions
    Elicitation Follow-Up Selected Stakeholders Elicitation Notes Confirm Accuracy of Notes
    First Pass Validation Selected Stakeholders Consolidated Requirements Validate Aggregated Requirements
    Second Pass Validation Selected Stakeholders Prioritized Requirements Validate Requirements Priority
    Eliminated Requirements Affected Stakeholders Out of Scope Requirements Affected Stakeholders Understand Impact of Eliminated Requirements
    Solution Selection High Authority/Expertise Stakeholders Modeled Solutions Select Solution
    Selected Solution High Authority/Expertise Stakeholders and Project Sponsor Requirements Package Communicate Solution
    Requirements Sign-Off Project Sponsor Requirements Package Obtain Sign-Off

    Setting control points – approvals and sign-offs

    # – Control Point: A decision requiring specific approval or sign-off from defined stakeholders involved with the project. Control points result in accepted or rejected deliverables/documents.

    A – Plan Approval: This control point requires a review of the requirements gathering plan, stakeholders, and elicitation techniques.

    B – Requirements Validation: This control point requires a review of the requirements documentation that indicates project and product requirements.

    C – Prioritization Sign-Off: This requires sign-off from the business and/or user groups. This might be sign-off to approve a document, prioritization, or confirm that testing is complete.

    D – IT or Peer Sign-Off: This requires sign-off from IT to approve technical requirements or confirm that IT is ready to accept a change.

    Match control points to project level and identify these in your requirements business process models

    1.2.5 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Activity 1.2.4 business process diagram
    Output
    • Identify control points
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs

    Define all of the key control points, required documentation, and involved stakeholders.

    1. On the board, post the initial business process diagram built in exercise 1.2.4. Have participants suggest appropriate control points. Write the control point number on a sticky note and place it where the control point should be.
    2. Now that we have identified the control points, consider each control point and define who will be involved in each one, who provides the approval to move forward, the documentation required, and the overall goal.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 6.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    A savvy BA should clarify and confirm project scope prior to embarking on requirements elicitation

    Before commencing requirements gathering, it’s critical that your practitioners have a clear understanding of the initial business case and rationale for the project that they’re supporting. This is vital for providing the business context that elicitation activities must be geared towards.

    • Prior to commencing the requirements gathering phase, the designated BA should obtain a clear statement of scope or initial project charter from the project sponsor. It’s also advisable for the BA to have an in-person meeting with the project sponsor(s) to understand the overarching strategic or tactical impetus for the project. This initial meeting should be less about eliciting requirements and more about understanding why the project is moving forward, and the business processes it seeks to enable or re-engineer (the target state).
    • During this meeting, the BA should seek to develop a clear understanding of the strategic rationale for why the project is being undertaken (the anticipated business benefits) and why it is being undertaken at this time. If the sponsor has any business process models they can share, this would be a good time to review them.

    During requirements gathering, BAs should steer clear of solutions and focus on capturing requirements. Focus on traceable, hierarchical, and testable requirements. Focusing on solution design means you are out of requirements mode.

    Identify constraints early and often, and ensure that they are adequately communicated to project sponsors and end users

    Constraints come in many forms (i.e. financial, regulatory, and technological). Identifying these constraints prior to entering requirements gathering enables you to remain alert; you can separate what is possible from what is impossible, and set stakeholder expectations accordingly.

    • Most organizations don’t inventory their constraints until after they’ve gathered requirements. This is dangerous, as clients may inadvertently signal to end users or stakeholders that an infeasible requirement is something they will pursue. As a result, stakeholders are disappointed when they don’t see it materialize.
    • Organizations need to put advanced effort into constraint identification and management. Too much time is wasted pursuing requirements that aren't feasible given existing internal (e.g. budgets and system) and external (e.g. legislative or regulatory) constraints.
    • Organizations need to manage diverse stakeholders for requirements analysis. Communication will not always be solely with internal teams, but also with suppliers, customers, vendors, and system integrators.

    Stakeholder management is a critical aspect of the BA’s role. Part of the BA’s responsibility is prioritizing solutions and demonstrating to stakeholders the level of effort required and the value attained.

    A graphic, with an arrow running down the left side, pointing downward, which is labelled Constraint Malleability. On the right side of the arrow are three rounded arrows, stacked. The top arrow is labelled Legal/Regulatory Constraints, the second is labelled System/Technical Constraints and the third is labelled Stakeholder Constraints

    Conduct initial brainstorming on the scope of a selected enterprise application project (real or a sample of your choice)

    1.2.6 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Project details
    Output
    • Initial project scoping
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders

    Begin the requirements gathering process by conducting some initial scoping on why we are doing the project, the goals, and the constraints.

    1. Share the project intake form/charter with each member of the group, and give them a few minutes to read over the project details.
    2. On the board write the project topic and three sub-topics:
      • Why does the business want this?
      • What do you want customers (end users) to be able to do?
      • What are the constraints?
    3. As a group, brainstorm answers to each of these questions and write them on the board.

    Example: Conduct initial brainstorming on the project

    Image shows an example for initial brainstorming on a project. The image shows the overall idea, Implement CRM, with question bubbles emerging out of it, and space left blank to brainstorm the answers to those questions.

    Identify stakeholders that must be consulted during the elicitation part of the process; get a good spectrum of subject matter experts (SMEs)

    Before you can dive into most elicitation techniques, you need to know who you’re going to speak with – not all stakeholders hold the same value.

    There are two broad categories of stakeholders:

    Customers: Those who ask for a system/project/change but do not necessarily use it. These are typically executive sponsors, project managers, or interested stakeholders. They are customers in the sense that they may provide the funding or budget for a project, and may have requests for features and functionality, but they won’t have to use it in their own workflows.

    Users: Those who may not ask for a system but must use it in their routine workflows. These are your end users, those who will actually interact with the system. Users don’t necessarily have to be people – they can also be other systems that will require inputs or outputs from the proposed solution. Understand their needs to best drive more granular functional requirements.

    "The people you need to make happy at the end of the day are the people who are going to help you identify and prioritize requirements." – Director of IT, Municipal Utilities Provider

    Need a hand with stakeholder identification? Leverage Info-Tech’s Stakeholder Planning Tool to catalog and prioritize the stakeholders your BAs will need to contact during the elicitation phase.

    Exercise: Identify and analyze stakeholders for the application project prior to beginning formal elicitation

    1.2.7 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • List of stakeholders
    Output
    • Stakeholder analysis
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • BAs

    Practice the process for identifying and analyzing key stakeholders for requirements gathering.

    1. As a group, generate a complete list of the project stakeholders. Consider who is involved in the problem and who will be impacted by the solution, and record the names of these stakeholders/stakeholder groups on a sticky note. Categories include:
      1. Who is the project sponsor?
      2. Who are the user groups?
      3. Who are the project architects?
      4. Who are the specialty stakeholders (SMEs)?
      5. Who is your project team?
    2. Now that you’ve compiled a complete list, review each user group and indicate their level of influence against their level of involvement in the project to create a stakeholder power map by placing their sticky on a 2X2 grid.
    3. At the end of the day, record this list in the Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template.

    Use Info-Tech’s Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    1.5 Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    Use the Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template for structuring and managing ongoing communications among key requirements gathering implementation stakeholders.

    An illustration of the Stakeholder Power Map Template tab of the Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    Use the Stakeholder Power Map tab to:

    • Identify the stakeholder's name and role.
    • Identify their position on the power map using the drop-down menu.
    • Identify their level of support.
    • Identify resisters' reasons for resisting as: unwilling, unable, and/or unknowing.
    • Identify which committees they currently sit on, and which they will sit on in the future state.
    • Identify any key objections the stakeholder may have.

    Use the Communication Management Plan tab to:

    • Identify the vehicle/communication medium (status update, meeting, training, etc.).
    • Identify the audience for the communication.
    • Identify the purpose for communication.
    • Identify the frequency.
    • Identify who is responsible for the communication.
    • Identify how the communication will be distributed, and the level of detail.

    Right-size your investments in requirements management technology; sometimes the “suite spot” isn’t necessary

    Recording and analyzing requirements needs some kind of tool, but don’t overinvest in a dedicated suite if you can manage with a more inexpensive solution (such as Word, Excel, and/or Visio). Top-tier solutions may be necessary for an enterprise ERP deployment, but you can use a low-cost solution for low-level productivity application.

    • Many companies do things in the wrong order. Organizations need to right-size the approach that they take to recording and analyzing requirements. Taking the suite approach isn’t always better – often, inputting the requirements into Word or Excel will suffice. An RM suite won’t solve your problems by itself.
    • If you’re dealing with strategic approach or calculated approach projects, their complexity likely warrants a dedicated RM suite that can trace system dependencies. If you’re dealing with primarily elementary or fundamental approach projects, use a more basic tool.

    Your SOP guide should specify the technology platform that your analysts are expected to use for initial elicitation as well as analysis and validation. You don’t want them to use Word if you’ve invested in a full-out IBM RM solution.

    The graphic shows a pyramid shape next to an arrow, pointing up. The arrow is labelled Project Complexity. The pyramid includes three text boxes, reading (from top to bottom) Dedicated RM Suite; RM Module in PM Software; and Productivity APP (Word/Excel/Visio)

    If you need to opt for a dedicated suite, these vendors should be strong contenders in your consideration set

    Dedicated requirements management suites are a great (although pricey) way to have full control over recording, analysis, and hierarchical categorization of requirements. Consider some of the major vendors in the space if Word, Excel, and Visio aren’t suitable for you.

    • Before you purchase a full-scale suite or module for requirements management, ensure that the following contenders have been evaluated for your requirements gathering technology strategy:
      • Micro Focus Requirements Management
      • IBM Requisite Pro
      • IBM Rational DOORS
      • Blueprint Requirements Management
      • Jama Software
      • Polarion Software (a Siemens Company)

    A mid-sized consulting company overhauls its requirement gathering software to better understand stakeholder needs

    CASE STUDY

    Industry Consulting

    Source Jama Software

    Challenge

    ArcherPoint is a leading Microsoft Partner responsible for providing business solutions to its clients. Its varied customer base now requires a more sophisticated requirements gathering software.

    Its process was centered around emailing Word documents, creating versions, and merging issues. ArcherPoint recognized the need to enhance effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy of requirements gathering through a prescriptive set of elicitation procedures.

    Solution

    The IT department at ArcherPoint recognized that a strong requirements gathering process was essential to delivering value to stakeholders. It needed more scalable and flexible requirements gathering software to enhance requirements traceability. The company implemented SaaS solutions that included traceability and seamless integration features.

    These features reduced the incidences of repetition, allowed for tracing of requirements relationships, and ultimately led to an exhaustive understanding of stakeholders’ needs.

    Results

    Projects are now vetted upon an understanding of the business client’s needs with a thorough requirements gathering collection and analysis.

    A deeper understanding of the business needs also allows ArcherPoint to better understand the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders. This allows for the implementation of structures and policies which makes the requirements gathering process rigorous.

    There are different types of requirements that need to be gathered throughout the elicitation phase

    Business Requirements

    • Higher-level statements of the goals, objectives, or needs of the enterprise.
    • Describe the reasons why a project has been initiated, the objectives that the project will achieve, and the metrics that will be used to measure its success.
    • Business requirements focus on the needs of the organization as a whole, not stakeholders within it.
    • Business requirements provide the foundation on which all further requirements analysis is based:
      • Ultimately, any detailed requirements must map to business requirements. If not, what business need does the detailed requirement fulfill?

    Stakeholder Requirements

    • Statements of the needs of a particular stakeholder or class of stakeholders, and how that stakeholder will interact with a solution.
    • Stakeholder requirements serve as a bridge between business requirements and the various classes of solution requirements.
    • When eliciting stakeholder requirements, other types of detailed requirements may be identified. Record these for future use, but keep the focus on capturing the stakeholders’ needs over detailing solution requirements.

    Solution options or preferences are not requirements. Be sure to identify these quickly to avoid being forced into untimely discussions and sub-optimal solution decisions.

    Requirement types – a quick overview (continued)

    Solution Requirements: Describe the characteristics of a solution that meet business requirements and stakeholder requirements. They are frequently divided into sub-categories, particularly when the requirements describe a software solution:

    Functional Requirements

    • Describe the behavior and information that the solution will manage. They describe capabilities the system will be able to perform in terms of behaviors or operations, i.e. specific information technology application actions or responses.
    • Functional requirements are not detailed solution specifications; rather, they are the basis from which specifications will be developed.

    Non-Functional Requirements

    • Capture conditions that do not directly relate to the behavior or functionality of the solution, but rather describe environmental conditions under which the solution must remain effective or qualities that the systems must have. These can include requirements related to capacity, speed, security, availability, and the information architecture and presentation of the user interface.
    • Non-functional requirements often represent constraints on the ultimate solution. They tend to be less negotiable than functional requirements.
    • For IT solutions, technical requirements would fit in this category.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Remember that solution requirements are distinct from solution specifications; in time, specifications will be developed from the requirements. Don’t get ahead of the process.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    1.2.1 Conduct current and target state analysis

    An analyst will facilitate a discussion to assess the maturity of your requirements gathering process and identify any gaps in the current state.

    1.2.2 Establish requirements gathering performance metrics

    Speak to an analyst to discuss and determine key metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your requirements gathering processes.

    1.2.4 Identify your requirements gathering business process model

    An analyst will facilitate a discussion to determine the ideal target business process flow for your requirements gathering.

    1.2.3; 1.2.5 Define control levels and match control points

    An analyst will assist you with determining the appropriate requirements gathering approach for different project levels. The discussion will highlight key control points and define stakeholders who will be involved in each one.

    1.2.6; 1.2.7 Conduct initial scoping and identify key stakeholders

    An analyst will facilitate a discussion to highlight the scope of the requirements gathering optimization project as well as identify and analyze key stakeholders in the process.

    Phase 2: Define the Elicitation Process

    Phase 2 outline

    Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 2: Define the Elicitation Process

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks

    Step 2.1: Determine Elicitation Techniques

    Start with an analyst kick off call:

    • Understand and assess elicitation techniques.
    • Determine best fit to projects and business environment.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Understand different elicitation techniques.
    • Record the approved elicitation techniques.
    Step 2.2: Structure Elicitation Output

    Review findings with analyst:

    • Review options for structuring the output of requirements elicitation.
    • Build the requirements gathering operating model.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Build use case model.
    • Use table-top testing to build use case models.
    • Build the operating model.

    With these tools & templates:

    • Business Requirements Document Template
    • Scrum Documentation Template
    Phase 2 Results & Insights:
    • Best practices for conducting and structuring elicitation.

    Step 2.1: Determine Elicitation Techniques

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Understand requirements elicitation techniques.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • BAs
    • Business stakeholders

    Outcomes of this step

    • Select and record best-fit elicitation techniques.

    Eliciting requirements is all about effectively creating the initial shortlist of needs the business has for an application

    The image is the Requirements Gathering Framework, shown earlier. All parts of the framework are greyed-out, except for the arrow containing the word Elicit in the center of the image, with three bullet points beneath it that read: Prepare; Conduct; Confirm.

    The elicitation phase is where the BAs actually meet with project stakeholders and uncover the requirements for the application. Major tasks within this phase include stakeholder identification, selecting elicitation techniques, and conducting the elicitation sessions. This phase involves the most information gathering and therefore requires a significant amount of time to be done properly.

    Good requirements elicitation leverages a strong elicitation framework and executes the right elicitation techniques

    A mediocre requirements practitioner takes an order taker approach to elicitation: they elicit requirements by showing up to a meeting with the stakeholder and asking, “What do you want?” This approach frequently results in gaps in requirements, as most stakeholders cannot free-form spit out an accurate inventory of their needs.

    A strong requirements practitioner first decides on an elicitation framework – a mechanism to anchor the discussion about the business requirements. Info-Tech recommends using business process modelling (BPM) as the most effective framework. The BA can now work through several key questions:

    • What processes will this application need to support?
    • What does the current process look like?
    • How could we improve the process?
    • In a target state process map, what are the key functional requirements necessary to support this?

    The second key element to elicitation is using the right blend of elicitation techniques: the tactical approach used to actually collect the requirements. Interviews are the most popular means, but focus groups, JAD sessions, and observational techniques can often yield better results – faster. This section will touch on BPM/BPI as an elicitation framework, then do deep dive on different elicitation techniques.

    The elicitation phase of most enterprise application projects follows a similar four-step approach

    Prepare

    Stakeholders must be identified, and elicitation frameworks and techniques selected. Each technique requires different preparation. For example, brainstorming requires ground rules; focus groups require invitations, specific focus areas, and meeting rooms (perhaps even cameras). Look at each of these techniques and discuss how you would prepare.

    Conduct

    A good elicitor has the following underlying competencies: analytical thinking, problem solving, behavioral characteristics, business knowledge, communication skills, interaction skills, and proficiency in BA tools. In both group and individual elicitation techniques, interpersonal proficiency and strong facilitation is a must. A good BA has an intuitive sense of how to manage the flow of conversations, keep them results-oriented, and prevent stakeholder tangents or gripe sessions.

    Document

    How you document will depend on the technique you use. For example, recording and transcribing a focus group is probably a good idea, but you still need to analyze the results and determine the actual requirements. Use cases demand a software tool – without one, they become cumbersome and unwieldy. Consider how you would document the results before you choose the technique. Some analysts prefer to use solutions like OneNote or Evernote for capturing the raw initial notes, others prefer pen and paper: it’s what works best for the BA at hand.

    Confirm

    Review the documentation with your stakeholder and confirm the understanding of each requirement via active listening skills. Revise requirements as necessary. Circulating the initial notes of a requirements interview or focus group is a great practice to get into – it ensures jargon and acronyms are correctly captured, and that nothing has been lost in the initial translation.

    BPM is an extremely useful framework for framing your requirements elicitation discussions

    What is BPM? (Source: BPMInstitute.org)

    BPMs can take multiple forms, but they are created as visual process flows that depict a series of events. They can be customized at the discretion of the requirements gathering team (swim lanes, legends, etc.) based on the level of detail needed from the input.

    When to use them?

    BPMs can be used as the basis for further process improvement or re-engineering efforts for IT and applications projects. When the requirements gathering process owner needs to validate whether or not a specific step involved in the process is necessary, BPM provides the necessary breakdown.

    What’s the benefit?

    Different individuals absorb information in a variety of ways. Visual representations of a process or set of steps tend to be well received by a large sub-set of individuals, making BPMs an effective analysis technique.

    This related Info-Tech blueprint provides an extremely thorough overview of how to leverage BPM and process improvement approaches.

    Use a SIPOC table to assist with zooming into a step in a BPM to help define requirements

    Build a Sales Report
    • Salesforce
    • Daily sales results
    • Sales by product
    • Sales by account rep
    • Receive customer orders
    • Process invoices
    • GL roll-up
    • Sales by region
    • Sales by rep
    • Director of Sales
    • CEO
    • Report is accurate
    • Report is timely
    • Balance to GL
    • Automated email notification

    Source: iSixSigma

    Example: Extract requirements from a BPM for a customer service solution

    Look at an example for a claims process, and focus on the Record Claim task (event).

    Task Input Output Risks Opportunities Condition Sample Requirements
    Record Claim Customer Email Case Record
    • An agent accidentally misses the email and the case is not submitted.
    • The contents of the email are not properly ported over into the case for the claim.
    • The claim is routed to the wrong recipient within the claims department.
    • There is translation risk when the claim is entered in another language from which it is received.
    • Reduce the time to populate a customer’s claim information into the case.
    • Automate the data capture and routing.
    • Pre-population of the case with the email contents.
    • Suggested routing based on the nature of the case.
    • Multi-language support.

    Business:

    • The system requires email-to-case functionality.

    Non-Functional:

    • The cases must be supported in multiple languages.
    • Case management requires Outlook integration.

    Functional:

    • The case must support the following information:
    • Title; Customer; Subject; Case Origin; Case Type; Owner; Status; Priority
    • The system must pre-populate the claims agent based on the nature of the case.

    The image is an excerpt from a table, with the title Claims Process at the top. The top row is labelled Customer Service, and includes a textbox that reads Record Claim. The bottom row is labelled Claims, and includes a textbox that reads Manage Claim. A downward-pointing arrow connects the two textboxes.

    Identify the preferred elicitation techniques in your requirements gathering SOP: outline order of operations

    Conducting elicitation typically takes the greatest part of the requirements management process. During elicitation, the designated BA(s) should be reviewing documentation, and conducting individual and group sessions with key stakeholders.

    • When eliciting requirements, it’s critical that your designated BAs use multiple techniques; relying only on stakeholder interviews while neglecting to conduct focus groups and joint whiteboarding sessions will lead to trouble.
    • Avoid makeshift solutions by focusing on target state requirements, but don’t forget about the basic user needs. These can often be neglected because one party assumes that the other already knows about them.
    • The SOP guide should provide your BAs with a shortlist of recommended/mandated elicitation techniques based on business scenarios (examples in this section). Your SOP should also suggest the order in which BAs use the techniques for initial elicitation. Generally, document review comes first, followed by group, individual, and observational techniques.

    Elicitation is an iterative process – requirements should be refined in successive steps. If you need more information in the analysis phases, don’t be afraid to go back and conduct more elicitation.

    Understand different elicitation techniques

    2.1.1 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Elicitation techniques
    Output
    • Elicitation technique assessment
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Paper
    Participants
    • BAs
    1. For this exercise, review the following elicitation techniques: observation, document review, surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Use the material in the next slides to brainstorm around the following questions:
      1. What types of information can the technique be used to collect?
      2. Why would you use this technique over others?
      3. How will you prepare to use the technique?
      4. How will you document the technique?
      5. Is this technique suitable for all projects?
      6. When wouldn’t you use it?
    2. Have each group present their findings from the brainstorming to the group.

    Document any changes to the elicitation techniques in section 4.0 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Understand different elicitation techniques – Interviews

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Structured One-on-One Interview In a structured one-on-one interview, the BA has a fixed list of questions to ask the stakeholder and follows up where necessary. Structured interviews provide the opportunity to quickly home in on areas of concern that were identified during process mapping or group elicitation techniques. They should be employed with purpose, i.e. to receive specific stakeholder feedback on proposed requirements or to help identify systemic constraints. Generally speaking, they should be 30 minutes or less. Low Medium
    Unstructured One-on-One Interview In an unstructured one-on-one interview, the BA allows the conversation to flow free form. The BA may have broad themes to touch on but does not run down a specific question list. Unstructured interviews are most useful for initial elicitation, when brainstorming a draft list of potential requirements is paramount. Unstructured interviews work best with senior stakeholders (sponsors or power users), since they can be time consuming if they’re applied to a large sample size. It’s important for BAs not to stifle open dialogue and allow the participants to speak openly. They should be 60 minutes or less. Medium Low
    Info-Tech Insight

    Interviews should be used with high-value targets. Those who receive one-on-one face time can help generate good requirements, as well as allow effective communication around requirements at a later point (i.e. during the analysis and validation phases).

    Understand the diverse approaches for interviews

    Use a clear interview approach to guide the preparation, facilitation styles, participants, and interview schedules you manage for a specific project.

    Depending on your stakeholder audience and interview objectives, apply one or more of the following approaches to interviews.

    Interview Approaches

    • Unstructured
    • Semi-structured
    • Structured

    The Benefits of Interviews

    Fosters direct engagement

    IT is able to hear directly from stakeholders about what they are looking to do with a solution and the level of functionality that they expect from it.

    Offers greater detail

    With interviews, a greater degree of insight can be gained by leveraging information that wouldn’t be collected through traditional surveys. Face-to-face interactions provide thorough answers and context that helps inform requirements.

    Removes ambiguity

    Face-to-face interactions allow opportunities for follow-up around ambiguous answers. Clarify what stakeholders are looking for and expect in a project.

    Enables stakeholder management

    Interviews are a direct line of communication with a project stakeholder. They provide input and insight, and help to maintain alignment, plan next steps, and increase awareness within the IT organization.

    Select an interview structure based on project objectives and staff types

    Consider stakeholder types and characteristics, in conjunction with the best way to maximize time, when selecting which of the three interview structures to leverage during the elicitation phase of requirements gathering.

    Structured Interviews

    • Interviews conducted using this structure are modelled after the typical Q&A session.
    • The interviewer asks the participant a variety of closed-ended questions.
    • The participant’s response is limited to the scope of the question.

    Semi-Structured Interviews

    • The interviewer may prepare a guide, but it acts as more of an outline.
    • The goal of the interview is to foster and develop conversation.
    • Participants have the ability to answer questions on broad topics without compromising the initial guide.

    Unstructured Interviews

    • The interviewer may have a general interview guide filled with open-ended questions.
    • The objective of the questions is to promote discussion.
    • Participants may discuss broader themes and topics.

    Select the best interview approach

    Review the following questions to determine what interview structure you should utilize. If you answer the question with “Yes,” then follow the corresponding recommendations for the interview elements.

    Question Structure Type Facilitation Technique # of Participants
    Do you have to interview multiple participants at once because of time constraints? Semi-structured Discussion 1+
    Does the business or stakeholders want you to ask specific questions? Structured Q&A 1
    Have you already tried an unsuccessful survey to gather information? Semi-structured Discussion 1+
    Are you utilizing interviews to understand the area? Unstructured Discussion 1+
    Do you need to gather requirements for an immediate project? Structured Q&A 1+

    Decisions to make for interviews

    Interviews should be used with high-value targets. Those who receive one-on-one face time can help generate good requirements and allow for effective communication around requirements during the analysis and validation stages.

    Who to engage?

    • Individuals with an understanding of the project scope, constraints and considerations, and high-level objectives.
    • Project stakeholders from across different functional units to solicit a varied set of requirement inputs.

    How to engage?

    • Approach selected interview candidate(s) with a verbal invitation to participate in the requirements gathering process for [Project X].
    • Take the initiative to book time in the candidate’s calendar. Include in your calendar invitation a description of the preparation required for the interview, the anticipated outputs, and a brief timeline agenda for the interview itself.

    How to drive participant engagement?

    • Use introductory interview questions to better familiarize yourself with the interviewee and to create an environment in which the individual feels welcome and at ease.
    • Once acclimatized, ensure that you hold the attention of the interviewee by providing further probing, yet applicable, interview questions.

    Manage each point of the interaction in the interview process

    Interviews generally follow the same workflow regardless of which structure you select. You must manage the process to ensure that the interview runs smoothly and results in an effective gathering requirements process.

    1. Prep Schedule
      • Recommended Actions
        • Send an email with a proposed date and time for the meeting.
        • Include an overview of what you will be discussing.
        • Mention if other people will be joining (if group interview).
    2. Meeting Opening
      • Recommended Actions
        • Provide context around the meeting’s purpose and primary focal points.
        • Let interviewee(s) know how long the interview will last.
        • Ask if they have any blockers that may cause the meeting to end early.
    3. Meeting Discussion
      • Recommended Actions
        • Ask questions and facilitate discussion in accordance with the structure you have selected.
        • Ensure that the meeting’s dialogue is being either recorded using written notes (if possible) or a voice recorder.
    4. Meeting Wrap-Up
      • Recommended Actions
        • Provide a summary of the big findings and what was agreed upon.
        • Outline next steps or anything else you will require from the participant.
        • Let the interviewee(s) know that you will follow up with interview notes, and will require feedback from them.
    5. Meeting Follow-Up
      • Recommended Actions
        • Send an overview of what was covered and agreed upon during the interview.
        • Show the mock-ups of your work based on the interview, and solicit feedback.
        • Give the interviewee(s) the opportunity to review your notes or recording and add value where needed.

    Solve the problem before it occurs with interview troubleshooting techniques

    The interview process may grind to a halt due to challenging situations. Below are common scenarios and corresponding troubleshooting techniques to get your interview back on track.

    Scenario Technique
    Quiet interviewee Begin all interviews by asking courteous and welcoming questions. This technique will warm the interviewee up and make them feel more comfortable. Ask prompting questions during periods of silence in the interview. Take note of the answers provided by the interviewee in your interview guide, along with observations and impact statements that occur throughout the duration of the interview process.
    Disgruntled interviewee Avoid creating a hostile environment by eliminating the interviewee’s perception that you are choosing to focus on issues that the interviewee feels will not be resolved. Ask questions to contextualize the issue. For example, ask why they feel a particular way about the issue, and determine whether they have valid concerns that you can resolve.
    Interviewee has issues articulating their answer Encourage the interviewee to use a whiteboard or pen and paper to kick start their thought process. Make sure you book a room with these resources readily available.

    Understand different elicitation techniques – Observation

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Casual Observation The process of observing stakeholders performing tasks where the stakeholders are unaware they are being observed. Capture true behavior through observation of stakeholders performing tasks without informing them they are being observed. This information can be valuable for mapping business process; however, it is difficult to isolate the core business activities from unnecessary actions. Low Medium
    Formal Observation The process of observing stakeholders performing tasks where the stakeholders are aware they are being observed. Formal observation allows BAs to isolate and study the core activities in a business process because the stakeholder is aware they are being observed. Stakeholders may become distrusting of the BA and modify their behavior if they feel their job responsibilities or job security are at risk Low Medium

    Info-Tech Insight

    Observing stakeholders does not uncover any information about the target state. Be sure to use contextual observation in conjunction with other techniques to discover the target state.

    Understand different elicitation techniques – Surveys

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Closed-Response Survey A survey that has fixed responses for each answer. A Likert-scale (or similar measures) can be used to have respondents evaluate and prioritize possible requirements. Closed response surveys can be sent to large groups and used to quickly gauge user interest in different functional areas. They are easy for users to fill out and don’t require a high investment of time. However, their main deficit is that they are likely to miss novel requirements not listed. As such, closed response surveys are best used after initial elicitation or brainstorming to validate feature groups. Low Medium
    Open-Response Survey A survey that has open-ended response fields. Questions are fixed, but respondents are free to populate the field in their own words. Open-response surveys take longer to fill out than closed, but can garner deeper insights. Open-response surveys are a useful supplement (and occasionally replacement) for group elicitation techniques, like focus groups, when you need to receive an initial list of requirements from a broad cross-section of stakeholders. Their primary shortcoming is the analyst can’t immediately follow up on interesting points. However, they are particularly useful for reaching stakeholders who are unavailable for individual one-on-ones or group meetings. Low Medium

    Info-Tech Insight

    Surveys can be useful mechanisms for initial drafting of raw requirements (open-response) and gauging user interest in proposed requirements or feature sets (closed-response). However, they should not be the sole focus of your elicitation program due to lack of interactivity and two-way dialogue with the BA.

    Be aware: Know the implications of leveraging surveys

    What are surveys?

    Surveys take a sample population’s written responses for data collection. Survey respondents can identify themselves or choose to remain anonymous. Anonymity removes the fear of repercussions for giving critical responses to sensitive topics.

    Who needs to be involved?

    Participants of a survey include the survey writer, respondent(s), and results compiler. There is a moderate amount of work that comes from both the writer and compiler, with little work involved on the end of the respondent.

    What are the benefits?

    The main benefit of surveys is their ability to reach large population groups and segments without requiring personal interaction, thus saving money. Surveys are also very responsive and can be created and modified rapidly to address needs as they arise on an on-going basis.

    When is it best to employ a survey method?

    Surveys are most valuable when completed early in the requirements gathering stage.

    Intake and Scoping → Requirements Gathering → Solution Design → Development/ Procurement → Implementation/ Deployment

    When a project is announced, develop surveys to gauge what users consider must-have, should-have, and could-have requirements.

    Use surveys to profile the demand for specific requirements.

    It is often difficult to determine if requirements are must haves or should haves. Surveys are a strong method to assist in narrowing down a wide range of requirements.

    • If all survey respondents list the same requirement, then that requirement is a must have.
    • If no participants mention a requirement, then that requirement is not likely to be important to project success.
    • If the results are scattered, it could be that the organization is unsure of what is needed.

    Are surveys worth the time and effort? Most of the time.

    Surveys can generate insights. However, there are potential barriers:

    • Well-constructed surveys are difficult to make – asking the right questions without being too long.
    • Participants may not take surveys seriously, giving non-truthful or half-hearted answers.

    Surveys should only be done if the above barriers can easily be overcome.

    Scenario: Survey used to gather potential requirements

    Scenario

    There is an unclear picture of the business needs and functional requirements for a solution.

    Survey Approach

    Use open-ended questions to allow respondents to propose requirements they see as necessary.

    Sample questions

    • What do you believe _______ (project) should include to be successful?
    • How can _______ (project) be best made for you?
    • What do you like/dislike about ________ (process that the project will address)?

    What to do with your results

    Take a step back

    If you are using surveys to elicit a large number of requirements, there is probably a lack of clear scope and vision. Focus on scope clarification. Joint development sessions are a great technique for defining your scope with SMEs.

    Moving ahead

    • Create additional surveys. Additional surveys can help narrow down the large list of requirements. This process can be reiterated until there is a manageable number of requirements.
    • Move onto interviews. Speak directly with the users to get a grasp of the importance of the requirements taken from surveys.

    Employ survey design best practices

    Proper survey design determines how valuable the responses will be. Review survey principles released by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    Provide context

    Include enough detail to contextualize questions to the employee’s job duties.

    Where necessary:

    • Include conditions
    • Timeline considerations
    • Additional pertinent details

    Give clear instructions

    When introducing a question identify if it should be answered by giving one answer, multiple answers, or a ranking of answers.

    Avoid IT jargon

    Ensure the survey’s language is easily understood.

    When surveying colleagues from the business use their own terms, not IT’s.

    E.g. laptops vs. hardware

    Saying “laptops” is more detailed and is a universal term.

    Use ranges

    Recommended:

    In a month your Outlook fails:

    • 1-3 times
    • 4-7 times
    • 7+ times

    Not Recommended:

    Your Outlook fails:

    • Almost never
    • Infrequently
    • Frequently
    • Almost always

    Keep surveys short

    Improve responses and maintain stakeholder interest by only including relevant questions that have corresponding actions.

    Recommended: Keep surveys to ten or less prompts.

    Scenario: Survey used to narrow down requirements

    Scenario

    There is a large list of requirements and the business is unsure of which ones to further pursue.

    Survey Approach

    Use closed-ended questions to give degrees of importance and rank requirements.

    Sample questions

    • How often do you need _____ (requirement)?
      • 1-3 times a week; 4-6 times a week; 7+ times a week
    • Given the five listed requirements below, rank each requirement in order of importance, with 1 being the most important and 5 being the least important.
    • On a scale from 1-5, how important is ________ (requirement)?
      • 1 – Not important at all; 2 – Would provide minimal benefit; 3 – Would be nice to have; 4 – Would provide substantial benefit; 5 – Crucial to success

    What to do with your results

    Determine which requirements to further explore

    Avoid simply aggregating average importance and using the highest average as the number-one priority. Group the highest average importance requirements to be further explored with other elicitation techniques.

    Moving ahead

    The group of highly important requirements needs to be further explored during interviews, joint development sessions, and rapid development sessions.

    Scenario: Survey used to discover crucial hidden requirements

    Scenario

    The business wanted a closer look into a specific process to determine if the project could be improved to better address process issues.

    Survey Approach

    Use open-ended questions to allow employees to articulate very specific details of a process.

    Sample questions

    • While doing ________ (process/activity), what part is the most frustrating to accomplish? Why?
    • Is there any part of ________ (process/activity) that you feel does not add value? Why?
    • How would you improve _________ (process/activity)?

    What to do with your results

    Set up prototyping

    Prototype a portion with the new requirement to see if it meets the user’s needs. Joint application development and rapid development sessions pair developers and users together to collaboratively build a solution.

    Next steps

    • Use interviews to begin solution mapping. Speak to SMEs and the users that the requirement would affect. Understand how to properly incorporate the discovered requirement(s) into the solution.
    • Create user stories. User stories allow developers to step into the shoes of the users. Document the user’s requirement desires and their reason for wanting it. Give those user stories to the developers.

    Explore mediums for survey delivery

    Online

    Free online surveys offer quick survey templates but may lack customization. Paid options include customizable features. Studies show that most participants find web-based surveys more appealing, as web surveys tend to have a higher rate of completion.

    Potential Services (Not a comprehensive list)

    SurveyMonkey – free and paid options

    Good Forms – free options

    Ideal for:

    • Low complexity surveys
    • High complexity surveys
    • Quick responses
    • Low cost (free survey options)

    Paper

    Paper surveys offer complete customizability. However, paper surveys take longer to distribute and record, and are also more expensive to administer.

    Ideal for:

    • Low complexity surveys
    • High complexity surveys
    • Quick responses
    • Low cost

    Internally-developed

    Internally-developed surveys can be distributed via the intranet or email. Internal surveys offer the most customization. Cost is the creator’s time, but cost can be saved on distribution versus paper and paid online surveys.

    Ideal for:

    • Low complexity surveys
    • High complexity surveys
    • Quick responses
    • Low cost (if created quickly)

    Understand different elicitation techniques – Focus Groups

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Focus Group Focus groups are sessions held between a small group (typically ten individuals or less) and an experienced facilitator who leads the conversation in a productive direction. Focus groups are highly effective for initial requirements brainstorming. The best practice is to structure them in a cross-functional manner to ensure multiple viewpoints are represented, and the conversation doesn’t become dominated by one particular individual. Facilitators must be wary of groupthink in these meetings (i.e. the tendency to converge on a single POV). Medium Medium
    Workshop Workshops are larger sessions (typically ten people or more) that are led by a facilitator, and are dependent on targeted exercises. Workshops may be occasionally decomposed into smaller group sessions. Workshops are highly versatile: they can be used for initial brainstorming, requirement prioritization, constraint identification, and business process mapping. Typically, the facilitator will use exercises or activities (such as whiteboarding, sticky note prioritization, role-playing, etc.) to get participants to share and evaluate sets of requirements. The main downside to workshops is a high time commitment from both stakeholders and the BA. Medium High

    Info-Tech Insight

    Group elicitation techniques are most useful for gathering a wide spectrum of requirements from a broad group of stakeholders. Individual or observational techniques are typically needed for further follow-up and in-depth analysis with critical power users or sponsors.

    Conduct focus groups and workshops

    There are two specific types of group interviews that can be utilized to elicit requirements: focus groups and workshops. Understand each type’s strengths and weaknesses to determine which is better to use in certain situations.

    Focus Groups Workshops
    Description
    • Small groups are encouraged to speak openly about topics with guidance from a facilitator.
    • Larger groups are led by a facilitator to complete target exercises that promote hands-on learning.
    Strengths
    • Highly effective for initial requirements brainstorming.
    • Insights can be explored in depth.
    • Any part of the requirements gathering process can be done in a workshop.
    • Use of activities can increase the learning beyond simple discussions.
    Weaknesses
    • Loudest voice in the room can induce groupthink.
    • Discussion can easily veer off topic.
    • Extremely difficult to bring together such a large group for extended periods of time.
    Facilitation Guidance
    • Make sure the group is structured in a cross-functional manner to ensure multiple viewpoints are represented.
    • If the group is too large, break the members into smaller groups. Try putting together members who would not usually interact.

    Solution mapping and joint review sessions should be used for high-touch, high-rigor BPM-centric projects

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Solution Mapping Session A one-on-one session to outline business processes. BPM methods are used to write possible target states for the solution on a whiteboard and to engineer requirements based on steps in the model. Solution mapping should be done with technically savvy stakeholders with a firm understanding of BPM methodologies and nomenclature. Generally, this type of elicitation method should be done with stakeholders who participated in tier one elicitation techniques who can assist with reverse-engineering business models into requirement lists. Medium Medium
    Joint Requirements Review Session This elicitation method is sometimes used as a last step prior to moving to formal requirements analysis. During the review session, the rough list of requirements is vetted and confirmed with stakeholders. A one-on-one (or small group) requirements review session gives your BAs the opportunity to ensure that what was recorded/transcribed during previous one-on-ones (or group elicitation sessions) is materially accurate and representative of the intent of the stakeholder. This elicitation step allows you to do a preliminary clean up of the requirements list before entering the formal analysis phase. Low Low

    Info-Tech Insight

    Solution mapping and joint requirements review sessions are more advanced elicitation techniques that should be employed after preliminary techniques have been utilized. They should be reserved for technically sophisticated, high-value stakeholders.

    Interactive whiteboarding and joint development sessions should be leveraged for high-rigor BPM-based projects

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Interactive White- boarding A group session where either a) requirements are converted to BPM diagrams and process flows, or b) these flows are reverse engineered to distil requirement sets. While the focus of workshops and focus groups is more on direct requirements elicitation, interactive whiteboarding sessions are used to assist with creating initial solution maps (or reverse engineering proposed solutions into requirements). By bringing stakeholders into the process, the BA benefits from a greater depth of experience and access to SMEs. Medium Medium
    Joint Application Development (JAD) JAD sessions pair end-user teams together with developers (and BA facilitators) to collect requirements and begin mapping and developing prototypes directly on the spot. JAD sessions fit well with organizations that use Agile processes. They are particularly useful when the overall project scope is ambiguous; they can be used for project scoping, requirements definition, and initial prototyping. JAD techniques are heavily dependent on having SMEs in the room – they should preference knowledge power users over the “rank and file.” High High

    Info-Tech Insight

    Interactive whiteboarding should be heavily BPM-centric, creating models that link requirements to specific workflow activities. Joint development sessions are time-consuming but create greater cohesion and understanding between BAs, developers, and SMEs.

    Rapid application development sessions add some Agile aspects to requirements elicitation

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Rapid Application Development A form of prototyping, RAD sessions are akin to joint development sessions but with greater emphasis on back-and-forth mock-ups of the proposed solution. RAD sessions are highly iterative – requirements are gathered in sessions, developers create prototypes offline, and the results are validated by stakeholders in the next meeting. This approach should only be employed in highly Agile-centric environments. High High

    For more information specific to using the Agile development methodology, refer to the project blueprint Implement Agile Practices That Work.

    The role of the BA differs with an Agile approach to requirements gathering. A traditional BA is a subset of the Agile BA, who typically serves as product owner. Agile BAs have elevated responsibilities that include bridging communication between stakeholders and developers, prioritizing and detailing the requirements, and testing solutions.

    Overview of JAD and RDS techniques (Part 1)

    Use the following slides to gain a thorough understanding of both JAD and rapid development sessions (RDS) to decide which fits your project best.

    Joint Application Development Rapid Development Sessions
    Description JAD pairs end users and developers with a facilitator to collect requirements and begin solution mapping to create an initial prototype. RDS is an advanced approach to JAD. After an initial meeting, prototypes are developed and validated by stakeholders. Improvements are suggested by stakeholders and another prototype is created. This process is iterated until a complete solution is created.
    Who is involved? End users, SMEs, developers, and a facilitator (you).
    Who should use this technique? JAD is best employed in an Agile organization. Agile organizations can take advantage of the high amount of collaboration involved. RDS requires a more Agile organization that can effectively and efficiently handle impromptu meetings to improve iterations.
    Time/effort versus value JAD is a time/effort-intensive activity, requiring different parties at the same time. However, the value is well worth it. JAD provides clarity for the project’s scope, justifies the requirements gathered, and could result in an initial prototype. RDS is even more time/effort intensive than JAD. While it is more resource intensive, the reward is a more quickly developed full solution that is more customized with fewer bugs.

    Overview of JAD and RDS techniques (Part 2)

    Joint Application Development

    Timeline

    Projects that use JAD should not expect dramatically quicker solution development. JAD is a thorough look at the elicitation process to make sure that the right requirements are found for the final solution’s needs. If done well, JAD eliminates rework.

    Engagement

    Employees vary in their project engagement. Certain employees leverage JAD because they care about the solution. Others are asked for their expertise (SMEs) or because they perform the process often and understand it well.

    Implications

    JAD’s thorough process guarantees that requirements gathering is done well.

    • All requirements map back to the scope.
    • SMEs are consulted throughout the duration of the process.
    • Prototyping is only done after final solution mapping is complete.

    Rapid Development Sessions

    Timeline

    Projects that use RDS can either expect quicker or slower requirements gathering depending on the quality of iteration. If each iteration solves a requirement issue, then one can expect that the solution will be developed fairly rapidly. If the iterations fail to meet requirements the process will be quite lengthy.

    Engagement

    Employees doing RDS are typically very engaged in the project and play a large role in helping to create the solution.

    Implications

    RDS success is tied to the organization’s ability to collaborate. Strong collaboration will lead to:

    • Fewer bugs as they are eliminated in each iteration.
    • A solution that is highly customized to meet the user’s needs.

    Poor collaboration will lead to RDS losing its full value.

    When is it best to use JAD?

    JAD is best employed in an Agile organization for application development and selection. This technique best serves relatively complicated, large-scale projects that require rapid or sequential iterations on a prototype or solution as a part of requirements gathering elicitation. JAD effectuates each step in the elicitation process well, from initial elicitation to narrowing down requirements.

    When tackling a project type you’ve never attempted

    Most requirement gathering professionals will use their experience with project type standards to establish key requirements. Avoid only relying on standards when tackling a new project type. Apply JAD’s structured approach to a new project type to be thorough during the elicitation phase.

    In tandem with other elicitation techniques

    While JAD is an overarching requirements elicitation technique, it should not be the only one used. Combine the strengths of other elicitation techniques for the best results.

    When is it best to use RDS?

    RDS is best utilized when one, but preferably both, of the below criteria is met.

    When the scope of the project is small to medium sized

    RDS’ strengths lie in being able to tailor-make certain aspects of the solution. If the solution is too large, tailor-made sections are impossible as multiple user groups have different needs or there is insufficient resources. When a project is small to medium sized, developers can take the time to custom make sections for a specific user group.

    When most development resources are readily available

    RDS requires developers spending a large amount of time with users, leaving less time for development. Having developers at the ready to take on users’ improvement maintains the effectiveness of RDS. If the same developer who speaks to users develops the entire iteration, the process would be slowed down dramatically, losing effectiveness.

    Techniques to compliment JAD/RDS

    1. Unstructured conversations

    JAD relies on unstructured conversations to clarify scope, gain insights, and discuss prototyping. However, a structure must exist to guarantee that all topics are discussed and meetings are not wasted.

    2. Solution mapping and interactive white-boarding

    JAD often involves visually illustrating how high-level concepts connect as well as prototypes. Use solution mapping and interactive whiteboarding to help users and participants better understand the solution.

    3. Focus groups

    Having a group development session provides all the benefits of focus groups while reducing time spent in the typically time-intensive JAD process.

    Plan how you will execute JAD

    Before the meeting

    1. Prepare for the meeting

    Email all parties a meeting overview of topics that will be discussed.

    During the meeting

    2. Discussion

    • Facilitate the conversation according to what is needed (e.g. skip scope clarification if it is already well defined).
    • Leverage solution mapping and other visual aids to appeal to all users.
    • Confirm with SMEs that requirements will meet the users’ needs.
    • Discuss initial prototyping.

    After the meeting

    3. Wrap-up

    • Provide a key findings summary and set of agreements.
    • Outline next steps for all parties.

    4. Follow-up

    • Send the mock-up of any agreed upon prototype(s).
    • Schedule future meetings to continue prototyping.

    JAD provides a detail-oriented view into the elicitation process. As a facilitator, take detailed notes to maximize the outputs of JAD.

    Plan how you will execute RDS

    Before the meeting

    1. Prepare for the meeting

    • Email all parties a meeting overview.
    • Ask employees and developers to bring their vision of the solution, regardless of its level of detail.

    During the meeting

    2. Hold the discussion

    • Facilitate the conversation according to what is needed (e.g. skip scope clarification if already well defined).
    • Have both parties explain their visions for the solution.
    • Talk about initial prototype and current iteration.

    After the meeting

    3. Wrap-up

    • Provide a key findings summary and agreements.
    • Outline next steps for all parties.

    4. Follow-up

    • Send the mock-up of any agreed upon prototype(s).
    • Schedule future meeting to continue prototyping.

    RDS is best done in quick succession. Keep in constant contact with both employees and developers to maintain positive momentum from a successful iteration improvement.

    Develop a tailored facilitation guide for JAD and RDS

    JAD/RDS are both collaborative activities, and as with all group activities, issues are bound to arise. Be proactive and resolve issues using the following guidelines.

    Scenario Technique
    Employee and developer visions for the solution don’t match up Focus on what both solutions have in common first to dissolve any tension. Next, understand the reason why both parties have differences. Was it a difference in assumptions? Difference in what is a requirement? Once the answer has been determined, work on bridging the gaps. If there is no resolution, appoint a credible authority (or yourself) to become the final decision maker.
    Employee has difficulty understanding the technical aspect of the developer’s solution Translate the developer’s technical terms into a language that the employee understands. Encourage the employee to ask questions to further their understanding.
    Employee was told that their requirement or proposed solution is not feasible Have a high-level member of the development team explain how the requirement/solution is not feasible. If it’s possible, tell the employee that the requirement can be done in a future release and keep them updated.

    Harvest documentation from past projects to uncover reusable requirements

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Legacy System Manuals The process of reviewing documentation and manuals associated with legacy systems to identify constraints and exact requirements for reuse. Reviewing legacy systems and accompanying documentation is an excellent way to gain a preliminary understanding of the requirements for the upcoming application. Be careful not to overly rely on requirements from legacy systems; if legacy systems have a feature set up one way, this does not mean it should be set up the same way on the upcoming application. If an upcoming application must interact with other systems, it is ideal to understand the integration points early. None High
    Historical Projects The process of reviewing documentation from historical projects to extract reusable requirements. Previous project documentation can be a great source of information and historical lessons learned. Unfortunately, historical projects may not be well documented. Historical mining can save a great deal of time; however, the fact that it was done historically does not mean that it was done properly. None High

    Info-Tech Insight

    Document mining is a laborious process, and as the term “mining” suggests the yield will vary. Regardless of the outcome, document mining must be performed and should be viewed as an investment in the requirements gathering process.

    Extract internal and external constraints from business rules, policies, and glossaries

    Technique Description Assessment and Best Practices Stakeholder Effort BA Effort
    Rules The process of extracting business logic from pre-existing business rules (e.g. explicit or implied workflows). Stakeholders may not be fully aware of all of the business rules or the underlying rationale for the rules. Unfortunately, business rule documents can be lengthy and the number of rules relevant to the project will vary. None High
    Glossary The process of extracting terminology and definitions from glossaries. Terminology and definitions do not directly lead to the generation of requirements. However, reviewing glossaries will allow BAs to better understand domain SMEs and interpret their requirements. None High
    Policy The process of extracting business logic from business policy documents (e.g. security policy and acceptable use). Stakeholders may not be fully aware of the different policies or the underlying rationale for why they were created. Going directly to the source is an excellent way to identify constraints and requirements. Unfortunately, policies can be lengthy and the number of items relevant to the project will vary. None High

    Info-Tech Insight

    Document mining should be the first type of elicitation activity that is conducted because it allows the BA to become familiar with organizational terminology and processes. As a result, the stakeholder facing elicitation sessions will be more productive.

    Review the different types of formal documentation (Part 1)

    1. Glossary

    Extract terminology and definitions from glossaries. A glossary is an excellent source to understand the terminology that SMEs will use.

    2. Policy

    Pull business logic from policy documents (e.g. security policy and acceptable use). Policies generally have mandatory requirements for projects, such as standard compliance requirements.

    3. Rules

    Review and reuse business logic that comes from pre-existing rules (e.g. explicit or implied workflows). Like policies, rules often have mandatory requirements or at least will require significant change for something to no longer be a requirement.

    Review the different types of formal documentation (Part 2)

    4. Legacy System

    Review documents and manuals of legacy systems, and identify reusable constraints and requirements. Benefits include:

    • Gain a preliminary understanding of general organizational requirements.
    • Ease of solution integration with the legacy system if needed.

    Remember to not use all of the basic requirements of a legacy system. Always strive to find a better, more productive solution.

    5. Historical Projects

    Review documents from historical projects to extract reusable requirements. Lessons learned from the company’s previous projects are more applicable than case studies. While historical projects can be of great use, consider that previous projects may not be well documented.

    Drive business alignment as an output from documentation review

    Project managers frequently state that aligning projects to the business goals is a key objective of effective project management; however, it is rarely carried out throughout the project itself. This gap is often due to a lack of understanding around how to create true alignment between individual projects and the business needs.

    Use company-released statements and reports

    Extract business wants and needs from official statements and reports (e.g. press releases, yearly reports). Statements and reports outline where the organization wants to go which helps to unearth relevant project requirements.

    Ask yourself, does the project align to the business?

    Documented requirements should always align with the scope of the project and the business objectives. Refer back frequently to your set of gathered requirements to check if they are properly aligned and ensure the project is not veering away from the original scope and business objectives.

    Don’t just read for the sake of reading

    The largest problem with documentation review is that requirements gathering professionals do it for the sake of saying they did it. As a result, projects often go off course due to not aligning to business objectives following the review sessions.

    • When reading a document, take notes to avoid projects going over time and budget and business dissatisfaction. Document your notes and schedule time to review the set of complete notes with your team following the individual documentation review.

    Select elicitation techniques that match the elicitation scenario

    There is a time and place for each technique. Don’t become too reliant on the same ones. Diversify your approach based on the elicitation goal.

    A chart showing Elicitation Scenarios and Techniques, with each marked for their efficacy.

    This table shows the relative strengths and weaknesses of each elicitation technique compared against the five basic elicitation scenarios.

    A typical project will encounter most of the elicitation scenarios. Therefore, it is important to utilize a healthy mix of techniques to optimize effectiveness.

    Very Strong = Very Effective

    Strong = Effective

    Medium = Somewhat Effective

    Weak = Minimally Effective

    Very Weak = Not Effective

    Record the approved elicitation techniques that your BAs should use

    2.1.2 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Approved elicitation techniques
    Output
    • Execution procedure
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs

    Record the approved elicitation methods and best practices for each technique in the SOP.

    Identify which techniques should be utilized with the different stakeholder classes.

    Segment the different techniques based by project complexity level.

    Use the following chart to record the approved techniques.

    Stakeholder L1 Projects L2 Projects L3 Projects L4 Projects
    Senior Management Structured Interviews
    Project Sponsor Unstructured Interviews
    SME (Business) Focus Groups Unstructured Interviews
    Functional Manager Focus Groups Structured Interviews
    End Users Surveys; Focus Groups; Follow-Up Interviews; Observational Techniques

    Document the output from this exercise in section 4.0 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Confirm initial elicitation notes with stakeholders

    Open lines of communication with stakeholders and keep them involved in the requirements gathering process; confirm the initial elicitation before proceeding.

    Confirming the notes from the elicitation session with stakeholders will result in three benefits:

    1. Simple miscommunications can compound and result in costly rework if they aren’t caught early. Providing stakeholders with a copy of notes from the elicitation session will eliminate issues before they manifest themselves in the project.
    2. Stakeholders often require an absorption period after elicitation sessions to reflect on the meeting. Following up with stakeholders gives them an opportunity to clarify, enhance, or change their responses.
    3. Stakeholders will become disinterested in the project (and potentially the finished application) if their involvement in the project ends after elicitation. Confirming the notes from elicitation keeps them involved in the process and transitions stakeholders into the analysis phase.

    This is the Confirm stage of the Confirm, Verify, Approve process.

    “Are these notes accurate and complete?”

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    2.1.1 Understand the different elicitation techniques

    An analyst will walk you through the different elicitation techniques including observations, document reviews, surveys, focus groups, and interviews, and highlight the level of effort required for each.

    2.1.2 Select and record the approved elicitation techniques

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion to determine which techniques should be utilized with the different stakeholder classes.

    Step 2.2: Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Build use-case models.
    • Practice using elicitation techniques with business stakeholders to build use-case models.
    • Practice leveraging user stories to convey requirements.
    This step involves the following participants:
    • BAs
    • Business stakeholders
    Outcomes of this step
    • Understand the value of use-case models for requirements gathering.
    • Practice different techniques for building use-case models with stakeholders.

    Record and capture requirements in solution-oriented formats

    Unstructured notes for each requirement are difficult to manage and create ambiguity. Using solution-oriented formats during elicitation sessions ensures that the content can be digested by IT and business users.

    This table shows common solution-oriented formats for recording requirements. Determine which formats the development team and BAs are comfortable using and create a list of acceptable formats to use in projects.

    Format Description Examples
    Behavior Diagrams These diagrams describe what must happen in the system. Business Process Models, Swim Lane Diagram, Use Case Diagram
    Interaction Diagrams These diagrams describe the flow and control of data within a system. Sequence Diagrams, Entity Diagrams
    Stories These text-based representations take the perspective of a user and describe the activities and benefits of a process. Scenarios, User Stories

    Info-Tech Insight

    Business process modeling is an excellent way to visually represent intricate processes for both IT and business users. For complex projects with high business significance, business process modeling is the best way to capture requirements and create transformational gains.

    Use cases give projects direction and guidance from the business perspective

    Use Case Creation Process

    Define Use Cases for Each Stakeholder

    • Each stakeholder may have different uses for the same solution. Identify all possible use cases attributed to the stakeholders.
    • All use cases are possible test case scenarios.

    Define Applications for Each Use Case

    • Applications are the engines behind the use cases. Defining the applications to satisfy use cases will pinpoint the areas where development or procurement is necessary.

    Consider the following guidelines:

    1. Don’t involve systems in the use cases. Use cases just identify the key end-user interaction points that the proposed solution is supposed to cover.
    2. Some use cases are dependent on other use cases or multiple stakeholders may be involved in a single use case. Depending on the availability of these use cases, they can either be all identified up front (Waterfall) or created at various iterations (Agile).
    3. Consider the enterprise architecture perspective. Existing enterprise architecture designs can provide a foundation of current requirement mappings and system structure. Reuse these resources to reduce efforts.
    4. Avoid developing use cases in isolation. Reusability is key in reducing designing efforts. By involving multiple departments, requirement clashes can be avoided and the likelihood of reusability increases.

    Develop practical use cases to help drive the development effort in the right direction

    Evaluating the practicality and likelihood of use cases is just as important as developing them.

    Use cases can conflict with each other. In certain situations, specific requirements of these use cases may clash with one another even though they are functionally sound. Evaluate use-case requirements and determine how they satisfy the overall business need.

    Use cases are not necessarily isolated; they can be nested. Certain functionalities are dependent on the results of another action, often in a hierarchical fashion. By mapping out the expected workflows, BAs can determine the most appropriate way to implement.

    Use cases can be functionally implemented in many ways. There could be multiple ways to accomplish the same use case. Each of these needs to be documented so that functional testing and user documentation can be based on them.

    Nested Use Case Examples:

    Log Into Account ← Depends on (Nested) Ordering Products Online
    Enter username and password Complete order form
    Verify user is a real person Process order
    Send user forgotten password message Check user’s account
    Send order confirmation to user

    Build a use-case model

    2.2.1 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Sub processes
    Output
    • Use case model
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs
    Demonstrate how to use elicitation techniques to build use cases for the project.
    1. Identify a sub-process to build the use-case model. Begin the exercise by giving a brief description of the purpose of the meeting.
    2. For each stakeholder, draw a stick figure on the board. Pose the question “If you need to do X, what is your first step?” Go through the process until the end goal and draw each step. Ensure that you capture triggers, causes, decision points, outcomes, tools, and interactions.
    3. Starting at the beginning of the diagram, go through each step again and check with stakeholders if the step can be broken down into more granular steps.
    4. Ask the stakeholder if there are any alternative flows that people use, or any exceptions to process steps. If there are, map these out on the board.
    5. Go back through each step and ask the stakeholder where the current process is causing them grief, and where modification should be made.
    6. Record this information in the Business Requirements Document Template.

    Build a use-case model

    2.2.1

    Example: Generate Letters

    Inspector: Log into system → Search for case → Identify recipient → Determine letter type → Print letter

    Admin: Receive letter from inspector → Package and mail letter

    Citizen: Receive letter from inspector

    Understand user stories and profiles

    What are they?

    User stories describe what requirement a user wants in the solution and why they want it. The end goal of a user story is to create a simple description of a requirement for developers.

    When to use them

    User stories should always be used in requirements gathering. User stories should be collected throughout the elicitation process. Try to recapture user stories as new project information is released to capture any changes in end-customer needs.

    What’s the benefit?

    User stories help capture target users, customers, and stakeholders. They also create a “face” for individual user requirements by providing user context. This detail enables IT leaders to associate goals and end objectives with each persona.

    Takeaway

    To better understand the characteristics driving user requirements, begin to map objectives to separate user personas that represent each of the project stakeholders.

    Are user stories worth the time and effort?

    Absolutely.

    A user’s wants and needs serve as a constant reminder to developers. Developers can use this information to focus on how a solution needs to accomplish a goal instead of only focusing on what goals need to be completed.

    Create customized user stories to guide or structure your elicitation output

    Instructions

    1. During surveys, interviews, and development sessions, ask participants the following questions:
      • What do you want from the solution?
      • Why do you want that?
    2. Separate the answer into an “I want to” and “So that” format.
      • For users who give multiple “I want to” and “So that” statements, separate them into their respective pairs.
    3. Place each story on a small card that can easily be given to developers.
    As a I want to So that Size Priority
    Developer Learn network and system constraints The churn between Operations and I will be reduced. 1 point Low

    Team member

    Increase the number of demonstrations I can achieve greater alignment with business stakeholders. 3 points High
    Product owner Implement a user story prioritization technique I can delegate stories in my product backlog to multiple Agile teams. 3 points Medium

    How to make an effective and compelling user story

    Keep your user stories short and impactful to ensure that they retain their impact.

    Follow a simple formula:

    As a [stakeholder title], I want to [one requirement] so that [reason for wanting that requirement].

    Use this template for all user stories. Other formats will undermine the point of a user story. Multiple requirements from a single user must be made into multiple stories and given to the appropriate developer. User stories should fit onto a sticky note or small card.

    Example

    As an: I want to: So that:
    Administrator Integrate with Excel File transfer won’t possibly lose information
    X Administrator Integrate with Excel and Word File transfer won’t possibly lose information

    While the difference between the two may be small, it would still undermine the effectiveness of a user story. Different developers may work on the integration of Excel or Word and may not receive this user story.

    Assign user stories a size and priority level

    Designate a size to user stories

    Size is an estimate of how many resources must be dedicated to accomplish the want. Assign a size to each user story to help determine resource allocation.

    Assign business priority to user stories

    Based on how important the requirement is to project success, assign each user story a rating of high, medium, or low. The priority given will dictate which requirements are completed first.

    Example:

    Scope: Design software to simplify financial reporting

    User Story Estimated Size Priority
    As an administrator, I want to integrate with Excel so that file transfer won’t possibly lose information. Low High
    As an administrator, I want to simplify graph construction so that I can more easily display information for stakeholders. High Medium

    Combine both size and priority to decide resource allocation. Low-size, high-priority tasks should always be done first.

    Group similar user stories together to create greater impact

    Group user stories that have the same requirement

    When collecting user stories, many will be centered around the same requirement. Group similar user stories together to show the need for that requirement’s inclusion in the solution.

    Even if it isn’t a must-have requirement, if the number of similar user stories is high enough, it would become the most important should-have requirement.

    Group together user stories such as these:
    As an I want So that
    Administrator To be able to create bar graphs Information can be more easily illustrated
    Accountant To be able to make pie charts Budget information can be visually represented

    Both user stories are about creating charts and would be developed similarly.

    Leave these user stories separate
    As an I want So that
    Administrator The program to auto-save Information won’t be lost during power outages
    Accountant To be able to save to SharePoint My colleagues can easily view and edit my work

    While both stories are about saving documents, the development of each feature is vastly different.

    Create customized user profiles

    User profiles are a way of grouping users based on a significant shared details (e.g. in the finance department, website user).

    Go beyond the user profile

    When creating the profile, consider more than the group’s name. Ask yourself the following questions:

    • What level of knowledge and expertise does this user profile have with this type of software?
    • How much will this user profile interact with the solution?
    • What degree of dependency will this user profile have on the solution?

    For example, if a user profile has low expertise but interacts and depends heavily on the program, a more thorough tutorial of the FAQ section is needed.

    Profiles put developers in user’s shoes

    Grouping users together helps developers put a face to the name. Developers can then more easily empathize with users and develop an end solution that is directly catered to their needs.

    Leverage group activities to break down user-story sizing techniques

    Work in groups to run through the following story-sizing activities.

    Planning Poker: This approach uses the Delphi method where members estimate the size of each user story by revealing numbered cards. These estimates are then discussed and agreed upon as a group.

    • Planning poker generates discussion about variances in estimates but dominant personalities may lead to biased results or groupthink.

    Team Sort: This approach can assist in expediting estimation when you are handling numerous user stories.

    • Bucket your user stories into sizes (e.g. extra-small, small, medium, large, and extra-large) based on an acceptable benchmark that may change from project to project.
    • Collaborate as a team to conclude the final size.
    • Next, translate these sizes into points.

    The graphic shows the two activities described, Planning Poker and Team Sort. In the Planning Poker image, 3 sets of cards are shown, with the numbers 13, 5, and 1 on the top of each set. At the bottom of the image are 7 cards, labelled with: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. In the Team Sort section, there is an arrow pointing in both directions, representing a spectrum from XS to XL. Each size is assigned a point value: XS is 1; S is 3; M is 5; L is 10; and XL is 20. Cards with User Story # written on them are arranged along the spectrum.

    Create a product backlog to communicate business needs to development teams

    Use the product backlog to capture expected work and create a roadmap for the project by showing what requirements need to be delivered.

    How is the product owner involved?

    • The product owner is responsible for keeping in close contact with the end customer and making the appropriate changes to the product backlog as new ideas, insights, and impediments arise.
    • The product owner should have good communication with the team to make accurate changes to the product backlog depending on technical difficulties and needs for clarification.

    How do I create a product backlog?

    • Write requirements in user stories. Use the format: “As a (user role), I want (function) so that (benefit).” Identify end users and understand their needs.
    • Assign each requirement a priority. Decide which requirements are the most important to deliver. Ask yourself, “Which user story will create the most value?”

    What are the approaches to generate my backlog?

    • Team Brainstorming – The product owner, team, and scrum master work together to write and prioritize user stories in a single or a series of meetings.
    • Business Case – The product owner translates business cases into user stories as per the definition of “development ready.”

    Epics and Themes

    As you begin to take on larger projects, it may be advantageous to organize and group your user stories to simplify your release plan:

    • Epics are collections of similar user stories and are used to describe significant and large development initiatives.
    • Themes are collections of similar epics and are normally used to define high-level business objectives.

    To avoid confusion, the pilot product backlog will be solely composed of user stories.

    Example:

    Theme: Increase user exposure to corporate services through mobile devices
    Epic: Access corporate services through a mobile application Epic: Access corporate services through mobile website
    User Story: As a user, I want to find the closest office so that I can minimize travel time As a user, I want to find the closest office so that I can minimize travel time User Story: As a user, I want to submit a complaint so that I can improve company processes

    Simulate product backlog creation

    Overview

    Leverage Info-Tech’s Scrum Documentation Template, using the Backlog and Planning tab, to help walk you through this activity.

    Instructions

    1. Have your product owner describe the business objectives of the pilot project.
    2. Write the key business requirements as user stories.
    3. Based on your business value drivers, identify the business value of your user stories (high, medium, low).
    4. Have your team review the user stories and question the story’s value, priority, goal, and meaning.
    5. Break down the user stories if the feature or business goal is unclear or too large.
    6. Document the perceived business value of each user story, as well as the priority, goal, and meaning.

    Examples:

    As a citizen, I want to know about road construction so that I can save time when driving. Business Value: High

    As a customer, I want to find the nearest government office so that I can register for benefits. Business Value: Medium

    As a voter, I want to know what each candidate believes in so that I can make an informed decision. Business Value: High

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    2.2.1 Build use-case models

    An analyst will assist in demonstrating how to use elicitation techniques to build use-case models. The analyst will walk you through the table testing to visually map out and design process flows for each use case.

    Phase 3: Analyze and Validate Requirements

    Phase 3 outline

    Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 3: Analyze and Validate Requirements

    Proposed Time to Completion: 1 week
    Step 3.1: Create Analysis Framework

    Start with an analyst kick off call:

    • Create policies for requirements categorization and prioritization.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Create functional requirements categories.
    • Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies.
    • Prioritize requirements.

    With these tools & templates:

    • Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool
    Step 3.2: Validate Business Requirements

    Review findings with analyst:

    • Establish best practices for validating the BRD with project stakeholders.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Right-size the BRD.
    • Present the BRD to business stakeholders.
    • Translate business requirements into technical requirements.
    • Identify testing opportunities.

    With these tools & templates:

    • Business Requirements Document Template
    • Requirements Gathering Testing Checklist

    Phase 3 Results & Insights:

    • Standardized frameworks for analysis and validation of business requirements

    Step 3.1: Create Analysis Framework

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Categorize requirements.
    • Eliminate redundant requirements.
    This step involves the following participants:
    • BAs
    Outcomes of this step
    • Prioritized requirements list.

    Analyze requirements to de-duplicate them, consolidate them – and most importantly – prioritize them!

    he image is the Requirements Gathering Framework, shown earlier. All parts of the framework are greyed-out, except for the arrow containing the word Analyze in the center of the image, with three bullet points beneath it that read: Organize; Prioritize; Verify

    The analysis phase is where requirements are compiled, categorized, and prioritized to make managing large volumes easier. Many organizations prematurely celebrate being finished the elicitation phase and do not perform adequate diligence in this phase; however, the analysis phase is crucial for a smooth transition into validation and application development or procurement.

    Categorize requirements to identify and highlight requirement relationships and dependencies

    Eliciting requirements is an important step in the process, but turning endless pages of notes into something meaningful to all stakeholders is the major challenge.

    Begin the analysis phase by categorizing requirements to make locating, reconciling, and managing them much easier. There are often complex relationships and dependencies among requirements that do not get noted or emphasized to the development team and as a result get overlooked.

    Typically, requirements are classified as functional and non-functional at the high level. Functional requirements specify WHAT the system or component needs to do and non-functional requirements explain HOW the system must behave.

    Examples

    Functional Requirement: The application must produce a sales report at the end of the month.

    Non-Functional Requirement: The report must be available within one minute after midnight (EST) of the last day of the month. The report will be available for five years after the report is produced. All numbers in the report will be displayed to two decimal places.

    Categorize requirements to identify and highlight requirement relationships and dependencies

    Further sub-categorization of requirements is necessary to realize the full benefit of categorization. Proficient BAs will even work backwards from the categories to drive the elicitation sessions. The categories used will depend on the type of project, but for categorizing non-functional requirements, the Volere Requirements Resources has created an exhaustive list of sub-categories.

    Requirements Category Elements

    Example

    Look & Feel Appearance, Style

    User Experience

    Usability & Humanity Ease of Use, Personalization, Internationalization, Learning, Understandability, Accessibility Language Support
    Performance Speed, Latency, Safety, Precision, Reliability, Availability, Robustness, Capacity, Scalability, Longevity Bandwidth
    Operational & Environmental Expected Physical Environment, Interfacing With Adjacent Systems, Productization, Release Heating and Cooling
    Maintainability & Support Maintenance, Supportability, Adaptability Warranty SLAs

    Security

    Access, Integrity, Privacy, Audit, Immunity Intrusion Prevention
    Cultural & Political Global Differentiation Different Statutory Holidays
    Legal Compliance, Standards Hosting Regulations

    What constitutes good requirements

    Complete – Expressed a whole idea or statement.

    Correct – Technically and legally possible.

    Clear – Unambiguous and not confusing.

    Verifiable – It can be determined that the system meets the requirement.

    Necessary – Should support one of the project goals.

    Feasible – Can be accomplished within cost and schedule.

    Prioritized – Tracked according to business need levels.

    Consistent – Not in conflict with other requirements.

    Traceable – Uniquely identified and tracked.

    Modular – Can be changed without excessive impact.

    Design-independent – Does not pose specific solutions on design.

    Create functional requirement categories

    3.1.1 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Activity 2.2.1
    Output
    • Requirements categories
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • BAs
    Practice the techniques for categorizing requirements.
    1. Divide the list of requirements that were elicited for the identified sub-process in exercise 2.2.1 among smaller groups.
    2. Have groups write the requirements on red, yellow, or green sticky notes, depending on the stakeholder’s level of influence.
    3. Along the top of the whiteboard, write the eight requirements categories, and have each group place the sticky notes under the category where they believe they should fit.
    4. Once each group has posted the requirements, review the board and discuss any requirements that should be placed in another category.

    Document any changes to the requirements categories in section 5.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Create functional requirement categories

    The image depicts a whiteboard with different colored post-it notes grouped into the following categories: Look & Feel; Usability & Humanity; Legal; Maintainability & Support; Operational & Environmental; Security; Cultural & Political; and Performance.

    Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies

    Clean up requirements and make everyone’s life simpler!

    After elicitation, it is very common for an organization to end up with redundant, complementary, and conflicting requirements. Consolidation will make managing a large volume of requirements much easier.

    Redundant Requirements Owner Priority
    1. The application shall feed employee information into the payroll system. Payroll High
    2. The application shall feed employee information into the payroll system. HR Low
    Result The application shall feed employee information into the payroll system. Payroll & HR High
    Complementary Requirements Owner Priority
    1. The application shall export reports in XLS and PDF format. Marketing High
    2. The application shall export reports in CSV and PDF format. Finance High
    Result The application shall export reports in XLS, CSV, and PDF format. Marketing & Finance High

    Info-Tech Insight

    When collapsing redundant or complementary requirements, it is imperative that the ownership and priority metadata be preserved for future reference. Avoid consolidating complementary requirements with drastically different priority levels.

    Identify and eliminate conflict between requirements

    Conflicting requirements are unavoidable; identify and resolve them as early as possible to minimize rework and grief.

    Conflicting requirements occur when stakeholders have requirements that either partially or fully contradict one another, and as a result, it is not possible or practical to implement all of the requirements.

    Steps to Resolving Conflict:

    1. Notify the relevant stakeholders of the conflict and search for a basic solution or compromise.
    2. If the stakeholders remain in a deadlock, appoint a final decision maker.
    3. Schedule a meeting to resolve the conflict with the relevant stakeholders and the decision maker. If multiple conflicts exist between the same stakeholder groups, try to resolve as many as possible at once to save time and encourage reciprocation.
    4. Give all parties the opportunity to voice their rationale and objectively rate the priority of the requirement. Attempt to reach an agreement, consensus, or compromise.
    5. If the parties remain in a deadlock, encourage the final decision maker to weigh in. Their decision should be based on which party has the greater need for the requirement, the difficulty to implement the requirement, and which requirement better aligns with the project goals.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Resolve conflicts whenever possible during the elicitation phase by using cross-functional workshops to facilitate discussions that address and settle conflicts in the room.

    Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies

    3.1.2 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Activity 3.1.1
    Output
    • Requirements categories
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • BAs

    Review the outputs from the last exercise and ensure that the list is mutually exclusive by consolidating similar requirements and eliminating redundancies.

    1. Looking at each category in turn, review the sticky notes and group similar, complementary, and conflicting notes together. Put a red dot on any conflicting requirements to be used in a later exercise.
    2. Have the group start by eliminating the redundant requirements.
    3. Have the group look at the complementary requirements, and consolidate each into a single requirement. Discard originals.
    4. Record this information in the Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool.

    Prioritize requirements to assist with solution modeling

    Prioritization is the process of ranking each requirement based on its importance to project success. Hold a separate meeting for the domain SMEs, implementation SMEs, project managers, and project sponsors to prioritize the requirements list. At the conclusion of the meeting, each requirement should be assigned a priority level. The implementation SMEs will use these priority levels to ensure efforts are targeted towards the proper requirements as well as to plan features available on each release. Use the MoSCoW Model of Prioritization to effectively order requirements.

    The MoSCoW Model of Prioritization

    The image shows the MoSCoW Model of Prioritization, which is shaped like a pyramid. The sections, from top to bottom (becoming incrementally larger) are: Must Have; Should Have; Could Have; and Won't Have. There is additional text next to each category, as follows: Must have - Requirements must be implemented for the solution to be considered successful.; Should have: Requirements are high priority that should be included in the solution if possible.; Could Have: Requirements are desirable but not necessary and could be included if resources are available.; Won't Have: Requirements won’t be in the next release, but will be considered for the future releases.

    The MoSCoW model was introduced by Dai Clegg of Oracle UK in 1994 (Source: ProductPlan).

    Base your prioritization on the right set of criteria

    Effective Prioritization Criteria

    Criteria

    Description

    Regulatory & Legal Compliance These requirements will be considered mandatory.
    Policy Compliance Unless an internal policy can be altered or an exception can be made, these requirements will be considered mandatory.
    Business Value Significance Give a higher priority to high-value requirements.
    Business Risk Any requirement with the potential to jeopardize the entire project should be given a high priority and implemented early.
    Likelihood of Success Especially in proof-of-concept projects, it is recommended that requirements have good odds.
    Implementation Complexity Give a higher priority to low implementation difficulty requirements.
    Alignment With Strategy Give a higher priority to requirements that enable the corporate strategy.
    Urgency Prioritize requirements based on time sensitivity.
    Dependencies A requirement on its own may be low priority, but if it supports a high-priority requirement, then its priority must match it.

    Info-Tech Insight

    It is easier to prioritize requirements if they have already been collapsed, resolved, and rewritten. There is no point in prioritizing every requirement that is elicited up front when some of them will eventually be eliminated.

    Use the Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool to steer your requirements gathering approach during a project

    3.1 Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool

    Use the Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool to identify and track stakeholder involvement, elicitation techniques, and scheduling, as well as to track categorization and prioritization of requirements.

    • Use the Identify Stakeholders tab to:
      • Identify the stakeholder's name and role.
      • Identify their influence and involvement.
      • Identify the elicitation techniques that you will be using.
      • Identify who will be conducting the elicitation sessions.
      • Identify if requirements were validated post elicitation session.
      • Identify when the elicitation will take place.
    • Use the Categorize & Prioritize tab to:
      • Identify the stakeholder.
      • Identify the core function.
      • Identify the business requirement.
      • Describe the requirement.
      • Identify the categorization of the requirement.
      • Identify the level of priority of the requirement.

    Prioritize requirements

    3.1.3 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Requirements list
    • Prioritization criteria
    Output
    • Prioritized requirements
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • BAs
    • Business stakeholders

    Using the output from the MoSCoW model, prioritize the requirements according to those you must have, should have, could have, and won’t have.

    1. As a group, review each requirement and decide if the requirement is:
      1. Must have
      2. Should have
      3. Could have
      4. Won’t have
    2. Beginning with the must-have requirements, determine if each has any dependencies. Ensure that each of the dependencies are moved to the must-have category. Group and circle the dependent requirements.
    3. Continue the same exercise with the should-have and could-have options.
    4. Record the results in the Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool.

    Step 1 – Prioritize requirements

    3.1.3

    The image shows a whiteboard, with four categories listed at the top: Must Have; Should Have; Could Have; Won't Have. There are yellow post-it notes under each category.

    Step 2-3 – Prioritize requirements

    This image is the same as the previous image, but with the additions of two dotted line squares under the Must Have category, with arrows pointing to them from post-its in the Should have category.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    3.1.1 Create functional requirements categories

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion to brainstorm and determine criteria for requirements categories.

    3.1.2 Consolidate similar requirements and eliminate redundancies

    An analyst will facilitate a session to review the requirements categories to ensure the list is mutually exclusive by consolidating similar requirements and eliminating redundancies.

    3.1.3 Prioritize requirements

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion on how to prioritize requirements according to the MoSCoW prioritization framework. The analyst will also walk you through the exercise of determining dependencies for each requirement.

    Step 3.2: Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Build the BRD.
    • Translate functional requirements to technical requirements.
    • Identify testing opportunities.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • BAs

    Outcomes of this step

    • Finalized BRD.

    Validate requirements to ensure that they meet stakeholder needs – getting sign-off is essential

    The image is the Requirements Gathering Framework shown previously. In this instance, all aspects of the graphic are greyed out with the exception of the Validate arrow, right of center. Below the arrow are three bullet points: Translate; Allocate; Approve.

    The validation phase involves translating the requirements, modeling the solutions, allocating features across the phased deployment plan, preparing the requirements package, and getting requirement sign-off. This is the last step in the Info-Tech Requirements Gathering Framework.

    Prepare a user-friendly requirements package

    Before going for final sign-off, ensure that you have pulled together all of the relevant documentation.

    The requirements package is a compilation of all of the business analysis and requirements gathering that occurred. The document will be distributed among major stakeholders for review and sign-off.

    Some may argue that the biggest challenge in the validation phase is getting the stakeholders to sign off on the requirements package; however, the real challenge is getting them to actually read it. Often, stakeholders sign the requirements document without fully understanding the scope of the application, details of deployment, and how it affects them.

    Remember, this document is not for the BAs; it’s for the stakeholders. Make the package with the stakeholders in mind. Create multiple versions of the requirements package where the length and level of technical details is tailored to the audience. Consider creating a supplementary PowerPoint version of the requirements package to present to senior management.

    Contents of Requirements Package:

    • Project Charter (if available)
    • Overarching Project Goals
    • Categorized Business Requirements
    • Selected Solution Proposal
    • Rationale for Solution Selection
    • Phased Roll-Out Plan
    • Proposed Schedule/Timeline
    • Signatures Page

    "Sit down with your stakeholders, read them the document line by line, and have them paraphrase it back to you so you’re on the same page." – Anonymous City Manager of IT Project Planning Info-Tech Interview

    Capture requirements in a dedicated BRD

    The BRD captures the original business objectives and high-level business requirements for the system/process. The system requirements document (SRD) captures the more detailed functional and technical requirements.

    The graphic is grouped into two sections, indicated by brackets on the right side, the top section labelled BRD and the lower section labelled as SRD. In the BRD section, a box reads Needs Identified in the Business Case. An arrow points from the bottom of the box down to another box labelled Use Cases. In the SRD section, there are three arrows pointing from the Use Cases box to three boxes in a row. They are labelled Functionality; Usability; and Constraints. Each of these boxes has a plus sign between it and the next in the line. At the bottom of the SRD section is a box with text that reads: Quality of Service Reliability, Supportability, and Performance

    Use Info-Tech’s Business Requirements Document Template to specify the business needs and expectations

    3.2 Business Requirements Document Template

    The Business Requirements Document Template can be used to record the functional, quality, and usability requirements into formats that are easily consumable for future analysis, architectural and design activities, and most importantly in a format that is understandable by all business partners.

    The BRD is designed to take the reader from a high-level understanding of the business processes down to the detailed automation requirements. It should capture the following:

    • Project summary and background
    • Operating model
    • Business process model
    • Use cases
    • Requirements elicitation techniques
    • Prioritized requirements
    • Assumptions and constraints

    Rightsize the BRD

    3.2.1 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Project levels
    • BRD categories
    Output
    • BRD
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs
    • Business stakeholders

    Build the required documentation for requirements gathering.

    1. On the board, write out the components of the BRD. As a group, review the headings and decide if all sections are needed for level 1 & 2 and level 3 & 4 projects. Your level 3-4 project business cases will have the most detailed business cases; consider your level 1-2 projects, and remove any categories you don’t believe are necessary for the project level.
    2. Now that you have a right-sized template, break the team into two groups and have each group complete one section of the template for your selected project.
      1. Project overview
      2. Implementation considerations
    3. Once complete, have each group present its section, and allow the group to make additions and modifications to each section.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 6 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Present the BRD to business stakeholders

    3.2.2 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Activity 3.2.1
    Output
    • BRD presentation
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders

    Practice presenting the requirements document to business stakeholders.

    1. Hold a meeting with a group of selected stakeholders, and have a representative present each section of the BRD for your project.
    2. Instruct participants that they should spend the majority of their time on the requirements section, in particular the operating model and the requirements prioritization.
    3. At the end of the meeting, have the business stakeholders validate the requirements, and approve moving forward with the project or indicate where further requirements gathering must take place.

    Example:

    Typical Requirements Gathering Validation Meeting Agenda
    Project overview 5 minutes
    Project operating model 10 minutes
    Prioritized requirements list 5 minutes
    Business process model 30 minutes
    Implementation considerations 5 minutes

    Translate business requirements into technical requirements

    3.2.3 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Business requirements
    Output
    • BRD presentation
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs
    • Developers

    Practice translating business requirements into system requirements.

    1. Bring in representatives from the development team, and have a representative walk them through the business process model.
    2. Present a detailed account of each business requirement, and work with the IT team to build out the system requirements for each.
    3. Document the system requirements in the Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool.

    For requirements traceability, ensure you’re linking your requirements management back to your test strategy

    After a solution has been fully deployed, it’s critical to create a strong link between your software testing strategy and the requirements that were collected. User acceptance testing (UAT) is a good approach for requirement verification.

    • Many organizations fail to create an explicit connection between their requirements gathering and software testing strategies. Don’t follow their example!
    • When conducting UAT, structure exercises in the context of the requirements; run through the signed-off list and ask users whether or not the deployed functionality was in line with the expectations outlined in the finalized requirements documentation.
    • If not – determine whether it was a miscommunication on the requirements management side or a failure of the developers (or procurement team) to meet the agreed-upon requirements.

    Download the Requirements Gathering Testing Checklist template.

    Identify the testing opportunities

    3.2.4 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • List of requirements
    Output
    • Requirements testing process
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs
    • Developers

    Identify how to test the effectiveness of different requirements.

    1. Ask the group to review the list of requirements and identify:
      1. Which kinds of requirements enable constructive testing efforts?
      2. Which kinds of requirements enable destructive testing efforts?
      3. Which kinds of requirements support end-user acceptance testing?
      4. What do these validation-enabling objectives mean in terms of requirement specificity?
    2. For each, identify who will do the testing and at what stage.

    Verify that the requirements still meet the stakeholders’ needs

    Keep the stakeholders involved in the process in between elicitation and sign-off to ensure that nothing gets lost in transition.

    After an organization’s requirements have been aggregated, categorized, and consolidated, the business requirements package will begin to take shape. However, there is still a great deal of work to complete. Prior to proceeding with the process, requirements should be verified by domain SMEs to ensure that the analyzed requirements continue to meet their needs. This step is often overlooked because it is laborious and can create additional work; however, the workload associated with verification is much less than the eventual rework stemming from poor requirements.

    All errors in the requirements gathering process eventually surface; it is only a matter of time. Control when these errors appear and minimize costs by soliciting feedback from stakeholders early and often.

    This is the Verify stage of the Confirm, Verify, Approve process.

    “Do these requirements still meet your needs?”

    Put it all together: obtain final requirements sign-off

    Use the sign-off process as one last opportunity to manage expectations, obtain commitment from the stakeholders, and minimize change requests.

    Development or procurement of the application cannot begin until the requirements package has been approved by all of the key stakeholders. This will be the third time that the stakeholders are asked to review the requirements; however, this will be the first time that the stakeholders are asked to sign off on them.

    It is important that the stakeholders understand the significance of their signatures. This is their last opportunity to see exactly what the solution will look like and to make change requests. Ensure that the stakeholders also recognize which requirements were omitted from the solution that may affect them.

    The sign-off process needs to mean something to the stakeholders. Once a signature is given, that stakeholder must be accountable for it and should not be able to make change requests. Note that there are some requests from senior stakeholders that can’t be refused; use discretion when declining requests.

    This is the Approve stage of the Confirm, Verify, Approve process.

    "Once requirements are signed off, stay firm on them!" – Anonymous Hospital Business Systems Analyst Info-Tech Interview

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with out Info-Tech analysts:

    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    3.2.1; 3.2.2 Rightsize the BRD and present it to business stakeholders

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion to gather the required documentation for building the BRD. The analyst will also assist with practicing the presenting of each section of the document to business stakeholders.

    3.2.3; 3.2.4 Translate business requirements into technical requirements and identify testing opportunities

    An analyst will facilitate the session to practice translating business requirements into testing requirements and assist in determining how to test the effectiveness of different requirements.

    Phase 4: Create a Requirements Governance Action Plan

    Phase 4 outline

    Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 4: Create a Requirements Governance Action Plan

    Proposed Time to Completion: 3 weeks

    Step 4.1: Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    Start with an analyst kick off call:

    • Discuss how to handle changes to requirements and establish a formal change control process.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Develop a change control process.
    • Build the guidelines for escalating changes.
    • Confirm your requirements gathering process.
    • Define RACI for the requirements gathering process.

    With these tools & templates:

    • Requirements Traceability Matrix
    Step 4.2: Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    Review findings with analyst:

    • Review options for ongoing governance of the requirements gathering process.

    Then complete these activities…

    • Define the requirements gathering steering committee purpose.
    • Define the RACI for the RGSC.
    • Define procedures, cadence, and agenda for the RGSC.
    • Identify and analyze stakeholders.
    • Create a communications management plan.
    • Build the requirements gathering process implementation timeline.

    With these tools & templates:

    Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template

    Phase 4 Results & Insights:
    • Formalized change control and governance processes for requirements.

    Step 4.1: Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:
    • Develop change control process.
    • Develop change escalation process.
    This step involves the following participants:
    • BAs
    • Business stakeholders
    Outcomes of this step
    • Requirements gathering process validation.
    • RACI completed.

    Manage, communicate, and test requirements

    The image is the Requirement Gathering Framework graphic from previous sections. In this instance, all parts of the image are greyed out, with the exception of the arrows labelled Communicate and Manage, located at the bottom of the image.

    Although the manage, communicate, and test requirements section chronologically falls as the last section of this blueprint, that does not imply that this section is to be performed only at the end. These tasks are meant to be completed iteratively throughout the project to support the core requirements gathering tasks.

    Prevent requirements scope creep

    Once the stakeholders sign off on the requirements document, any changes need to be tracked and managed. To do that, you need a change control process.

    Thoroughly validating requirements should reduce the amount of change requests you receive. However, eliminating all changes is unavoidable.

    The BAs, sponsor, and stakeholders should have agreed upon a clearly defined scope for the project during the planning phase, but there will almost always be requests for change as the project progresses. Even a high number of small changes can negatively impact the project schedule and budget.

    To avoid scope creep, route all changes, including small ones, through a formal change control process that will be adapted depending on the level of project and impact of the change.

    Linking change requests to requirements is essential to understanding relevance and potential impact

    1. Receive project change request.
    2. Refer to requirements document to identify requirements associated with the change.
      • Matching requirement is found: The change is relevant to the project.
      • Multiple requirements are associated with the proposed change: The change has wider implications for the project and will require closer analysis.
      • The request involves a change or new business requirements: Even if the change is within scope, time, and budget, return to the stakeholder who submitted the request to identify the potentially new requirements that relate to this change. If the sponsor agrees to the new requirements, you may be able to approve the change.
    3. Findings influence decision to escalate/approve/reject change request.

    Develop a change control process

    4.1.1 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Current change control process
    Output
    • Updated change control process
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs
    • Developers
    1. Ask the team to consider their current change control process. It might be helpful to discuss a project that is currently underway, or already completed, to provide context. Draw the process on the whiteboard through discussion with the team.
    2. If necessary, provide some cues. Below are some change control process activities:
      • Submit project change request form.
      • PM assesses change.
      • Project sponsor assesses change.
      • Bring request to project steering committee to assess change.
      • Approve/reject change.
    3. Ask participants to brainstorm a potential separate process for dealing with small changes. Add a new branch for minor changes, which will allow you to make decisions on when to bundle the changes versus implementing directly.

    Document any changes from this exercise in section 7.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Example change control process

    The image is an example of a change control process, depicted via a flowchart.

    Build guidelines for escalating changes

    4.1.2 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Current change control process
    Output
    • Updated change control process
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs
    • Developers

    Determine how changes will be escalated for level 1/2/3/4 projects.

    1. Write down the escalation options for level 3 & 4 projects on the whiteboard:
      • Final decision rests with project manager.
      • Escalate to sponsor.
      • Escalate to project steering committee.
      • Escalate to change control board.
    2. Brainstorm categories for assessing the impact of a change and begin creating a chart on the whiteboard by listing these categories in the far left column. Across the top, list the escalation options for level 3 & 4 projects.
    3. Ask the team to agree on escalation conditions for each escalation option. For example, for the final decision to rest with the project manager one condition might be:
      • Change is within original project scope.
    4. Review the output from exercise 4.1.1 and tailor the process model to meet level 3 & 4 escalation models.
    5. Repeat steps 1-4 for level 1 & 2 projects.

    Document any changes from this exercise in section 7.2 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Example: Change control process – Level 3 & 4

    Impact Category Final Decision Rests With Project Manager If: Escalate to Steering Committee If: Escalate to Change Control Board If: Escalate to Sponsor If:
    Scope
    • Change is within original project scope.
    • Change is out of scope.
    Budget
    • Change can be absorbed into current project budget.
    • Change will require additional funds exceeding any contingency reserves.
    • Change will require the release of contingency reserves.
    Schedule
    • Change can be absorbed into current project schedule.
    • Change will require the final project close date to be delayed.
    • Change will require a delay in key milestone dates.
    Requirements
    • Change can be linked to an existing business requirement.
    • Change will require a change to business requirements, or a new business requirement.

    Example: Change control process – Level 1 & 2

    Impact CategoryFinal Decision Rests With Project Manager If:Escalate to Steering Committee If:Escalate to Sponsor If:
    Scope
    • Change is within original project scope.
    • Change is out of scope.
    Budget
    • Change can be absorbed into current project budget, even if this means releasing contingency funds.
    • Change will require additional funds exceeding any contingency reserves.
    Schedule
    • Change can be absorbed into current project schedule, even if this means moving milestone dates.
    • Change will require the final project close date to be delayed.
    Requirements
    • Change can be linked to an existing business requirement.
    • Change will require a change to business requirements, or a new business requirement.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s Requirements Traceability Matrix to help create end-to-end traceability of your requirements

    4.1 Requirements Traceability Matrix

    Even if you’re not using a dedicated requirements management suite, you still need a way to trace requirements from inception to closure.
    • Ensuring traceability of requirements is key. If you don’t have a dedicated suite, Info-Tech’s Requirements Traceability Matrix can be used as a form of documentation.
    • The traceability matrix covers:
      • Association ID
      • Technical Assumptions and Needs
      • Functional Requirement
      • Status
      • Architectural Documentation
      • Software Modules
      • Test Case Number

    Info-Tech Deliverable
    Take advantage of Info-Tech’s Requirements Traceability Matrix to track requirements from inception through to testing.

    You can’t fully validate what you don’t test; link your requirements management back to your test strategy

    Create a repository to store requirements for reuse on future projects.

    • Reuse previously documented requirements on future projects to save the organization time, money, and grief. Well-documented requirements discovered early can even be reused in the same project.
    • If every module of the application must be able to save or print, then the requirement only needs to be written once. The key is to be able to identify and isolate requirements with a high likelihood of reuse. Typically, requirements pertaining to regulatory and business rule compliance are prime candidates for reuse.
    • Build and share a repository to store historical requirement documentation. The repository must be intuitive and easy to navigate, or users will not take advantage of it. Plan the information hierarchy in advance. Requirements management software suites have the ability to create a repository and easily migrate requirements over from past projects.
    • Assign one person to manage the repository to create consistency and accountability. This person will maintain the master requirements document and ensure the changes that take place during development are reflected in the requirements.

    Confirm your requirements gathering process

    4.1.3 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Activity 1.2.4
    Output
    • Requirements gathering process model
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • BAs

    Review the requirements gathering process and control levels for project levels 1/2/3/4 and add as much detail as possible to each process.

    1. Draw out the requirements gathering process for a level 4 project as created in exercise 1.2.4 on a whiteboard.
    2. Review each process step as a group, and break down each step so that it is at its most granular. Be sure to include each decision point, key documentation, and approvals.
    3. Once complete, review the process for level 3, 2 & 1. Reduce steps as necessary. Note: there may not be a lot of differentiation between your project level 4 & 3 or level 2 & 1 processes. You should see differentiation in your process between 2 and 3.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 2.4 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Example: Confirm your requirements gathering process

    The image is an example of a requirements gathering process, representing in the format of a flowchart.

    Define RACI for the requirements gathering process

    4.1.4 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • List of stakeholders
    Output
    • RACI matrix
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders

    Understand who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for key elements of the requirements gathering process for project levels 1/2/3/4.

    1. As a group, identify the key stakeholders for requirements gathering and place those names along the top of the board.
    2. On the left side of the board, list the process steps and control points for a level 4 project.
    3. For each process step, identify who is responsible, accountable, informed, and consulted.
    4. Repeat this process for project levels 3, 2 & 1.

    Example: RACI for requirements gathering

    Project Requestor Project Sponsor Customers Suppliers Subject Matter Experts Vendors Executives Project Management IT Management Developer/ Business Analyst Network Services Support
    Intake Form A C C I R
    High-Level Business Case R A C C C C I I C
    Project Classification I I C I R A R
    Project Approval R R I I I I I I A I I
    Project Charter R C R R C R I A I R C C
    Develop BRD R I R C C C R A C C
    Sign-Off on BRD/ Project Charter R A R R R R
    Develop System Requirements C C C R I C A R R
    Sign-Off on SRD R R R I A R R
    Testing/Validation A I R C R C R I R R
    Change Requests R R C C A I R C
    Sign-Off on Change Request R A R R R R
    Final Acceptance R A R I I I I R R R I I

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    4.1.1; 4.1.2 Develop a change control process and guidelines for escalating changes

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion on how to improve upon your organization’s change control processes and how changes will be escalated to ensure effective tracking and management of changes.

    4.1.3 Confirm your requirements gathering process

    With the group, an analyst will review the requirements gathering process and control levels for the different project levels.

    4.1.4 Define the RACI for the requirements gathering process

    An analyst will facilitate a whiteboard exercise to understand who is responsible, accountable, informed, and consulted for key elements of the requirements gathering process.

    Step 4.2: Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    Phase 1

    1.1 Understand the Benefits of Requirements Optimization

    1.2 Determine Your Target State for Requirements Gathering

    Phase 2

    2.1 Determine Elicitation Techniques

    2.2 Structure Elicitation Output

    Phase 3

    3.1 Create Analysis Framework

    3.2 Validate Business Requirements

    Phase 4

    4.1 Create Control Processes for Requirements Changes

    4.2 Build Requirements Governance and Communication Plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Developing a requirements gathering steering committee.
    • Identifying and analyzing stakeholders for requirements governance.
    • Creating a communication management plan.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Business stakeholders
    • BAs

    Outcomes of this step

    • Requirements governance framework.
    • Communication management plan.

    Establish proper governance for requirements gathering that effectively creates and communicates guiding principles

    If appropriate governance oversight doesn’t exist to create and enforce operating procedures, analysts and developers will run amok with their own processes.

    • One of the best ways to properly govern your requirements gathering process is to establish a working committee within the framework of your existing IT steering committee. This working group should be given the responsibility of policy formulation and oversight for requirements gathering operating procedures. The governance group should be comprised of both business and IT sponsors (e.g. a director, BA, and “voice of the business” line manager).
    • The governance team will not actually be executing the requirements gathering process, but it will be deciding upon which policies to adopt for elicitation, analysis, and validation. The team will also be responsible for ensuring – either directly or indirectly through designated managers – that BAs or other requirements gathering processionals are following the approved steps.

    Requirements Governance Responsibilities

    1. Provide oversight and review of SOPs pertaining to requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation.

    2. Establish corporate policies with respect to requirements gathering SOP training and education of analysts.

    3. Prioritize efforts for requirements optimization.

    4. Determine and track metrics that will be used to gauge the success (or failure) of requirements optimization efforts and make process and policy changes as needed.

    Right-size your governance structure to your organization’s complexity and breadth of capabilities

    Not all organizations will be best served by a formal steering committee for requirements gathering. Assess the complexity of your projects and the number of requirements gathering practitioners to match the right governance structure.

    Level 1: Working Committee
    • A working committee is convened temporarily as required to do periodic reviews of the requirements process (often annually, or when issues are surfaced by practitioners). This governance mechanism works best in small organizations with an ad hoc culture, low complexity projects, and a small number of practitioners.
    Level 2: IT Steering Committee Sub-Group
    • For organizations that already have a formal IT steering committee, a sub-group dedicated to managing the requirements gathering process is desirable to a full committee if most projects are complexity level 1 or 2, and/or there are fewer than ten requirements gathering practitioners.
    Level 3: Requirements Gathering Steering Committee
    • If your requirements gathering process has more than ten practitioners and routinely deals with high-complexity projects (like ERP or CRM), a standing formal committee responsible for oversight of SOPs will provide stronger governance than the first two options.
    Level 4: Requirements Gathering Center of Excellence
    • For large organizations with multiple business units, matrix organizations for BAs, and a very large number of requirements gathering practitioners, a formal center of excellence can provide both governance as well as onboarding and training for requirements gathering.

    Identify and analyze stakeholders

    4.2.1A – 1 hour

    Input
    • Number of practitioners, project complexity levels
    Output
    • Governance structure selection
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders

    Use a power map to determine which governance model best fits your organization.

    The image is a square, split into four equal sections, labelled as follows from top left: Requirements Steering Committee; Requirements Center of Excellence; IT Steering Committee Sub-Group; Working Committee. The left and bottom edges of the square are labelled as follows: on the left, with an arrow pointing upwards, Project Complexity; on the bottom, with arrow pointing right, # of Requirements Practitioners.

    Define your requirements gathering governance structure(s) and purpose

    4.2.1B – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Requirements gathering elicitation, analysis, and validation policies
    Output
    • Governance mandate
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Business stakeholders

    This exercise will help to define the purpose statement for the applicable requirements gathering governance team.

    1. As a group, brainstorm key words that describe the unique role the governance team will play. Consider value, decisions, and authority.
    2. Using the themes, come up with a set of statements that describe the overall purpose statement.
    3. Document the outcome for the final deliverable.

    Example:

    The requirements gathering governance team oversees the procedures that are employed by BAs and other requirements gathering practitioners for [insert company name]. Members of the team are appointed by [insert role] and are accountable to [typically the chair of the committee].

    Day-to-day operations of the requirements gathering team are expected to be at the practitioner (i.e. BA) level. The team is not responsible for conducting elicitation on its own, although members of the team may be involved from a project perspective.

    Document the output from this exercise in section 3.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    A benefits provider established a steering committee to provide consistency and standardization in requirements gathering

    CASE STUDY

    Industry Not-for-Profit

    Source Info-Tech Workshop

    Challenge

    This organization is a not-for-profit benefits provider that offers dental coverage to more than 1.5 million people across three states.

    With a wide ranging application portfolio that includes in-house, custom developed applications as well as commercial off-the-shelf solutions, the company had no consistent method of gathering requirements.

    Solution

    The organization contracted Info-Tech to help build an SOP to put in place a rigorous and efficient methodology for requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation.

    One of the key realizations in the workshop was the need for governance and oversight over the requirements gathering process. As a result, the organization developed a Requirements Management Steering Committee to provide strategic oversight and governance over requirements gathering processes.

    Results

    The Requirements Management Steering Committee introduced accountability and oversight into the procedures that are employed by BAs. The Committee’s mandate included:

    • Provide oversight and review SOPs pertaining to requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation.
    • Establish corporate policies with respect to training and education of analysts on requirements gathering SOPs.
    • Prioritize efforts for requirements optimization.
    • Determine metrics that can be used to gauge the success of requirements optimization efforts.

    Authority matrix – RACI

    There needs to be a clear understanding of who is accountable, responsible, consulted, and informed about matters brought to the attention of the requirements gathering governance team.

    • An authority matrix is often used within organizations to indicate roles and responsibilities in relation to processes and activities.
    • Using the RACI model as an example, there is only one person accountable for an activity, although several people may be responsible for executing parts of the activity.
    • In this model, accountable means end-to-end accountability for the process. Accountability should remain with the same person for all activities of a process.

    RResponsible

    The one responsible for getting the job done.

    A – Accountable

    Only one person can be accountable for each task.

    C – Consulted

    Involvement through input of knowledge and information.

    I – Informed

    Receiving information about process execution and quality.

    Define the RACI for effective requirements gathering governance

    4.2.2 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Members’ list
    Output
    • Governance RACI
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • Governance team members

    Build the participation list and authority matrix for the requirements gathering governance team.

    1. Have each participant individually consider the responsibilities of the governance team, and write five participant roles they believe should be members of the governance team.
    2. Have each participant place the roles on the whiteboard, group participants, and agree to five participants who should be members.
    3. On the whiteboard, write the responsibilities of the governance team in a column on the left, and place the sticky notes of the participant roles along the top of the board.
    4. Under the appropriate column for each activity, identify who is the “accountable,” “responsible,” “consulted,” and “informed” role for each activity.
    5. Agree to a governance chair.

    Document any changes from this exercise in section 3.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Example: Steps 2-5: Build the governance RACI

    The image shows an example governance RACI, with the top of the chart labelled with Committee Participants, and the left hand column labelled Committee Responsibilities. Some of the boxes have been filled in.

    Define your requirements gathering governance team procedures, cadence, and agenda

    4.2.3 – 30 minutes

    Input
    • Governance responsibilities
    Output
    • Governance procedures and agenda
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • Steering committee members

    Define your governance team procedures, cadence, and agenda.

    1. Review the format of a typical agenda as well as the list of responsibilities for the governance team.
    2. Consider how you will address each of these responsibilities in the meeting, who needs to present, and how long each presentation should be.
    3. Add up the times to define the meeting duration.
    4. Consider how often you need to meet to discuss the information: monthly, quarterly, or annually? Are there different actions that need to be taken at different points in the year?
    5. As a group, decide how the governance team will approve changes and document any voting standards that should be included in the charter. Will a vote be taken during or prior to the meeting? Who will have the authority to break a tie?
    6. As a group, decide how the committee will review information and documentation. Will members commit to reviewing associated documents before the meeting? Can associated documentation be stored in a knowledge repository and/or be distributed to members prior to the meeting? Who will be responsible for this? Can a short meeting/conference call be held with relevant reviewers to discuss documentation before the official committee meeting?

    Review the format of a typical agenda

    4.2.3 – 30 minutes

    Meeting call to order [Committee Chair] [Time]
    Roll call [Committee Chair] [Time]
    Review of SOPs
    A. Requirements gathering dashboard review [Presenters, department] [Time]
    B. Review targets [Presenters, department] [Time]
    C. Policy Review [Presenters, department] [Time]

    Define the governance procedures and cadence

    4.2.3 – 30 minutes

    • The governance team or committee will be chaired by [insert role].
    • The team shall meet on a [insert time frame (e.g. monthly, semi-annual, annual)] basis. These meetings will be scheduled by the team or committee chair or designated proxy.
    • Approval for all SOP changes will be reached through a [insert vote consensus criteria (majority, uncontested, etc.)] vote of the governance team. The vote will be administered by the governance chair. Each member of the committee shall be entitled to one vote, excepting [insert exceptions].
    • The governance team has the authority to reject any requirements gathering proposal which it deems not to have made a sufficient case or which does not significantly contribute to the strategic objectives of [insert company name].
    • [Name of individual] will record and distribute the meeting minutes and documentation of business to be discussed in the meeting.

    Document any changes from this exercise in section 3.1 of the Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook.

    Changing the requirements gathering process can be disruptive – be successful by gaining business support

    A successful communication plan involves making the initiative visible and creating staff awareness around it. Educate the organization on how the requirements gathering process will differ.

    People can be adverse to change and may be unreceptive to being told they must “comply” to new policies and procedures. Demonstrate the value in requirements gathering and show how it will assist people in their day-to-day activities.

    By demonstrating how an improved requirements gathering process will impact staff directly, you create a deeper level of understanding across lines-of-business, and ultimately a higher level of acceptance for new processes, rules, and guidelines.

    A proactive communication plan will:
    • Assist in overcoming issues with prioritization, alignment resourcing, and staff resistance.
    • Provide a formalized process for implementing new policies, rules, and guidelines.
    • Detail requirements gathering ownership and accountability for the entirety of the process.
    • Encourage acceptance and support of the initiative.

    Identify and analyze stakeholders to communicate the change process

    Who are the requirements gathering stakeholders?

    Stakeholder:

    • A stakeholder is any person, group, or organization who is the end user, owner, sponsor, or consumer of an IT project, change, or application.
    • When assessing an individual or group, ask whether they can impact or be impacted by any decision, change, or activity executed as part of the project. This might include individuals outside of the organization.

    Key Stakeholder:

    • Someone in a management role or someone with decision-making power who will be able to influence requirements and/or be impacted by project outcomes.

    User Group Representatives:

    • For impacted user groups, follow best practice and engage an individual to act as a representative. This individual will become the primary point of contact when making decisions that impact the group.

    Identify the reasons for resistance to change

    Stakeholders may resist change for a variety of reasons, and different strategies are necessary to address each.

    Unwilling – Individuals who are unwilling to change may need additional encouragement. For these individuals, you’ll need to reframe the situation and emphasize how the change will benefit them specifically.

    Unable – All involved requirements gathering will need some form of training on the process, committee roles, and responsibilities. Be sure to have training and support available for employees who need it and communicate this to staff.

    Unaware – Until people understand exactly what is going on, they will not be able to conform to the process. Communicate change regularly at the appropriate detail to encourage stakeholder support.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Resisters who have influence present a high risk to the implementation as they may encourage others to resist as well. Know where and why each stakeholder is likely to resist to mitigate risk. A detailed plan will ensure you have the needed documentation and communications to successfully manage stakeholder resistance.

    Identify and analyze stakeholders

    4.2.4 – 1 hour

    Input
    • Requirements gathering stakeholders list
    Output
    • Stakeholder power map
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • RGSC members

    Identify the impact and level of resistance of all stakeholders to come up with the right communication plan.

    1. Through discussion, generate a complete list of stakeholders for requirements gathering and record the names on the whiteboard or flip chart. Group related stakeholders together.
    2. Using the template on the next slide, draw the stakeholder power map.
    3. Evaluate each stakeholder on the list based on:
      1. Influence: To what degree can this stakeholder impact progress?
      2. Involvement: How involved is the stakeholder already?
      3. Support: Label supporters with green sticky notes, resisters with red notes, and the rest with a third color.
    4. Based on the assessment, write the stakeholder’s name on a green, red, or other colored sticky note, and place the sticky note in the appropriate place on the power map.
    5. For each of the stakeholders identified as resisters, determine why you think they would be resistant. Is it because they are unwilling, unable, and/or unknowing?
    6. Document changes to the stakeholder analysis in the Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template.

    Identify and analyze stakeholders

    4.2.4 – 1 hour

    Use a power map to plot key stakeholders according to influence and involvement.

    The image shows a power map, which is a square divided into 4 equally-sized sections, labelled from top left: Focused Engagement; Key Players; Keep Informed; Minimal Engagement. On the left side of the square, there is an arrow pointing upwards labelled Influence; at the bottom of the square, there is an arrow pointing right labelled Involvement. On the right side of the image, there is a legend indicating that a green dot indicates a Supporter; a grey dot indicated Neutral; and a red dot indicates a Resister.

    Example: Identify and analyze stakeholders

    Use a power map to plot key stakeholders according to influence and involvement.

    The image is the same power map image from the previous section, with some additions. A red dot is located at the top left, with a note: High influence with low involvement? You need a strategy to increase engagement. A green dot is located mid-high on the right hand side. Grey dots are located left and right in the bottom of the map. The bottom right grey dot has the note: High involvement with lower influence? Make sure to keep these stakeholders informed at regular intervals and monitor engagement.

    Stakeholder analysis: Reading the power map

    High Risk:

    Stakeholders with high influence who are not as involved in the project or are heavily impacted by the project are less likely to give feedback throughout the project lifecycle and need to be engaged. They are not as involved but have the ability to impact project success, so stay one step ahead.

    Do not limit your engagement to kick-off and close – you need to continue seeking input and support at all stages of the project.

    Mid Risk:

    Key players have high influence, but they are also more involved with the project or impacted by its outcomes and are thus easier to engage.

    Stakeholders who are heavily impacted by project outcomes will be essential to your organizational change management strategy. Do not wait until implementation to engage them in preparing the organization to accept the project – make them change champions.

    Low Risk:

    Stakeholders with low influence who are not impacted by the project do not pose as great of a risk, but you need to keep them consistently informed of the project and involve them at the appropriate control points to collect feedback and approval.

    Inputs to the communications plan

    Stakeholder analysis should drive communications planning.

    Identify Stakeholders
    • Who is impacted by this project?
    • Who can affect project outcomes?
    Assess Stakeholders
    • Influence
    • Involvement
    • Support
    Stakeholder Change Impact Assessment
    • Identify change supporters/resistors and craft change messages to foster acceptance.
    Stakeholder Register
    • Record assessment results and preferred methods of communication.
    The Communications Management Plan:
    • Who will receive information?
    • What information will be distributed?
    • How will information be distributed?
    • What is the frequency of communication?
    • What will the level of detail be?
    • Who is responsible for distributing information?

    Communicate the reason for the change and stay on message throughout the change

    Leaders of successful change spend considerable time developing a powerful change message: a compelling narrative that articulates the desired end state and makes the change concrete and meaningful to staff. They create the change vision with staff to build ownership and commitment.

    The change message should:

    • Explain why the change is needed.
    • Summarize the things that will stay the same.
    • Highlight the things that will be left behind.
    • Emphasize the things that are being changed.
    • Explain how the change will be implemented.
    • Address how the change will affect the various roles in the organization.
    • Discuss staff’s role in making the change successful.

    The five elements of communicating the reason for the change:

    COMMUNICATING THE CHANGE

    What is the change?

    Why are we doing it?

    How are we going to go about it?

    How long will it take us?

    What will the role be for each department and individual?

    Create a communications management plan

    4.2.5 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Exercise 4.1.1
    Output
    • Communications management plan
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    Participants
    • RGSC members

    Build the communications management plan around your stakeholders’ needs.

    1. Build a chart on the board using the template on the next slide.
    2. Using the list from exercise 4.1.1, brainstorm a list of communication vehicles that will need to be used as part of the rollout plan (e.g. status updates, training).
    3. Through group discussion, fill in all these columns for at least three communication vehicles:
      • (Target) audience
      • Purpose (description)
      • Frequency (of the communication)
        • The method, frequency, and content of communication vehicles will change depending on the stakeholder involved. This needs to be reflected by your plan. For example, you may have several rows for “Status Report” to cover the different stakeholders who will be receiving it.
      • Owner (of the message)
      • Distribution (method)
      • (Level of) details
        • High/medium/low + headings
    4. Document your stakeholder analysis in the Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template.

    Communications plan template

    4.2.5 – 45 minutes

    Sample communications plan: Status reports

    Vehicle Audience Purpose Frequency Owner Distribution Level of Detail
    Communications Guidelines
    • Regardless of complexity, it is important not to overwhelm stakeholders with information that is not relevant to them. Sending more detailed information than is necessary might mean that it does not get read.
    • Distributing reports too widely may lead to people assuming that someone else is reading it, causing them to neglect reading it themselves.
    • Only distribute reports to the stakeholders who need the information. Think about what information that stakeholder requires to feel comfortable.

    Example: Identify and analyze stakeholders

    Sample communications plan: Status reports

    Vehicle Audience Purpose Frequency Owner Distribution Level of Detail
    Status Report Sponsor Project progress and deliverable status Weekly Project Manager Email

    Details for

    • Milestones
    • Deliverables
    • Budget
    • Schedule
    • Issues
    Status Report Line of Business VP Project progress Monthly Project Manager Email

    High Level for

    • Major milestone update

    Build your requirements gathering process implementation timeline

    4.2.6 – 45 minutes

    Input
    • Parking lot items
    Output
    • Implementation timeline
    Materials
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Sticky notes
    Participants
    • RGSC members

    Build a high-level timeline for the implementation.

    1. Collect the action items identified throughout the week in the “parking lot.”
    2. Individually or in groups, brainstorm any additional action items. Consider communication, additional training required, approvals, etc.
      • Write these on sticky notes and add them to the parking lot with the others.
    3. As a group, start organizing these notes into logical groupings.
    4. Assign each of the tasks to a person or group.
    5. Identify any risks or dependencies.
    6. Assign each of the tasks to a timeline.
    7. Following the exercise, the facilitator will convert this into a Gantt chart using the roadmap for requirements gathering action plan.

    Step 3: Organize the action items into logical groupings

    4.2.6 – 45 minutes

    The image shows a board with 5 categories: Documentation, Approval, Communication, Process, and Training. There are groups of post-it notes under each category title.

    Steps 4-6: Organize the action items into logical groupings

    4.2.6 – 45 minutes

    This image shows a chart with Action Items to be listed in the left-most column, Person or Group Responsible in the next column, Risks/Dependencies in the next columns, and periods of time (i.e. 1-3 months, 2-6 months, etc.) in the following columns. The chart has been partially filled in as an exemplar.

    Recalculate the selected requirements gathering metrics

    Measure and monitor the benefits of requirements gathering optimization.

    • Reassess the list of selected and captured requirements management metrics.
    • Recalculate the metrics and analyze any changes. Don’t expect a substantial result after the first attempt. It will take a while for BAs to adjust to the Info-Tech Requirements Gathering Framework. After the third project, results will begin to materialize.
    • Understand that the project complexity and business significance will also affect how long it takes to see results. The ideal projects to beta the process on would be of low complexity and high business significance.
    • Realize that poor requirements gathering can have negative effects on the morale of BAs, IT, and project managers. Don’t forget to capture the impact of these through surveys.

    Major KPIs typically used for benchmarking include:

    • Number of application bugs/defects (for internally developed applications).
    • Number of support requests or help desk tickets for the application, controlled for user deployment levels.
    • Overall project cycle time.
    • Overall project cost.
    • Requirements gathering as a percentage of project time.

    Revisit the requirements gathering metrics selected in the planning phase and recalculate them after requirements gathering optimization has been attempted.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    4.2.1; 4.2.2; 4.2.3 – Build a requirements gathering steering committee

    The analyst will facilitate the discussion to define the purpose statement of the steering committee, build the participation list and authority matrix for its members, and define the procedures and agenda.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    4.2.4 Identify and analyze stakeholders

    An analyst will facilitate the discussion on how to identify the impact and level of resistance of all stakeholders to come up with the communication plan.

    4.2.5 Create a communications management plan

    An analyst will assist the team in building the communications management plan based on the stakeholders’ needs that were outlined in the stakeholder analysis exercise.

    4.2.6 Build a requirements gathering implementation timeline

    An analyst will facilitate a session to brainstorm and document any action items and build a high-level timeline for implementation.

    Insight breakdown

    Requirements gathering SOPs should be prescriptive based on project complexity.

    • Complex projects will require more analytical rigor. Simpler projects can be served by more straightforward techniques such as user stories.

    Requirements gathering management tools can be pricy, but they can also be beneficial.

    • Requirements gathering management tools are a great way to have full control over recording, analyzing, and categorizing requirements over complex projects.

    BAs can make or break the execution of the requirements gathering process.

    • A strong process still needs to be executed well by BAs with the right blend of skills and knowledge.

    Summary of accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • Best practices for each stage of the requirements gathering framework:
      • Elicitation
      • Analysis
      • Validation
    • A clear understanding of BA competencies and skill sets necessary to successfully execute the requirements gathering process.

    Processes Optimized

    • Stakeholder identification and management.
    • Requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation.
    • Requirements gathering governance.
    • Change control processes for new requirements.
    • Communication processes for requirements gathering.

    Deliverables Completed

    • SOPs for requirements gathering.
    • Project level selection framework.
    • Communications framework for requirements gathering.
    • Requirements documentation standards.

    Organizations and experts who contributed to this research

    Interviews

    • Douglas Van Gelder, IT Manager, Community Development Commission of the County of Los Angeles
    • Michael Lyons, Transit Management Analyst, Metropolitan Transit Authority
    • Ken Piddington, CIO, MRE Consulting
    • Thomas Dong, Enterprise Software Manager, City of Waterloo
    • Chad Evans, Director of IT, Ontario Northland
    • Three anonymous contributors

    Note: This research also incorporates extensive insights and feedback from our advisory service and related research projects.

    Bibliography

    “10 Ways Requirements Can Sabotage Your Projects Right From the Start.” Blueprint Software Systems, 2012. Web.

    “BPM Definition.” BPMInstitute.org, n.d. Web.

    “Capturing the Value of Project Management.” PMI’s Pulse of the Profession, 2015. Web.

    Eby, Kate. “Demystifying the 5 Phases of Project Management.” Smartsheet, 29 May 2019. Web.

    “Product Management: MoSCoW Prioritization.” ProductPlan, n.d. Web.

    “Projects Delivered on Time & on Budget Result in Larger Market Opportunities.” Jama Software, 2015. Web.

    “SIPOC Table.” iSixSigma, n.d. Web.

    “Survey Principles.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, n.d. Web.

    “The Standish Group 2015 Chaos Report.” The Standish Group, 2015. Web.

    Implement Lean Management Practices That Work

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    • Parent Category Name: Performance Measurement
    • Parent Category Link: /performance-measurement
    • Service delivery teams do not measure, or have difficulty demonstrating, the value they provide.
    • There is a lack of continuous improvement.
    • There is low morale within the IT teams leading to low productivity.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Create a problem-solving culture. Frequent problem solving is the differentiator between sustaining Lean or falling back to old management methods.
    • Commit to employee growth. Empower teams to problem solve and multiply your organizational effectiveness.

    Impact and Result

    • Apply Lean management principles to IT to create alignment and transparency and drive continuous improvement and customer value.
    • Implement huddles and visual management.
    • Build team capabilities.
    • Focus on customer value.
    • Use metrics and data to make better decisions.
    • Systematically solve problems and improve performance.
    • Develop an operating rhythm to promote adherence to Lean.

    Implement Lean Management Practices That Work Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how a Lean management system can help you increase transparency, demonstrate value, engage your teams and customers, continuously improve, and create alignment.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand Lean concepts

    Understand what a Lean management system is, review Lean philosophies, and examine simple Lean tools and activities.

    • Implement Lean Management Practices That Work – Phase 1: Understand Lean Concepts
    • Lean Management Education Deck

    2. Determine the scope of your implementation

    Understand the implications of the scope of your Lean management program.

    • Implement Lean Management Practices That Work – Phase 2: Determine the Scope of Your Implementation
    • Lean Management Scoping Tool

    3. Design huddle board

    Examine the sections and content to include in your huddle board design.

    • Implement Lean Management Practices That Work – Phase 3: Design Huddle Board
    • Lean Management Huddle Board Template

    4. Design Leader Standard Work and operating rhythm

    Determine the actions required by leaders and the operating rhythm.

    • Implement Lean Management Practices That Work – Phase 4: Design Leader Standard Work and Operating Rhythm
    • Leader Standard Work Tracking Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Implement Lean Management Practices That Work

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Understand Lean Concepts

    The Purpose

    Understand Lean management.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Gain a common understanding of Lean management, the Lean management thought model, Lean philosophies, huddles, visual management, team growth, and voice of customer.

    Activities

    1.1 Define Lean management in your organization.

    1.2 Create training materials.

    Outputs

    Lean management definition

    Customized training materials

    2 Understand Lean Concepts (Continued) and Determine Scope

    The Purpose

    Understand Lean management.

    Determine the scope of your program.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understand metrics and performance review.

    Understand problem identification and continuous improvement.

    Understand Kanban.

    Understand Leader Standard Work.

    Define the scope of the Lean management program.

    Activities

    2.1 Develop example operational metrics

    2.2 Simulate problem section.

    2.3 Simulate Kanban.

    2.4 Build scoping tool.

    Outputs

    Understand how to use operational metrics

    Understand problem identification

    Understand Kanban/daily tasks section

    Defined scope for your program

    3 Huddle Board Design and Huddle Facilitation Coaching

    The Purpose

    Design the sections and content for your huddle board.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Initial huddle board design.

    Activities

    3.1 Design and build each section in your huddle board.

    3.2 Simulate coaching conversations.

    Outputs

    Initial huddle board design

    Understanding of how to conduct a huddle

    4 Design and Build Leader Standard Work

    The Purpose

    Design your Leader Standard Work activities.

    Develop a schedule for executing Leader Standard Work.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Standard activities identified and documented.

    Sample schedule developed.

    Activities

    4.1 Identify standard activities for leaders.

    4.2 Develop a schedule for executing Leader Standard Work.

    Outputs

    Leader Standard Work activities documented

    Initial schedule for Leader Standard Work activities

    Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization

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    • Parent Category Name: Selection & Implementation
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    • Organizations are under continual pressure to deliver faster, with shorter time-to-market, while introducing new products and services at the same time.
    • You and your team have concerns that your existing portfolio of applications is not up to the task.
    • While you understand the need for more investments to modernize your portfolio, your leadership does not appreciate what is required.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Legacy modernization is a process, not a single event.
    • Your modernization approach requires you to understand your landscape and decide on a path that minimizes business continuity risks, keeps the investments under control, and is prepared for surprises but always has your final state in mind.

    Impact and Result

    • Evaluate the current state, develop a legacy application strategy, and execute in an agile manner.
    • When coupled with a business case and communications strategy, this approach gives the organization a clear decision-making framework that will maximize business outcomes and deliver value where needed.

    Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization Storyboard – Understand legacy application modernization in the context of your organization, assess your landscape of applications, and define prioritization and disposition.

    This blueprint provides the steps necessary to build your own enterprise application implementation playbook that can be deployed and leveraged by your implementation teams.

    • Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization Storyboard

    2. Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization Presentation Template – The key output from leveraging this research is a presentation to pitch the modernization process.

    Build a proposal deck to make the case for legacy application modernization for your stakeholders. This will contain a definition of what a legacy application is in the context of your organization, a list of candidate applications to modernize, and a disposition strategy for each selected application.

    • Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization

    Revamp your business potential to improve agility, security, and user experience while reducing costs.

    Analyst Perspective

    An old application may have served us reliably, but it can prevent us from pursuing future business needs.

    Legacy systems remain well-embedded in the fabric of many organizations' application portfolios. They were often custom-built to meet the needs of the business. Typically, these are core tools that the business leverages to accomplish its goals.

    A legacy application becomes something we need to address when it no longer supports our business goals, is no longer supportable, bears an unsustainable ownership cost, or poses a threat to the organization's cybersecurity or compliance.

    When approaching your legacy application strategy, you must navigate a complex web of business, stakeholder, software, hardware, resourcing, and financial decisions. To complicate matters, the full scope of required effort is not immediately clear. Years of development are embedded in these legacy applications, which must be uncovered and dealt with appropriately.

    IT leaders require a proactive approach for evaluating the current state, developing a legacy application strategy, and executing in an agile manner. When coupled with a business case and communications strategy, the organization will have a clear decision-making framework that will maximize business outcomes and deliver value where needed.

    Ricardo de Oliveira, Research Director, Enterprise Applications

    Ricardo de Oliveira
    Research Director, Enterprise Applications
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge Common Obstacles Info-Tech's Approach
    • Organizations face continual pressure to decrease time-to-market while also introducing new products and services.
    • You and your team have concerns that the existing application portfolio is not up to the task.
    • While you may understand the need for greater investment to modernize your portfolio, leadership does not appreciate what is required.
    • For well-established organizations, applications can have a long lifespan. Employees who are used to existing tools and processes often resist change.
    • Modernization plans can be substantial, but budget and resources are limited.
    • Poor documentation of legacy applications can make it challenging to know what to modernize and how to do it effectively.
    • There are concerns that any changes will have material impacts on business continuity.
    • Info-Tech will enable you to build a proposal deck to make the case for legacy application modernization for your stakeholders. This will assist with:
      • Defining what a legacy application is in the context of your organization.
      • Creating a list of candidate applications for modernization.
      • Articulating the right disposition strategy for each selected applications.
      • Laying out what is next on your modernization journey.

    Info-Tech Insight
    Legacy modernization is a process, not a single event. Your modernization approach requires you to understand your landscape and decide on a path that minimizes business continuity risks, keeps investments under control, and is prepared for surprises but always has your final state in mind.

    An approach to making the case for legacy application modernization

    Understand
    Assess the challenges, lay out the reasons, define your legacy, and prepare to remove the barriers to modernization.
    Assess
    Determine the benefits by business capability. Leverage APM foundations to select the candidate applications and prioritize.
    Legacy Application Modernization
    Define
    Use the prioritized application list to drive the next steps to modernization.

    Legacy application modernization is perceived as necessary to remain competitive

    The 2022 State CIO Survey by NASCIO shows that legacy application modernization jumped from fifth to second in state CIO priorities.

    "Be patient and also impatient. Patient because all states have a lot of legacy tech they are inheriting and government is NOT easy. But also, impatient because there is a lot to do - make your priorities clear but also find out what the CIO needs to accomplish those priorities."

    Source: NASCIO, 2022

    State CIO Priorities

    US government agencies feel pressured to deal with legacy applications

    In fiscal year 2021, the US government planned to spend over $100 billion on information technology. Most of that was to be used to operate and maintain existing systems, including legacy applications, which can be both more expensive to maintain and more vulnerable to hackers. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified:

    • 10 critical federal IT legacy systems
    • In operation between 8 and 51 years
    • Collectively cost $337 million per year to operate and maintain

    Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2021

    Example: In banking, modern platforms are essential

    Increasing competition from fintech 73% of financial services executives perceive retail banking as being the most susceptible to fintech disruption (PwC, 2016)
    Growing number of neo-banks The International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes the fast growth of fintech in financial services is creating systemic risk to global financial stability (IMF, 2022)
    Access to data and advanced analytics Estimated global bank revenue lost due to poor data is 15% to 25% (MIT, 2017)
    Shifting client expectations/demographics 50% of Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z use a digital bank to provide their primary checking account (Finextra, 2022)
    Generational transfer of wealth It is estimated that up to US$68 trillion in wealth will be transferred from baby boomers (Forbes, 2021)

    Case Study

    Delta takes off with a modernized blend of mainframes and cloud

    INDUSTRY: Transportation
    SOURCE: CIO Magazine, 2023

    Challenge
    The airline has hundreds of applications in the process of moving to the cloud, but most main capabilities are underpinned by workloads on the mainframe and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
    Some of those workloads include travel reservation systems and crew scheduling systems - mission-critical, 24/7 applications that are never turned off.
    Solution
    Delta has shifted to a hybrid architecture, with a customer experience transformation that makes the most of the cloud's agility and the mainframe's dependability.
    Delta's foray into the cloud began about two years ago as the pandemic brought travel to a virtual halt. The airline started migrating many front-end and distributed applications to the cloud while retaining traditional back-end workloads on the mainframe.
    Results
    Hybrid infrastructures are expected to remain in complex industries such as airlines and banking, where high availability and maximum reliability are non-negotiable.
    While some CIOs are sharpening their mainframe exit strategies by opting for a steep journey to the cloud, mainframes remain ideal for certain workloads.

    Phase 1: Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization

    Phase 1
    1.1 Understand your challenges
    1.2 Define legacy applications
    1.3 Assess your barriers
    1.4 Find the impacted capabilities
    1.5 Define candidate applications
    1.6 Now, Next, Later

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Understand your challenges with modernization
    • Define legacy applications in your context
    • Assess your barriers to modernization
    • Find the impacted capabilities and their benefits
    • Define candidate applications and dispositions

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Application group leaders
    • Individual application owners

    Adding the Right Value: Building Cloud Brokerages That Enable

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    In many cases, the answer is to develop a cloud brokerage to manage the complexity. But what should your cloud broker be delivering, and how?

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • To avoid failure, you need to provide security and compliance, but basic user satisfaction means becoming a frictionless intermediary.
    • Enabling brokers provide knowledge and guidance for the best usage of cloud.
    • While GCBs fill a critical role as a control point for IT consumption, they can easily turn into a friction point for IT projects. It’s important to find the right balance between enabling compliance and providing frictionless usability.

    Impact and Result

    • Avoid disintermediation.
    • Maintain compliance.
    • Leverage economies of scale.
    • Ensure architecture discipline.

    Adding the Right Value: Building Cloud Brokerages That Enable Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Build a Cloud Brokerage Deck – A guide to help you start designing a cloud brokerage that delivers value beyond gatekeeping.

    Define the value, ecosystem, and metrics required to add value as a brokerage. Develop a brokerage value proposition that aligns with your audience and capabilities. Define and rationalize the ecosystem of partners and value-add activities for your brokerage. Define KPIs that allow you to maximize and balance both usability and compliance.

    • Adding the Right Value: Building Cloud Brokerages That Enable Storyboard
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Adding the Right Value: Building Cloud Brokerages That Enable

    Considerations for implementing an institutional-focused cloud brokerage.

    Your Challenge

    Increasingly, large institutions and governments are adopting cloud-first postures for delivering IT resources. Combined with the growth of cloud offerings that are able to meet the certifications and requirements of this segment that has been driven by federal initiatives like Cloud-First in Canada and Cloud Smart in the United States, these two factors have left institutions (and the businesses that serve them) with the challenge of delivering cloud services to their users while maintaining compliance, control, and IT sanity.

    In many cases, the answer is to develop a cloud brokerage to manage the complexity. But what should your cloud broker be delivering and how?

    Navigating the Problem

    Not all cloud brokerages are the same. And while they can be an answer to cloud complexity, an ineffective brokerage can drain value and complicate operations even further. Cloud brokerages need to be designed:

    1. To deliver the right type of value to its users.
    2. To strike the balance between effective governance & security and flexibility & ease of use.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    By defining your end goals, framing solutions based on the type of value and rigor your brokerage needs to deliver, and focusing on the right balance of security and flexibility, you can deliver a brokerage that delivers the best of all worlds.

    1. Define the brokerage value you want to deliver.
    2. Build the catalog and partner ecosystem.
    3. Understand how to maximize adoption and minimize disintermediation while maintaining architectural discipline and compliance.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Sometimes a brokerage delivery model makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t! Understanding the value addition you want your brokerage to provide before creating it allows you to not only avoid pitfalls and maximize benefits but also understand when a brokerage model does and doesn’t make sense in the first place.

    Project Overview

    Understand what value you want your brokerage to deliver

    Different institutions want brokerage delivery for different reasons. It’s important to define up front why your users need to work through a brokerage and what value that brokerage needs to deliver.

    What’s in the catalog? Is it there to consolidate and simplify billing and consumption? Or does it add value further up the technology stack or value chain? If so, how does that change the capabilities you need internally and from partners?

    Security and compliance are usually the highest priority

    Among institutions adopting cloud, a broker that can help deliver their defined security and compliance standards is an almost universal requirement. Especially in government institutions, this can mean the need to meet a high standard in both implementation and validation.

    The good news is that even if you lack the complete set of skills in-house, the high certification levels available from hyperscale providers combined with a growing ecosystem of service providers working on these platforms means you can usually find the right partner(s) to make it possible.

    The real goal: frictionless intermediation and enablement

    Ultimately, if end users can’t get what they need from you, they will go around you to get it. This challenge, which has always existed in IT, is further amplified in a cloud service world that offers users a cornucopia of options outside the brokerage. Furthermore, cloud users expect to be able to consume IT seamlessly. Without frictionless satisfaction of user demand your brokerage will become disintermediated, which risks your highest priorities of security and compliance.

    Understand the evolution: Info-Tech thought model

    While initial adoption of cloud brokerages in institutions was focused on ensuring the ability of IT to extend its traditional role as gatekeeper to the realm of cloud services, the focus has now shifted upstream to enabling ease of use and smart adoption of cloud services. This is evidenced clearly in examples like the US government’s renaming of its digital strategy from “Cloud First” to “Cloud Smart” and has been mirrored in other regions and institutions.

    Info-Tech Insights

    To avoid failure, you need to provide security and compliance.

    Basic user satisfaction means becoming a frictionless intermediary.

    Exceed expectations! Enabling brokers provide knowledge and guidance for the best usage of cloud.

    • Security & Compliance
    • Frictionless Intermediation
    • Cloud-Enabling Brokerage

    Define the role of a cloud broker

    Where do brokers fit in the cloud model?

    • NIST Definition: An entity that manages the use, performance, and delivery of cloud services and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers.
    • Similar to a telecom master agent, a cloud broker acts as the middle-person and end-user point of contact, consolidating the management of underlying providers.
    • A government or institutional cloud broker (GCB) is responsible for the delivery of all cloud services consumed by the departments or agencies it supports or that are mandated to use it.

    Balancing governance and agility

    Info-Tech Insight

    While GCBs fill a critical role as a control point for IT consumption, they can easily turn into a friction point for IT projects. It’s important to find the right balance between enabling compliance and providing frictionless usability.

    Model brokerage drivers and benefits

    Reduced costs: Security through standardization: Frictionless consumption: Avoid disinter-mediation; Maintain compliance; Leverage economies of scale; Ensure architecture discipline

    Maintain compliance and ensure architecture discipline: Brokerages can be an effective gating point for ensuring properly governed and managed IT consumption that meets the specific regulations and compliances required for an institution. It can also be a strong catalyst and enabler for moving to even more effective cloud consumption through automation.

    Avoid disintermediation: Especially in institutions, cloud brokers are a key tool in the fight against disintermediation – that is, end users circumventing your IT department’s procurement and governance by consuming an ad hoc cloud service.

    Leverage economies of scale: Simply put, consolidation of your cloud consumption drives effectiveness by making the most of your buying power.

    Info-Tech Insights

    Understanding the importance of each benefit type to your brokerage audience will help you define the type of brokerage you need to build and what skills and partners will be required to deliver the right value.

    The brokerage landscape

    The past ten years have seen governments and institutions evolve from basic acceptance of cloud services to the usage of cloud as the core of most IT initiatives.

    • As part of this evolution, many organizations now have well-defined standards and guidance for the implementation, procurement, and regulation of cloud services for their use.
    • Both Canada (Strategic Plan for Information Management and Information Technology) and the United States (Cloud Smart – formerly known as Cloud First) have recently updated their guidance on adoption of cloud services. The Australian Government has also recently updated its Cloud Computing Policy.
    • AWS and Azure both now claim Full FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) certification.
    • This has not only enabled easy adoption of these core hyperscale cloud service by government but also driven the proliferation of a large ecosystem of FedRAMP-authorized cloud service providers.
    • This trend started with government at the federal level but has cascaded downstream to provincial and municipal governments globally, and the same model seems likely to be adopted by other governments and other institution types over time.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The ecosystem of platforms and tools has grown significantly and examples of best practices, especially in government, are readily available. Once you’ve defined your brokerage’s value stance, the building blocks you need to deliver often don’t need to be built from scratch.

    Address the unique challenges of business-led IT in institutions

    With the business taking more accountability and management of their own technology, brokers must learn how to evolve from being gatekeepers to enablers.

    This image This lists the Cons of IT acting as a gatekeeper providing oversight, and the Pros of IT acting as an Enabler in an IT Partnership.  the Cons are: Restrict System Access; Deliver & Monitor Applications; Own Organizational Risk; Train the Business.  The Pros are: Manage Role-Based Access; Deliver & Monitor Platforms; Share Organizational Risk; Coach & Mentor the Business

    Turn brokerage pitfalls into opportunities

    The greatest risks in using a cloud broker come from its nature as a single point of distribution for service and support. Without resources (or automation) to enable scale, as well as responsive processes for supporting users in finding the right services and making those services available through the brokerage, you will lose alignment with your users’ needs, which inevitably leads to disintermediation, loss of IT control, and broken compliance

    Info-Tech Insights

    Standardization and automation are your friend when building a cloud brokerage! Sometimes this means having a flexible catalog of options and configurations, but great brokerages can deliver value by helping their users redefine and evolve their workloads to work more effectively in the cloud. This means providing guidance and facilitating the landing/transformation of users’ workloads in the cloud, the right way.

    Challenges Impact
    • Single point of failure
    • Managing capacity
    • Alignment of brokerage with underlying agencies
    • Additional layer of complexity
    • Inability to deliver service
    • Disintermediation
    • Broken security/compliance
    • Loss of cost control/purchasing power

    Validate your cloud brokerage strategy using Info-Tech’s approach

    Value Definition

    • Define your brokerage type and value addition

    Capabilities Mapping

    • Understand the partners and capabilities you need to be able to deliver

    Measuring Value

    • Define KPIs for both compliant delivery and frictionless intermediation

    Provide Cloud Excellence

    • Move from intermediation to enablement and help users land on the cloud the right way

    Define the categories for your brokerage’s benefit and value

    Depending on the type of brokerage, the value delivered may be as simple as billing consolidation, but many brokerages go much deeper in their value proposition.

    This image depicts a funnel, where the following inputs make up the Broker Value: Integration, Interface and Management Enhancement; User Identity and Risk Management/ Security & Compliance; Cost & Workload Efficiency, Service Aggregation

    Define the categories of brokerage value to add

    • Purchasing Agents save the purchaser time by researching services from different vendors and providing the customer with information about how to use cloud computing to support business goals.
    • Contract Managers may also be assigned power to negotiate contracts with cloud providers on behalf of the customer. In this scenario, the broker may distribute services across multiple vendors to achieve cost-effectiveness, while managing the technical and procurement complexity of dealing with multiple vendors.
      • The broker may provide users with an application program interface (API) and user interface (UI) that hides any complexity and allows the customer to work with their cloud services as if they were being purchased from a single vendor. This type of broker is sometimes referred to as a cloud aggregator.
    • Cloud Enablers can also provide the customer with additional services, such as managing the deduplication, encryption, and cloud data transfer and assisting with data lifecycle management and other activities.
    • Cloud Customizers integrate various underlying cloud services for customers to provide a custom offering under a white label or its own brand.
    • Cloud Agents are essentially the software version of a Contract Manager and act by automating and facilitating the distribution of work between different cloud service providers.

    Info-Tech Insights

    Remember that these categories are general guidelines! Depending on the requirements and value a brokerage needs to deliver, it may fit more than one category of broker type.

    Brokerage types and value addition

    Info-Tech Insights

    Each value addition your brokerage invests in delivering should tie to reinforcing efficiency, compliance, frictionlessness, or enablement.

    Value Addition Purchasing Agent Contract Manager Cloud Enabler Cloud Customizer Cloud Agent
    Underlying service selection

    Standard Activity

    Standard Activity Standard Activity Standard Activity Common Activity
    Support and info Standard Activity

    Common Activity

    Standard Activity Standard Activity Common Activity
    Contract lifecycle (pricing/negotiation) Standard Activity Common Activity Standard Activity
    Workload distribution (to underlying services) (aggregation) Common Activity Standard Activity Standard Activity Standard Activity
    Value-add or layered on services Standard Activity Common Activity
    Customization/integration of underlying services Standard Activity
    Automated workload distribution (i.e. software) Standard Activity

    Start by delivering value in these common brokerage service categories

    Security & Compliance

    • Reporting & Auditing
    • SIEM & SOC Services
    • Patching & Monitoring

    Cost Management

    • Right-Sizing
    • Billing Analysis
    • Anomaly Detection & Change Recommendations

    Data Management

    • Data Tiering
    • Localization Management
    • Data Warehouse/Lake Services

    Resilience & Reliability

    • Backup & Archive
    • Replication & Sync
    • DR & HA Management
    • Ransomware Prevention/Mitigation

    Cloud-Native & DevOps Enablement

    • Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
    • DevOps Tools & Processes
    • SDLC Automation Tools

    Design, Transformation, and Integration

    • CDN Integration
    • AI Tools Integration
    • SaaS Customizations

    Activity: Brokerage value design

    Who are you and who are you building this for?

    • Internal brokerage (i.e. you are a department in an organization that is tasked with providing IT resources to other internal groups)
      • No profit motivation
      • Primary goal is to maintain compliance and avoid disintermediation
    • Third-party brokerage (i.e. you are an MSP that needs to build a brokerage to provide a variety of downstream services and act as the single point of consumption for an organization)
      • Focus on value-addition to the downstream services you facilitate for your client
      • Increased requirement to quickly add new partners/services from downstream as required by your client

    What requirements and pains do you need to address?

    • Remember that in the world of cloud, users ultimately can go around IT to find the resources and tools they want to use. In short, if you don’t provide ease and value, they will get it somewhere else.
    • Assess the different types of cloud brokerages out there as a guide to what sort of value you want to deliver.

    Why are you creating a brokerage? There are several categories of driver and more than one may apply.

    • Compliance and security gating/validation
    • Cost consolidation and governance
    • Value-add or feature enhancement of raw/downstream services being consumed

    It’s important to clearly understand how best you can deliver unique value to ensure that they want to consume from you.

    This is an image of a Venn diagram between the following: Who are you trying to serve?; Why and how are you uniquely positioned to deliver?; What requirements do they have and what pain points can you help solve?.  Where all three circles overlap is the Brokerage Value Proposition.

    Understand the ecosystem you’ll require to deliver value

    GCB

    • Enabling Effectiveness
    • Cost Governance
    • Adoption and User Satisfaction
    • Security & Compliance

    Whatever value proposition and associated services your brokerage has defined, either internal resources or additional partners will be required to run the platform and processes you want to offer on top of the defined base cloud platforms.

    Info-Tech Insights

    Remember to always align your value adds and activities to the four key themes:

    • Efficiency
    • Compliance
    • Frictionlessness
    • Cloud Enablement

    Delivering value may require an ecosystem

    The additional value your broker delivers will depend on the tools and services you can layer on top of the base cloud platform(s) you support.

    In many cases, you may require different partners to fulfil similar functions across different base platforms. Although this increases complexity for the brokerage, it’s also a place where additional value can be delivered to end users by your role as a frictionless intermediary.

    Base Partner/Platform

    • Third-party software & platforms
    • Third-party automations & integrations
    • Third-party service partners
    • Internal value-add functions

    Build the ecosystem you need for your value proposition

    Leverage partners and automation to bake compliance in.

    Different value-add types (based on the category/categories of broker you’re targeting) require different additional platforms and partners to augment the base cloud service you’re brokering.

    Security & Config

    • IaC Tools
    • Cloud Resource Configuration Validation
    • Templating Tools
    • Security Platforms
    • SDN and Networking Platforms
    • Resilience (Backup/Replication/DR/HA) Platforms
    • Data & Storage Management
    • Compliance and Validation Platforms & Partners

    Cost Management

    • Subscription Hierarchy Management
    • Showback and Chargeback Logic
    • Cost Dashboarding and Thresholding
    • Governance and Intervention

    Adoption & User Satisfaction

    • Service Delivery SLAs
    • Support Process & Tools
    • Capacity/Availability Management
    • Portal Usability/UX

    Speed of Evolution

    • Partner and Catalog/Service Additions
    • Broker Catalog Roadmapping
    • User Request Capture (new services)
    • User Request Capture (exceptions)

    Build your features and services lists

    Incorporate your end user, business, and IT perspectives in defining the list of mandatory and desired features of your target solution.

    See our Implement a Proactive and Consistent Vendor Selection Process blueprint for information on procurement practices, including RFP templates.

    End User

    • Visual, drag-and-drop models to define data models, business logic, and user interfaces
    • One-click deployment
    • Self-healing application
    • Vendor-managed infrastructure
    • Active community and marketplace
    • Prebuilt templates and libraries
    • Optical character recognition and natural language processing

    Business

    • Audit and change logs
    • Theme and template builder
    • Template management
    • Knowledgebase and document management
    • Role-based access
    • Business value, operational costs, and other KPI monitoring
    • Regulatory compliance
    • Consistent design and user experience across applications
    • Business workflow automation

    IT

    • Application and system performance monitoring
    • Versioning and code management
    • Automatic application and system refactoring and recovery
    • Exception and error handling
    • Scalability (e.g. load balancing) and infrastructure management
    • Real-time debugging
    • Testing capabilities
    • Security management
    • Application integration management

    Understand the stakeholders

    Hyperscale Platform/Base Platform: Security; Compliance and Validation;Portal/Front-End; Cost Governance; Broker Value Add(s)

    Depending on the value-add(s) you are trying to deliver, as well as the requirements from your institution(s), you will have a different delineation of responsibilities for each of the value-add dimensions. Typically, there will be at least three stakeholders whose role needs to be considered for each dimension:

    • Base Cloud Provider
    • Third-Party Platforms/Service Providers
    • Internal Resources

    Info-Tech Insights

    It’s important to remember that the ecosystem of third-party options available to you in each case will likely be dependent on if a given partner operates or supports your chosen base provider.

    Define the value added by each stakeholder in your value chain

    Value Addition Cost Governance Security & Compliance Adoption and User Satisfaction New Service Addition Speed End-User Cloud Effectiveness
    Base platform(s)
    Third party
    Internal

    A basic table of the stakeholders and platforms involved in your value stream is a critical tool for aligning activities and partners with brokerage value.

    Remember to tie each value-add category you’re embarking on to at least one of the key themes!

    Cost Governance → Efficiency

    Security & Compliance → Compliance

    Adoption & User Satisfaction → Frictionlessness

    New Service Addition Responsiveness → Frictionlessness, Enablement

    End-User Cloud Effectiveness → Enablement

    Info-Tech Insights

    The expectations for how applications are consumed and what a user experience should look like is increasingly being guided by the business and by the disintermediating power of the cloud-app ecosystem.

    “Enabling brokers” help embrace business-led IT

    In environments where compliance and security are a must, the challenges of handing off application management to the business are even more complex. Great brokers learn to act not just as a gatekeeper but an enabler of business-led IT.

    Business Empowerment

    Organizations are looking to enhance their Agile and BizDevOps practices by shifting traditional IT practices left and toward the business.

    Changing Business Needs

    Organizational priorities are constantly changing. Cost reduction opportunities and competitive advantages are lost because of delayed delivery of features.

    Low Barrier to Entry

    Low- and no-code development tools, full-stack solutions, and plug-and-play architectures allow non-technical users to easily build and implement applications without significant internal technical support or expertise.

    Democratization of IT

    A wide range of digital applications, services, and information are readily available and continuously updated through vendor and public marketplaces and open-source communities.

    Technology-Savvy Business

    The business is motivated to learn more about the technology they use so that they can better integrate it into their processes.

    Balance usability and compliance: accelerate cloud effectiveness

    Move to being an accelerator and an enabler! Rather than creating an additional layer of complexity, we can use the abstraction of a cloud brokerage to bring a wide variety of value-adds and partners into the ecosystem without increasing complexity for end users.

    Manage the user experience

    • Your portal is a great source of data for optimizing user adoption and satisfaction.
    • Understand the KPIs that matter to your clients or client groups from both a technical and a service perspective.

    Be proactive and responsive in meeting changing needs

    • Determine dashboard consumption by partner view.
    • Regularly review and address the gaps in your catalog.
    • Provide an easy mechanism for adding user-demanded services.

    Think like a service provider

    • You do need to be able to communicate and even market internally new services and capabilities as you add them or people won't know to come to you to use them.
    • It's also critical in helping people move along the path to enablement and knowing what might be possible that they hadn't considered.

    Provide cloud excellence functions

    Enablement Broker

    • Mentorship & Training
      • Build the skills, knowledge, and experiences of application owners and managers with internal and external expertise.
    • Organizational Change Leadership
      • Facilitate cultural, governance, and other organizational changes through strong relationships with business and IT leadership.
    • Good Delivery Practices & Thinking
      • Develop, share, and maintain a toolkit of good software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices and techniques.
    • Knowledge Sharing
      • Centralize a knowledgebase of up-to-date and accurate documentation and develop community forums to facilitate knowledge transfer.
    • Technology Governance & Leadership
      • Implement the organizational standards, policies, and rules for all applications and platforms and coordinate growth and sprawl.
    • Shared Services & Integrations
      • Provide critical services and integrations to support end users with internal resources or approved third-party providers and partners.

    Gauge value with the right metrics

    Focus your effort on measuring key metrics.

    Category

    Purpose

    Examples

    Business Value – The amount of value and benefits delivered. Justify the investment and impact of the brokerage and its optimization to business operations. ROI, user productivity, end-user satisfaction, business operational costs, error rate
    Application Quality – Satisfaction of application quality standards. Evaluate organizational effort to address and maximize user satisfaction and adoption rates. Adoption rate, usage friction metrics, user satisfaction metrics
    Delivery Effectiveness – The delivery efficiency of changes. Enable members to increase their speed to effective deployment, operation, and innovation on cloud platforms. Speed of deployment, landing/migration success metrics

    Determine measures that demonstrate the value of your brokerage by aligning it with your quality definition, value drivers, and users’ goals and objectives. Recognize that your journey will require constant monitoring and refinement to adjust to situations that may arise as you adopt new products, standards, strategies, tactics, processes, and tools.

    Activity Output

    Ultimately, the goal is designing a brokerage that can evolve from gatekeeping to frictionless intermediation to cloud enablement.

    Maintain focus on the value proposition, your brokerage ecosystem, and the metrics that represent enablement for your users and avoid pitfalls and challenges from the beginning.

    Activity: Define your brokerage type and value addition; Understand the partners and capabilities you need to be able to deliver; Define KPIs for both delivery (compliance) and adoption (frictionlessness); Output: GCB Strategy Plan; Addresses: Why and when you should build a GCB; How to avoid pitfalls; How to maximize benefits; How to maximize responsiveness and user satisfaction; How to roadmap and add services with agility.

    Appendix

    Related blueprints and tools

    Document Your Cloud Strategy

    This blueprint covers aligning your value proposition with general cloud requirements.

    Define Your Digital Business Strategy

    Phase 1 of this research covers identifying value chains to be transformed.

    Embrace Business-Managed Applications

    Phase 1 of this research covers understanding the business-managed applications as a factor in developing a frictionless intermediary model.

    Implement a Proactive and Consistent Vendor Selection Process

    This blueprint provides information on partner selection and procurement practices, including RFP templates.

    Bibliography

    “3 Types of Cloud Brokers That Can Save the Cloud.” Cloud Computing Topics, n.d. Web.

    Australian Government Cloud Computing Policy. Government of Australia, October 2014. Web.

    “Cloud Smart Policy Overview.” CIO.gov, n.d. Web.

    “From Cloud First to Cloud Smart.” CIO.gov, n.d. Web.

    Gardner, Dana. “Cloud brokering: Building a cloud of clouds.” ZDNet, 22 April 2011. Web.

    Narcisi, Gina. “Cloud, Next-Gen Services Help Master Agents Grow Quickly And Beat 'The Squeeze' “As Connectivity Commissions Decline.” CRN, 14 June 2017. Web.

    Smith, Spencer. “Asigra calls out the perils of cloud brokerage model.” TechTarget, 28 June 2019. Web.

    Tan, Aaron. “Australia issues new cloud computing guidelines.” TechTarget, 27 July 2020. Web.

    The European Commission Cloud Strategy. ec.europa.eu, 16 May 2019. Web.

    “TrustRadius Review: Cloud Brokers 2022.” TrustRadius, 2022. Web.

    Yedlin, Debbie. “Pros and Cons of Using a Cloud Broker.” Technology & Business Integrators, 17 April 2015. Web.

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

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    • Parent Category Name: Marketing Solutions
    • Parent Category Link: /marketing-solutions
    • A weak or poorly defined Go-to-Market strategy is often the root cause of slow product revenue growth or missed product revenue targets.
    • Many agile-driven product teams rush to release, skipping key GTM steps leaving Sales and Marketing misaligned and not ready to fully monetize precious product investments.
    • Guessing at buyer persona and journey or competitive SWOT analyses – two key deliverables of an effective GTM strategy – cause poor marketing and sales outcomes.
    • Without the sales and product-aligned business case for launch called for in a successful GTM strategy, companies see low buyer adoption, wasted sales and marketing investments, and a failure to claim product and launch campaign success.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Having an updated and compelling Go-to-Market strategy is a critical capability – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development, given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.
    • Establishing alignment through the GTM process builds long-term operational strength.
    • With a sound GTM strategy, marketers give themselves a 50% greater chance of product launch success.

    Impact and Result

    • Align stakeholders on a common vision and execution plan prior to the Build and Launch phases.
    • Build a foundation of buyer and competitive understanding to drive a successful product hypothesis, then validate with buyers.
    • Deliver a team-aligned launch plan that enables launch readiness and outlines commercial success.

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Research & Tools

    Build Your Go-to-Market Strategy

    Use this storyboard and its deliverables to build a baseline market, understand your buyer, and gain competitive insights. It will also help you design your initial product and business case, and align stakeholder plans to prep for build.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy – Executive Brief

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      Please enter your email and a few details and you're on your way to an efficient process.

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    • Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy – Phases 1-3
    • Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template
    • Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook
    • Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook
    • Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Infographic

    Workshop: Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Align on GTM Vision & Plan, Craft Initial Strategy

    The Purpose

    Align on GTM vision and plan; craft initial strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Confidence that market opportunity is sufficient.

    Deeper buyer understanding to drive product design and messaging and launch campaign asset design.

    Steering committee approval for next phase.

    Activities

    1.1 Outline a vision for GTM, roles required, identify Steering Committee lead, workstream leads, and teams.

    1.2 Capture GTM strategy hypothesis by working through initial draft of the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation and business case.

    1.3 Capture team knowledge on buyer persona and journey and competitive SWOT.

    1.4 Identify info./data gaps, sources, and plan for capturing/gathering including buyer interviews.

    Outputs

    Documented Steering Committee and Working team.

    Aligned on GTM vision and process.

    Documented buyer persona and journey. Competitive SWOT analysis.

    Document team knowledge on initial GTM strategy, buyer personas, and business case.

    2 Identify Initial Business Case, Sales Forecast, and Launch Plan

    The Purpose

    Identify Initial Business Case, Sales Forecast, and Launch Plan.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Confidence in size of market opportunity.

    Alignment of Sales and Product on product forecast.

    Assessment of marketing tech stack.

    Initial business case.

    Activities

    2.1 Size Product Market Opportunity and initial revenue forecast.

    2.2 Craft initial product hypothesis from buyer interviews including feature priorities, pricing, packaging, competitive differentiation, channel/route to market.

    2.3 Craft initial launch campaign, product release and sales and CX readiness plans.

    2.4 Identify launch budgets across each investment area.

    2.5 Discuss initial product launch business case and key activities.

    Outputs

    Product Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM) and Total Available Market (TAM).

    Definition of product-market fit, uniqueness, and competitive differentiation.

    Preliminary campaign, targets, and readiness plans.

    Incremental budgets for each key stakeholder area.

    Preliminary product launch business case.

    3 Develop Launch Plans (I of II)

    The Purpose

    Develop final Launch plans and budgets in product and marketing.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Align Product release/launch plans with the marketing campaign for launch.

    Understand incremental budgets from product and marketing for launch.

    Activities

    3.1 Apply product interviews to scope, MVP, roadmap, competitive differentiation, pricing, feature prioritization, routes to market, and sales forecast.

    3.2 Develop a more detailed launch campaign plan complete with asset-types, messaging, digital plan to support buyer journey, media buy plan and campaign metrics.

    Outputs

    Minimally Viable Product defined with feature prioritization. Product competitive differentiation documented Routes to market identified Sales forecast aligned with product team expectations.

    Marketing campaign launch plan Content marketing asset-creation/acquisition plan Campaign targets and metrics.

    4 Develop Launch Plans (II of II)

    The Purpose

    Develop final Launch Plans and budgets for remaining areas.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Align Product release/launch plans with the marketing campaign for launch.

    Understand incremental budgets from Product and Marketing for launch.

    Activities

    4.1 Develop detailed launch/readiness plans with final budgets for: Sales enablement , Sales training, Tech stack, Customer onboarding & success, Product marketing, AR, PR, Corp Comms/Internal Comms, Customer Events, Employee Events, etc.

    Outputs

    Detailed launch plans, budgets for Product Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and AR/PR/Corp. Comms.

    5 Present Final Business Case

    The Purpose

    To gain approval to move to Build and Launch phases.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Align business case with Steering Committee expectations

    Approvals to Build and Launch targeted offering

    Activities

    5.1 Review final launch/readiness plans with final budgets for all key areas.

    5.2 Move all key findings into Steering Committee presentation slides.

    5.3 Present to Steering Committee; receive feedback.

    5.4 Incorporate Steering Committee feedback; update finial business case.

    Outputs

    Combined budgets across all areas. Final launch/readiness plans.

    Final Steering Committee-facing slides.

    Final approvals for Build and Launch.

    Further reading

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    Maximize GTM success through deeper market and buyer understanding and competitive differentiation and launch team readiness that delivers target revenues.

    Table of Contents

    Section Title
    1 Executive Brief
    • Executive Summary
    • Analyst Perspective
    • Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy critical success factors
    • Key GTM challenges
    • Essential deliverables for GTM success
    • Benefits of a more effective GTM Strategy
    • Our methodology to support your success
    • Insight Summary
    • Blueprint deliverables and guided implementation steps
    2 Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights
    • Establish your team
    • Build buyer personas and journeys – develop initial messaging
    • Build initial product hypothesis
    • Size product market opportunity
    • Outline your key tech, app, and digital requirements
    • Develop your competitive differentiation
    • Select routes to market
    3 Design initial product and business case
    • Branding check
    • Formulate packaging and pricing
    • Craft buyer-valid product concept
    • Build campaign plan and targets
    • Develop budgets for creative, content, and media purchases
    • Draft product business case
    • Update GTM Strategy deck
    4 Align stakeholder plans to prep for build
    • Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases
    • Outline sales enablement and customer success plan
    • Build awareness plan
    • Finalize business case
    • Final GTM plan deck

    Executive Brief

    Analyst Perspective

    Go-to-Market Strategy.

    A successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy aligns marketing, product, sales and customer success, sees decision making based on deep buyer understanding, and tests many basic assumptions often overlooked in today’s agile-driven product development/management environment.

    The disciplines you build using our methodology will not only support your team’s effort building and launching more successful products, but also can be modified for use in other strategic initiatives such as branding, M&A integration, expanding into new markets, and other initiatives that require a cross-functional and multidisciplined process.

    Photo of Jeff Golterman, Managing Director, SoftwareReviews Advisory.

    Jeff Golterman
    Managing Director
    SoftwareReviews Advisory

    Executive Summary

    An ineffective go-to-market strategy is often a root cause of:
    • Failure to attain new product revenue targets.
    • A loss of customer focus and poor new product/feature release buyer adoption.
    • Product releases misaligned with marketing, sales, and customer success readiness.
    • Low win rates compared to key competitors’.
    • Low contact-to-lead conversion rates.
    • Loss of executive/investor support for further new product development and marketing investments.
    Hurdles to go-to-market success include:
    • An unclear product-market opportunity.
    • A lack of well defined and prioritized buyer personas and needs that are well understood.
    • Poor competitive analysis that fails to pinpoint key areas of competitive differentiation.
    • Guessing at buyer journey and buyer-described ideal engagement within your lead gen engine.
    • A business case that calls for levels of customer value delivery (vs. feature MVPs) that can actually deliver wins and targeted revenue goals.
    Apply SoftwareReviews approach for greater GTM success.

    Our blueprint is designed to help you:

    • Align stakeholders on a common vision and execution plan prior to the build and launch phases.
    • Build a foundation of buyer and competitive understanding to drive a successful product hypothesis, then validate with buyers.
    • Deliver a team-aligned launch plan that enables launch readiness and outlines commercial success.

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    Creating a compelling go-to-market strategy, and keeping it current, is a critical software company function – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development – given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.

    Go-to-Market Strategy Critical Success Factors

    Your GTM Strategy is where a multi-disciplined team builds a strong foundation for overall product plan, build, launch, and manage success

    A GTM Strategy is not all art and not all science but requires both. Software leaders will establish a set of core capabilities upon which they will plan, build, launch and manage product success. Executives, when resourcing their GTM strategies, will begin with:
    • Strong Program Leadership – An experienced Program Manager will guide the team through each step of GTM Strategy and test team readiness before advancing to the next step.
    • Few Shortcuts – Successful teams will have navigated the process through all steps together at least once. Then future launches can skip steps where prior decisions still hold.
    • Stakeholder Buy-In – Strong collaboration among Sales, Marketing, and Product wins the day.
    • Strong Team Skills – Success depends on having the right talent, making the right decisions, and delivering the right outcomes enabled with the right set of technologies and integrated to reach the right buyers at the right moment.
    • Discipline and perseverance – Given that GTM Strategy is not easy, it’s not surprising that 75% of marketers cite a significant level of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of their GTM plan, build, and launch phases.
    Diagram titled 'Go-to-Market Phases' with phases 'Manage', 'Launch', 'Build', and highlighted as 'This blueprint focus': 'Plan'.

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Marketers who get GTM Strategy “right” give themselves a 50% greater chance of Build and Launch success.

    Sample of the 'PLAN' section of the GTM Strategy optimization diagram shown later.

    Go-to-Market Success is Challenging

    Getting GTM right is like winning an Olympic first-place crew finish. It takes teamwork, practice, and well-functioning tools and equipment.

    Stock image of a rowing team.

    • The goal of any Go-to-Marketing Strategy is not only to do it right once, but to do it over and over consistently.
    • A lack of GTM consistency often results in decelerating growth, and a weak GTM Strategy is likely the root cause when companies observe any of the following challenges:
      • Product opportunity is unclear and well-defined business cases are lacking
      • Buyer adoption slows of new features and launch revenue targets are missed
      • Sales and marketing are not ready when development releases new features
      • Sales win/loss ratios drop as customers tell us products are not competitively differentiated
      • Loss of executive support for new product investments
    • A company experiencing any one of these symptoms will find a remedy in plugging gaps in the way they Go-to-Market.

    “Figuring out a Go-to-Market approach is no trivial exercise – it separates the companies that will be successful and sustainable from those that won’t.” (Harvard Business Review)

    Slowing growth may be due to missing GTM Strategy essentials

    Marketers – Large and Small – will further test their GTM Strategy strength by asking “Are we missing any of the following?”

    • Product, Marketing, and Sales Alignment
    • Buyer personas and journeys
    • Product market opportunity size
    • Competitively differentiated product hypothesis
    • Buyer validated commercial concept
    • Sales revenue plan and program cost budget
    • Compelling business case for build and launch

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:

    Marketers will go through the GTM Strategy process together across all disciplines at least once in order to establish a consistent process, make key foundational decisions (e.g. tech stack, channel strategy, pricing structure, etc.), and assess strengths and weaknesses to be addressed. Future releases to existing products don’t need to be re-thought but instead check-listed against prior foundational decisions.

    Is Your GTM Strategy Led and Staffed Properly?

    Staffing tree outlining GTM Strategy essentials. At the top are 'Steering Committee: CEO/GM in larger company, CFO/Senior Finance, Key functional leaders'. Next is 'Program Manager: Leads the GTM program. Workstream leads are “dotted line” for the program.' Followed by 'Workstream Leads: (PM) Product Marketing – Program leadership, (PD) Product Mgt. – Aligned with PM, (MO) Marketing Ops – SMB optional, (BR) Branding/Creative – SMB optional, (CI) Competitive Intel. – SMB optional, (DG) Demand Gen./Field Marketing. – crucial, (SE) Sales Enablement – crucial, (PR) PR/AR/Comms – SMB optional, and (CS) Customer Success – SMB optional'. In a 'Large Enterprise' each role is assigned to a separate person, but in a 'Small' Enterprise each person has multiple roles. 'SMB – as employees wear many hats, teams comprise members with requisite skills vs. specific roles/titles.'

    Benefits of a more effective go-to-market strategy

    Our research shows a more effective GTM Strategy delivers key benefits, including:
    • Increased product development ROI – with a finance-aligned business case, a buyer-validated value proposition, and the readiness of marketing and sales to product launch.
    • Launch campaign effectiveness – increases dramatically when messaging resonates with buyers and where they are in their journey.
    • Seller effectiveness – increases with buyer validated value proposition, competitive differentiation, and the ability to articulate to buyers.
    • Executive support – is achieved when an aligned sales, marketing, and product team proves consistent in delivering against release targets over and over again.

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Many marketers experiencing the value of the GTM Steering Committee, extend its use into a “Product and Pricing Council” (PPC) in order to move product-related decision making from ad-hoc to structured, and to reinforce GTM Strategy guardrails and best practices across the company.

    “Go-to-Market Strategies aren’t just for new products or services, they can also be used for:
    • Acquiring other businesses
    • Changing your business’s focus
    • Announcing a new feature
    • Entering a new market
    • Rebranding
    • Positioning or repositioning

    And while each GTM strategy is unique, there are a series of steps that every product marketer should follow.” (Product Marketing Alliance)

    Is your GTM Strategy optimized?

    Large detailed layout of the steps needed to 'Make Your Go-to-Market Strategy More Successful'. 'GTM Planning Success Can Be Elusive'; '75% of high-tech marketers desire a more effective GTM strategy...'. Steps: '1 Your Challenges - Are You Feeling Any of These Pains?', '2 Framework - Stay Aligned', '3 Planning - Check Your GTM Plan Steps', '4 Insight - Deliver Key Output', and '5 Results - Reap Key Benefits'. Source: SoftwareReviews, powered by Info-Tech Research Group.

    Marketers, in order to optimize a go-to-market strategy, will:

    1. Self assess for symptoms of a sub-optimized approach.
    2. Align marketing, sales, product, and customer success with a common vision and execution plan.
    3. Diagnose for missing steps.
    4. Ensure creation of key deliverables.
    5. And then be able to reap the rewards.

    Who benefits from an optimized go-to-market strategy?

    This research is designed for:
    • High-tech marketers who are:
      • Looking to improve any aspect of their go-to-market strategy.
      • Looking for a checklist of roles and responsibilities across the product planning, build, and launch processes.
      • Looking to foster better alignment among key stakeholders such as product marketing, product management, sales, field marketing/campaigners, and customer success.
      • Looking to build a stronger business case for new product development and launch.
    This research will help you:
    • Explain the benefits of a more effective go-to-market strategy to stakeholders.
    • Size the market opportunity for a product/solution.
    • Organize stakeholders for GTM operational success.
    • More easily present the GTM strategy to executives and colleagues.
    • Build and present a solid business case for product build and launch.
    This research will also assist:
    • High-tech marketing and product leaders who are:
      • Looking for a framework of best practices to improve and scale their GTM planning.
      • Looking to align team members from all the key teams that support high-tech product planning, build, launch, and manage.
    This research will help them:
    • Align stakeholders on an overall GTM strategy.
    • Coordinate tasks and activities involved across plan, build, launch, and manage – the product lifecycle.
    • Avoid low market opportunity pursuits.
    • Avoid poorly defined product launch business cases.
    • Build competence in managing cross-functional complex programs.

    SoftwareReviews’ Approach

    1

    Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

    Sizing your opportunity, building deep buyer understanding, competitive differentiation, and routes to market are fundamental first steps.

    2

    Design initial product and business case

    Validate positioning and messaging against brand, develop packaging and pricing, and develop digital approach, launch campaign approach and supporting budgets across all areas.

    3

    Align stakeholder plans to prep for build

    Rationalize product release and concept to sales/financial plan and further develop customer success, PR/AR, MarTech, and analytics/metrics plans.

    Our methodology provides a step-by-step approach to build a more effective go-to-market strategy

    1.Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights 2. Design initial product and business case 3. Align stakeholder plans to prep for build
    Phase Steps
    1. Select Steering Committee, GTM team, and outline roles and responsibilities. Build an aligned vision.
    2. Build initial product hypothesis based on sales and buyer “jobs to be done” research.
    3. Size the product market opportunity.
    4. Outline digital and tech requirements to support the full GTM process.
    5. Clarify target buyer personas and the buyer journey.
    6. Identify competitive gaps, parity, and differentiators.
    7. Select the most effective routes to market.
    8. Craft initial GTM Strategy presentation for executive review and status check.
    1. Compare emerging messaging and positioning with existing brand for consistency.
    2. Formulate packaging and pricing.
    3. Build a buyer-validated product concept.
    4. Build an initial campaign plan and targets.
    5. Develop initial budgets across all areas.
    6. Draft an initial product business case.
    7. Update GTM Strategy for executive review and status check.
    1. Assess technology and tools support for GTM strategy as well as future phases of GTM build, launch, and manage.
    2. Outline support for customer onboarding and ongoing engagement.
    3. Build an awareness plan covering media, social media, and industry analysts.
    4. Finalize product business case with collaborative input from product, sales, and marketing.
    5. Develop a final executive presentation for request for approval to proceed to GTM build phase.
    Phase Outcomes
    1. Properly sized market opportunity and a unique buyer value proposition
    2. Buyer persona and journey mapping with buyer needs and competitive SWOT
    3. Tech stack modernization requirements
    4. First draft of business case
    1. Customer-validated value proposition and product-market fit
    2. Initial product business case with sales alignment
    3. Initial launch plans including budgets across all areas
    1. Key stakeholders and their plans are fully aligned
    2. Executive sign-off to move to GTM build phases

    Insight summary

    Your go-to-market strategy ability is a strategic asset

    Having an updated and compelling go-to-market strategy is a critical capability – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development – given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.

    Build the GTM Steering Committee into a strategic decision-making body

    Many marketers experiencing the value of the GTM Steering Committee extend its use into a “Product and Pricing Council” (PPC) in order to move product-related decision making from ad-hoc to structured, and to reinforce GTM Strategy guardrails and best practices across the company.

    A strong MarTech apps and analytics stack differentiates GTM leaders from laggards

    Marketers that collaborate closely with Marketing Ops., Sales Ops., and IT early in the process of a go-to-market strategy will be best able to assess whether current website/digital, marketing applications, CRM/sales automation apps, and tools can support the complete Go-to-Market process effectively.

    Establishing alignment through the GTM process builds long term operational strength

    Marketers will go through the GTM Strategy process together across all disciplines at least once in order to establish a consistent process, make key foundational decisions (e.g. tech stack, channel strategy, pricing structure, etc.), and assess strengths and weaknesses to be addressed.

    Build speed and agility

    Future releases to existing products don’t need be re-thought but instead check-listed against prior foundational decisions.

    GTM Strategy builds launch success

    Marketers who get GTM Strategy “right” give themselves a 50% greater chance of build and launch success.

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

    Key deliverable:

    Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Capture key findings for your GTM Strategy within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template.

    Sample of the key deliverable, the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template.

    Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    Includes a RACI model and launch checklist that helps scope your working team’s roles and responsibilities.

    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook deliverable.

    Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Capture launch incremental costs that, when weighed against the forecasted revenue, illustrate gross margins as a crucial part of the business case.

    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook deliverable.

    Product Market Opportunity Sizing

    While not a deliverable of this blueprint per se, the Product Market Opportunity blueprint is required.

    Sample of the Product Market Opportunity Sizing deliverable. This blueprint calls for downloading the following additional blueprint:

    Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint

    While not a deliverable of this blueprint per se, the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint is required

    Sample of the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint deliverable.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."
    Included within advisory membership Optional add-ons

    Guided Implementation

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with a SoftwareReviews Advisory analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    For guidance on marketing applications, we can arrange a discussion with an Info-Tech analyst.

    Your engagement managers will work with you to schedule analyst calls.

    What does our GI on Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy look like?

    Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

    Design initial product and business case

    Align stakeholder plans to prep for build

    Call #1: Share GTM vision and outline team activities for the GTM Strategy process. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #2: Outline product market opportunity approach and steps to complete. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #3: Hold a series of inquiries to do a modernization check on tech stack. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

    Call #4: Discuss buyer interview process, persona, and journey steps. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

    Call #5: Outline competitive differentiation analysis, routes to market, and review of to-date business case. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #6: Discuss brand strength/weakness, pricing, and packaging approach. Plan next call – 3 weeks.

    Call #7: Outline needs to craft assets with right messaging across campaign launch plan and budget. Outline needs to create plans and budgets across rest of marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #8: Review template and approach for initial business case and sales and product alignment. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #9: Review initial business case and launch plans across marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #10: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for tech stack modernization. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #11: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for CX readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #12: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for digital readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #13: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for marketing and sales readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #14: Review final business case and coach on Steering Committee Presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.

    A Go-to-Market Workshop Overview

    Contact your engagement manager for more information.
    Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
    Align on GTM Vision & Plan, Craft Initial Strategy
    Identify Initial Business Case, Sales Forecast and Launch Plan
    Develop Launch Plans (i of ii)
    Develop Launch Plans (ii of ii)
    Present Final Business Case to Steering Committee
    Activities

    1.1 Outline a vision for GTM and roles required, identify Steering Committee lead, workstream leads, and teams.

    1.2 Capture GTM strategy hypothesis by working through initial draft of GTM Strategy Presentation and business case.

    1.3 Capture team knowledge on buyer persona and journey and competitive SWOT.

    1.4 Identify information/data gaps and sources and plan for capturing/gathering including buyer interviews.

    Plan next day 2-3 weeks after buyer persona/journey interviews.

    2.1 Size product market opportunity and initial revenue forecast.

    2.2 Craft initial product hypothesis from buyer interviews including feature priorities, pricing, packaging, competitive differentiation, and channel/route to market.

    2.3 Craft initial launch campaign, product release, sales, and CX readiness plans.

    2.4 Identify launch budgets across each investment area.

    2.5 Discuss initial product launch business case and key activities.

    Plan next day 2-3 weeks after product hypothesis-validation interviews with customers and prospects.

    3.1 Apply product interviews to scope, MVP, and roadmap competitive differentiation, pricing, feature prioritization, routes to market and sales forecast.

    3.2 Develop more detailed launch campaign plan complete with asset-types, messaging, digital plan to support buyer journey, media buy plan and campaign metrics.

    4.1 Develop detailed launch/readiness plans with final budgets for:

    • Sales enablement
    • Sales training
    • Tech stack
    • Customer onboarding & success
    • Product marketing
    • AR
    • PR
    • Corp comms/Internal comms
    • Customer events
    • Employee events
    • etc.

    5.1 Review final launch/readiness plans with final budgets for all key areas.

    5.2 Move all key findings up into Steering Committee presentation slides.

    5.3 Present to Steering Committee, receive feedback.

    5.4 incorporate Steering Committee feedback; update finial business case.

    Deliverables
    1. Documented Steering Committee and working team, aligned on GTM vision and process.
    2. Document team knowledge on initial GTM strategy, buyer persona and business case.
    1. Definition of product market fit, uniqueness and competitive differentiation.
    2. Preliminary product launch business case, campaign, targets, and readiness plans.
    1. Detailed launch plans, budgets for product and marketing launch.
    1. Detailed launch plans, budgets for product marketing, sales, customer success, and AR/PR/Corp. comms.
    1. Final GTM Strategy, launch plan and business case.
    2. Approvals to move to GTM build and launch phases.

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    Phase 1

    Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

    Phase 1

    1.1 Select Steering Cmte/team, build aligned vision for GTM

    1.2 Buyer personas, journey, initial messaging

    1.3 Build initial product hypothesis

    1.4 Size market opportunity

    1.5 Outline digital/tech requirements

    1.6 Competitive SWOT

    1.7 Select routes to market

    1.8 Craft GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 2

    2.1 Brand consistency check

    2.2 Formulate packaging and pricing

    2.3 Craft buyer-valid product concept

    2.4 Build campaign plan and targets

    2.5 Develop cost budgets across all areas

    2.6 Draft product business case

    2.7 Update GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases

    3.2 Outline sales enablement and Customer Success plan

    3.3 Build awareness plan

    3.4 Finalize business case

    3.5 Final GTM Plan deck

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Steering Committee and Team formulation
    • A vision for go-to-market strategy
    • Initial product hypothesis
    • Market Opportunity sizing
    • Tech stack/digital requirements
    • Buyer persona and journey
    • Competitive gaps, parity, differentiators
    • Routes to market
    • GTM Strategy deck

    This phase involves the following stakeholders:

    • Steering Committee
    • Working group leaders

    To complete this phase, you will need:

    Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook
    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template deliverable. Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook deliverable. Sample of the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint deliverable. Sample of the Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook deliverable.
    Use the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:
    • Documenting your GTM Strategy stakeholders
    • Documenting your GTM Strategy working team
    Use the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook to:
    • Review the scope of roles and responsibilities required
    • Document the roles and responsibilities of your teams
    Use the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint to:
    • Interview sales and customers/prospects to inform product concepts, understand persona and later, flush out buyer journey
    Use the Product Market Opportunity Sizing blueprint to:
    • Project Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Total Available Market (TAM) from your current penetrated market

    Step 1.1

    Identify a GTM Program Steering Committee and Team. Build an Aligned Vision for Your Go-to-Market Strategy Approach

    Activities
    • 1.1.1 Identify the Steering Committee of key stakeholders whose support will be critical to success
    • 1.1.2 Select your go-to-market strategy program team
    • 1.1.3 Discuss an overview of the GTM process and program roles and responsibilities with stakeholders and GTM workstream leads
    • 1.1.4 Develop a Go-to-Market launch, tiering, time-line, and overall program plan
    • 1.1.5 Work with each workstream lead on their overall project plan and incremental budget requirements

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify stakeholders – your Steering Committee
    • Identify team members
    • Present a vision of GTM Strategy

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Steering Committee
    • Program workstream leads

    Outcomes of this step

    • Steering Committee identified
    • Team members identified
    • All aligned on the GTM process
    • Go-to-market strategy timeline and program plan
    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals
    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    1.1.1 Identify stakeholders critical to success

    1-2 hours

    Input: Steering Committee interviews, Recognition of Steering Committee interest

    Output: List of GTM Strategy stakeholders as Steering Committee members

    Materials: Following slide outlining the key responsibilities required of the Steering Committee members, A high-Level timeline of GTM Strategy phases and key milestone meetings

    Participants: CMO, sponsoring executive, Functional leads - Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Customer Success

    1. The GTM Strategy initiative manager should meet with the CMO to determine who will comprise the Steering Committee for your GTM Strategy.
    2. Finalize selection of steering committee members.
    3. Meet with members to outline their roles and responsibilities and ensure their willingness to participate.
    4. Document the steering committee members and the milestone/presentation expectations for reporting project progress and results.

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Go To Market Steering Committee’s can become an important ongoing body to steer overall product, pricing and other GTM decisions. Some companies have done so by adding the CEO and CFO to this committee and designated it as a permanent body that meets monthly to give go/no decisions to “all things product related” across all products and business units. Leaders that use this tool well, stay aligned, demonstrate consistency across business units and leverage outcomes across business units to drive greater scale.

    Go-to-Market Strategy Stakeholders

    Understand that aligning key stakeholders around the way your company goes to market is an essential company function.

    Title Key Roles Supporting an Effective Go-to-Market Strategy
    Go-to-Market Strategy Sponsor
    • Owns the function at the management/C-suite level
    • Responsible for breaking down barriers and ensuring alignment with organizational strategy
    • CMO, VP of Marketing, and in SMB Providers, the CEO
    Go-to-Market Strategy Program Manager
    • Typically a senior member of the marketing team
    • Responsible for organizing the GTM Strategy process, preparing summary executive-level communications and approval requests
    • Program manages the GTM Strategy process, and in many cases, the continued phases of build and launch.
    • Product Marketing Director, or other marketing director, that has strong program management skills, has run large scale marketing and/or product programs, and is familiar with the stakeholder roles and enabling technologies
    Functional Workstream Leads
    • Works alongside the Go-to-Market Strategy Initiative Manager on a specific product launch, campaign, rebranding, new market development, etc. and ensures their functional workstreams are aligned with the GTM Strategy
    • With typical GTM B2B a representative from each of the following functions will comprise the team:
      • Product Marketing, Product Management, Field Marketing, Creative, Marketing Ops/Digital, PR/Corporate Comms/AR, Social Media Marketing, Sales Operations, Sales Enablement/Training, and Customer Success
    Digital, Marketing/Sales Ops/IT Team
    • Comprised of individuals whose application and tech tools knowledge and skills are crucial to supporting the entire marketing tech stack and its integration with Sales/CRM
    • Responsible for choosing technology that supports the business requirements behind Go-to-Market Strategy, and eventually the build and launch phases as well
    • Digital Platforms, CRM, Marketing Applications and Analytics managers
    Steering Committee
    • Comprised of C-suite/management-level individuals that guide key decisions, approve of requests, and mitigate any functional conflicts
    • Responsible for validating goals and priorities, defining the scope, enabling adequate resourcing, and managing change especially among C-level leaders in Sales & Product
    • CMO, CTO/CPO, CRO, Head of Customer Success

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Roles vary by company size. Launch success depends on clear responsibilities

    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    Success improves when you align & assign
    • Go-to-Market, build, and launch success improves when:
      • Phases and steps are outlined
      • Key activities are documented
      • Roles/functions are described
      • At the intersection of activities and role, whether the role is “Responsible,” “Accountable,” “Consulted,” or “Informed” is established across the team
    • Leaders will hold a workshop to establish RACI that fits with the scope and scale of your organization.
    • Confusion, conflict, and friction can be dramatically reduced/eliminated with RACI adoption and practice.
    • Review the RACI model and launch checklist within the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook in order to identify the full scope of roles and responsibilities needed.

    Go-to-Market Strategy Working Team

    Consider the skills and knowledge required for GTM Strategy as well as build and launch functions when choosing teams.

    Work with functional leaders to select workstream leads

    Workstream leads should be strong in collaboration, coordination of effort among others, knowledgeable about their respective function, and highly organized as they may be managing a team of colleagues within their function to deliver their responsible portion of GTM.

    Required Skills/Knowledge

    • Target Buyer
    • Product Roadmap
    • Brand
    • Competitors
    • Campaigns/Lead Gen
    • Sales Enablement
    • Media/Analysts
    • Customer satisfaction

    Suggested Functions

    • Product Marketing
    • Product Management
    • Creative Director
    • Competitive Intelligence
    • Demand Gen./Field Marketing
    • Sales Ops/Training/Enablement
    • PR/AR/Corporate Comms.
    • Customer Success
    Roles Required in Successful GTM Strategy
    For SMB companies, as employees wear many different hats, assign people that have the requisite skills and knowledge vs. the role title.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    1.1.2 Select the GTM Strategy working team

    1-2 hours

    Input: Stakeholders and leaders across the various functions outlined to the left

    Output: List of go-to-market strategy team members

    Materials: Go-to-Market Strategy Workbook

    Participants: Initiative Manager, CMO, Sponsoring executive, Departmental Leads – Sales, Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Management (and others), Marketing Applications Director, Senior Digital Business Analyst

    1. The GTM Strategy Initiative Manager should meet with the GTM Strategy Sponsor and functional leaders of workstream areas/functions to determine which team members will serve as Steering Committee members and who will serve as workstream leads.
    2. The working team for your go-to-market strategy should have the following roles represented in the working team:
      • Depending on the initiative and the size of the organization, the team will vary.
      • Key business leaders in key areas – Product Marketing, Field Marketing, Digital Marketing, Inside Sales, Sales, Marketing Ops., Product Management, and IT – should be involved.
    3. Document the members of your go-to-market strategy team in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation slide entitled “Our Team.”

    Download the Go-To-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    1.1.3 Develop a timeline for key milestones

    1 hour

    Timeline for Key Milestones with row headers 'Go-to-Market Phases', 'Major Milestones', and 'Key Phase Activities'. The phases (each column) and their associated activities are 'PLAN - Create buyer-validated product concept, size opportunity, and build business case', 'BUILD - Build product and enable readiness across the rest of marketing sales and customer success', 'LAUNCH - Release product, launch campaigns, and measure progress toward objectives', and then post-phase is 'MANAGE'. Notes in the 'Major Milestones' row: 'Outline key dates', 'Update with 'Today's Date' as you make progress', and 'Use GTM Plan major milestones or create your own'.

    GTM Program Managers:

    1. Will establish key program milestones working collaboratively with the Steering Cmte. and workstream leads.
    2. Outline key ”Market-facing” or external deliverables & dates, as well as internal.
    3. More detailed deliverable plans are called for working with workstream leads.
    4. This high-level overview will be used in regular Steering Cmte. and working team meets
    5. Record in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    1.1.5 Share your GTM strategy vision with your team

    1-2 hours

    Input: N/A

    Output: Team understanding of an effective go-to-market strategy, team roles and responsibilities and initial product and launch concept.

    Materials: The Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Executive Brief

    Participants: GTM Program Manager, CMO, Sponsoring executive, Workstream leads

    1. Download the Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Executive Brief and add the additional slides on Team Composition and Key Milestones you have created in prior steps as appropriate.
    2. Convene the Steering Committee and Working Team and take them through the Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Executive Brief with your additional slides to:
      1. Communicate team composition, roles and responsibilities, and key GTM Strategy program milestones.
      2. Educate them on what comprises a complete GTM Strategy from the Executive Brief.
    3. Optional: As a SoftwareReviews Advisory client, invite a SoftwareReviews analyst to present the Executive Brief if that is of help to you and your team.

    Go to the Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Executive Brief

    GTM program managers and workstream leads will collaborate on detailed project plans

    Timeline titled 'Workstreams Status' with a legend of shapes and colors, activities listed as row headers, timeline sections 'EXPLORE', 'DESIGN', 'ALIGN', and 'BUILD', and a column at the end of the timelines for the name of the workstream lead. Notes: 'Change names to actual workstream. Create separate pages for each', 'Overlay colored bars to indicate on/off track', 'Describe major deliverables & due dates', 'Outline major milestones', 'Update with your actual month and week-ending dates', 'Add workstream lead names'.

    Program managers will:

    • Outline an overall more detailed way of tracking GTM program workstreams, key dates and on/off track status

    Program managers & workstream leads will:

    • Call out each key workstream and workstream lead
    • Outline key deliverables and due dates
    • Track weekly for communicating status to Steering Cmte and working team meetings

    Use the Launch Checklist when building out full project plans

    Sample Launch Checklist table with project info above, and table columns 'Component', 'Owner', 'Start Date', 'Finish Date', 'G2M Plan', and 'Build'.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    Continuous improvement is enabled with a repeatable process
    • With ownership assigned and set-back schedules in place, product marketing and management leaders can take the guesswork out of the GTM plan and build and launch process for the entire team.
    • “Lighter” versions are created for lower-tier releases.
    • Checklists ensure “we haven’t missed anything” and drive clarity among the team.
    • Articulating where we are now and what’s next increases management confidence.
    • Rinse and repeat improves overall quality and drives scale.

    1.1.6 Develop a project plan for each workstream

    Work with your workstream leads to see them develop a detailed project plan that spans all their deliverables for a GTM Strategy
    1. It’s essential that GTM initiative managers can rely upon workstream leads to provide the status of their respective workstreams in a shared environment for easy weekly updating and reporting.
    2. We suggest the following approach:
      1. GTM initiative managers should maintain a copy of the GTM Strategy Presentation in a shared drive so workstream leads can provide updates.
      2. Workstream leads should work with their GTM initiative manager to populate a version of the workstream tracker shown on the previous slide that enables team status reporting.
      3. Additional slides that actually show “work completed” (e.g. images of assets created, training plans, screen caps of software functionality, etc.) should be reviewed each week as well.
      4. GTM initiative leaders/program managers are advised to summarize the to-date work completed across the team into the Go-To-Market Product and Launch Business Case slides to demonstrate progress to the Steering Committee.
    3. The goal is to keep tracking manageable. Because status is most easily shown during Steering Committee and Working Team meetings using PowerPoint, we recommend a simple approach to program management by using PowerPoint.
    Using the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation:
    3-4 hours Initial, 1-2 hours weekly
    1. Work with your workstream leads to create a slide for each workstream that will contain all the key milestones.
    2. Some teams will choose to use project management software, others a PowerPoint representation, which makes for easy presentation during status meets.
    3. Use the following resources:
      • In the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook, reference the Launch Checklist.
      • In the Go-to-Market Presentation, use the Appendix slides and complete for each workstream.
    4. The GTM initiative manager must be able to track status with workstream leads and present status to the rest of the team during Steering Committee and workstream lead meetings.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Download the Go-To-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

    Step 1.2

    Hold Interviews With Sales Then Customers and Prospects to Inform Your Initial Product Concept

    Activities
    • 1.2.1 Use the SoftwareReviews Buyer Persona and Journey Interview Guide and Data Capture Tool found within the SoftwareReviews Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint.
    • 1.2.2 Follow the instructions within the above blueprint and hold interviews with Sales and customers and prospects to inform your buyer persona, initial product hypothesis, and buyer journey.
    • 1.2.3 Flush out the initial product and launch concept using the slides found within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template. You will continually refine the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template such that you turn the Product and Launch descriptions into a business case for product build and launch. We advise you and your team to populate the slides to begin to inform an initial concept, then hold interviews with Sales, customers, and prospects to refine. The best way to capture customer and prospect insights is to use the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Schedule time with sales/sales advisory to flush out the product concept
    • Develop your customer and prospect interviewee list
    • Consolidate findings for your GTM Strategy program slide deck

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Sales/sales advisory, product management, initiative leader (product marketing)
    • Customers and prospects

    Outcomes of this step

    • Guidance from sales on product concept
    • Initial guidance from customers and prospective buyers
    • Agreement to proceed further

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    Documenting buyer personas enables success beyond marketing

    Documenting buyer personas has several essential benefits to marketing, sales, and product teams:
    • Achieve a better understanding of your target buyer – by building a detailed buyer persona for each type of buyer and keeping it fresh, you take a giant step in becoming a customer-centric organization.
    • Align the team on a common definition – will happen when you build buyer personas collaboratively and among teams that touch the customer.
    • Improved lead generation – increases dramatically when messaging and marketing assets across your lead generation engine better resonate with buyers because you have taken the time to understand them deeply.
    • More effective selling – is possible when sellers apply persona development output to their interactions with prospects and customers.
    • Better product-market fit – increases when product teams more deeply understand for whom they are designing products. Documenting buyer challenges, pain points, and unmet buyer needs gives product teams what they need to optimize product adoption.
    “It’s easier buying gifts for your best friend or partner than it is for a stranger, right? You know their likes and dislikes, you know the kind of gifts they’ll have use for, or the kinds of gifts they’ll get a kick out of. Customer personas work the same way. By knowing what your customer wants and needs, you can present them with content targeted specifically to those wants and needs.” (Emma Bilardi, Product Marketing Alliance, July 8, 2020)

    Buyer persona attributes that need defining

    A well defined buyer persona enables us to:

    • Clarify target org-types, identify buying decision makers and key personas, and determine how they make decisions
    • Align colleagues around a common definition of target buyer(s) to drive improvements in messaging and engagement across marketing, sales, and customer success
    • Identify specific asset-types and tools that, when activated within our lead gen engine and in the hands of sellers, helps a buyer move through a decision process
    Functional – “to find them”
    Job Role Titles Org Chart Dynamics Buying Center Firmographics

    Emotive – “what they do and jobs to be done”
    Initiatives – What programs/projects the persona is tasked with and what are their feelings and aspirations about these initiatives? Motivations? Build credibility? Get promoted? Challenges – Identify the business issues, problems, and pain points, that impede attainment of objectives. What are their fears, uncertainties, and doubts about these challenges? Buyer need – They may have multiple needs; which need is most likely met with the offering? Terminology – What are the keywords/phrases they organically use to discuss the buyer need or business issue?

    Decision Criteria – “how they decide”
    Buyer role – List decision-making criteria and power level. The five common buyer roles are champion, influencer, decision maker, user, and ratifier (purchaser/negotiator). Evaluation and decision criteria – The lens, either strategic, financial, or operational, through which the persona evaluates the impact of purchase.

    Solution Attributes – “what the ideal solution looks like”
    Steps in “Jobs to be Done” Elements of the “Ideal Solution” Business outcomes from ideal solution Opportunity scope – other potential users Acceptable price for value delivered Alternatives that see consideration Solution sourcing – channel, where to buy

    Behavioral Attributes – “how to approach them successfully”
    Content preferences – List the persona’s content preferences, could be blog, infographic, demo, video, or other, vs. long-form assets (e.g. white paper, presentation, analyst report). Interaction preferences – Which among in-person meetings, phone calls, emails, video conferencing, conducting research via web, mobile, and social. Watering holes – Which physical or virtual places do they go to network or exchange info with peers e.g. LinkedIn, etc.

    Buyer journeys are constantly shifting

    If you haven’t re-mapped buyer journeys recently, you may be losing to competitors that have. Leaders re-map buyer journeys frequently.
    • The multi-channel buyer journey is constantly changing – today’s B2B buyer uses industry research sites, vendor content marketing assets, software reviews sites, contacts with vendor salespeople, events participation, peer networking, consultants, emails, social media sites, and electronic media to research purchasing decisions.
    • COVID has dramatically decreased face-to-face – we estimate a B2B buyer spent between 20-25% more time online researching software buying decisions in 2021 than they did pre-COVID. This has diminished the importance of face-to-face selling and has given dramatic rise to digital selling and outbound marketing.
    • Content marketing has exploded – but without mapping the buyer journey and knowing where (by channel) and when (which buyer journey step) to offer content marketing assets, we will fail to convert prospects into buyers.

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Marketers are advised to update their buyer journey annually and with greater frequency when the human vs. digital mix is effected due to events such as COVID, and as emerging media such as Augmented Reality shifts asset-type usage and engagement options.

    “Two out of three B2B buyers today prefer remote human interactions or digital self service.

    And during August 2020-February 2021, use of digital self service leapt by 10%” (McKinsey & Company, 2021.)

    Challenges of not mapping persona and journey

    A lack of buyer persona and journey understanding is frequently the root cause of the following symptoms:
    • Lead generation results are way below expectations.
    • Inconsistent product-market fit.
    • Sellers have low success rates doing discovery with new prospects.
    • Website abandonment rates are really high.

    These challenges are often attributed to messaging and talk tracks that fail to resonate with prospects and products that fail to meet the needs of targeted buyers.

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Marketers developing buyer personas and journeys that lack agreement among Marketing, Sales, and Product of personas to target will squander precious time and resources throughout the customer targeting and acquisition process.

    “Forty-four percent of B2B marketers have already discovered the power of personas.” (Boardview, 2016.)

    1.2.1 Interview Sales and customers/prospects

    12 - 15 Hours, over course of 2-3 weeks

    Input: Insights from Sellers, Insights from customers and prospects

    Output: Completed slides outlining buyer persona, buyer journey, overall product concept, and detailed features and capabilities needed

    Materials: Create a Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint, Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation

    Participants: Product management lead, GTM Program Manager, Select sellers, Workstream leads that wish to participate in interviews

    1. Using the Create a Buyer Journey and Persona Journey blueprint:
      • Follow the instructions to interview a group of Sellers, and most importantly, several customers and prospects
        • For this stage in the GTM Strategy process, the goal is to validate your initial product and launch concept.
        • We urge getting through all the interview questions with interviewees as the answers inform:
          • Product market fit and Minimal Viable Product
          • Competitive differentiation
          • Messaging, positioning, and campaign targeting
          • Launch campaign asset creation.
      • Place summary findings into the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, and for reference, place the Buyer Persona and Journey Summaries into the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Appendix.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Download the Create a Buyer Journey and Persona Journey blueprint

    Step 1.3

    Update Your Product Concept

    Activities
    • 1.3.1 Based on Sales and Customer/Prospect interviews, update:
      • Your product concept slide
      • Detailed prioritization of features and capabilities

    This step calls for the following activities:

    • Update the product concept slide based on interview findings
    • Update/create the stack-ranking of buyer requested feature and capability priorities

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Product management lead
    • GTM initiative leader
    • Select workstream leads who sat in on interview findings

    Outcomes of this step

    • Advanced product concept
    • Prioritized features for development during Build phase
    • Understanding of MVP to deliver customer value and deal “wins”

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    1.3.1 Update Product and Launch concept

    2 Hours

    Input: Insights from Sellers, Insights from customers and prospects

    Output: Completed slides outlining product concept and detailed features and capabilities needed

    Materials: Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation

    Participants: Product management lead, GTM Program Manager, Select sellers, Workstream leads that wish to participate in interviews

    1. Using the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation:
      • With interview findings, update the Product and Launch Concept, Buyer Journey, and Capture Key Features/Capabilities of High Importance to Buyers slides

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Product and Launch Concept

    At this early stage, summarize findings from concept interviews to guide further discovery, as well as go-to-market concepts and initial campaign concepts in upcoming steps.

    Job Function Attributes

    Target Persona(s):
    Typical Title:
    Buying Center/functional area/dept.:

    Firmographics:
    Industry specific/All:
    Industry subsegments:
    Sizes (by revenues, # of employees):
    Geographical focus:

    Emotive Attributes

    Initiative descriptions: Buyer description of project/program/initiative. What terms used?

    Business issues: What are the business issues related to this initiative? How is this linked to a CEO-level mission-critical priority?

    Key challenges: What business/process hurdles need to be overcome?

    Pain points: What are the pain points to the business/personally in their role related to the challenges that drove them to seek a solution?

    Success motivations: What motivates our persona to be successful in this area?

    Solution and Opportunity

    Steps to do the job: What are the needed steps to do this job today?

    Key features and capabilities: What are the key solution elements the buyer sees in the ideal solution? (See additional detail slide with prioritized features.)

    Key business outcomes: In business terms, what value (e.g. cost/time/FTE savings, deals won, smarter, etc.) is expected by implementing this solution?

    Other users/opportunities: Are there other users in the role team/company that would benefit from this solution?

    Pricing/Packaging

    What is an acceptable price to pay for this solution? Based on financial benefits and ROI hurdles, what’s a good price to pay? A high price? What are packaging options? Any competitive pricing to compare?

    Alternatives/Competition

    What are alternatives to this solution: How else would you solve this problem? Are there other solutions you’ve investigated?

    Channel Preferences

    Where would it be most convenient to buy?: Direct from provider? Channel partner/reseller? Download from the web?

    Decision Criteria Attributes

    Decision maker – Role, criteria/decision lens:
    User(s) – Role, criteria/decision lens:
    Influencer(s) – Role, criteria/decision lens:
    Ratifier(s) – Role, criteria/decision lens:

    Behavioral Attributes

    Interaction preferences: Best way for us to reach this role? Email? At events? Texting? Video calls?

    Content types: Which content types (specifics; videos, short blog/article, longer whitepapers, etc.) help us stay educated about this initiative area?

    Content sources: What news, data, and insight sources (e.g. specifics) do you use to stay abreast of what’s important for this initiative area?

    Update the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation with findings from Sales and customer/prospect interviews.

    Capture key features/capabilities of high importance to buyers

    Ask buyers during interviews, as outlined in the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint, to describe and rate key features by need. You will also review with buyers during the GTM Build phase, so it’s important to establish high priority features now.

    Example bar chart for 'Buyer Feature Importance Ratings' where 'Buyer Need' is rated for each 'Feature'.
    • List key feature areas for buyer importance rating.
    • Establish a rating scheme.
        E.g. a rating of:
      • 4.5 or higher = critical ROI driver
      • 3.5 to 4.5 = must haves
      • 2 to 3.5 = nice to have
      • Less than 2 = low importance
    • Have buyers rate each possible feature 0-5 after explaining the rating scheme. Ask – are we missing any key features?
    • Update this slide, found within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, with customer/prospect interview findings.
    Perform the same buyer interviews for non-feature “capabilities” such as:
    • Ease of use, security, availability of training, service model, etc. – and other “non-feature” areas that you need for your product hypothesis.

    Step 1.4

    Size the Product Market Opportunity

    Activities
    • 1.3.1 Based on the product concept, size, and the product market opportunity and with a focus on your “Obtainable Market”:
      • Clarify the definitions used to size market opportunity.
      • Source data both internally and externally.
      • Calculate the available, obtainable market for your software product.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Review market sizing definitions and identify required data
    • Identify the target market for your software application
    • Source market and internal data that will support your market sizing
    • Document and validate with team members

    This step involves the following participants:

    • GTM initiative leader
    • CMO, select workstream leads

    Outcomes of this step

    • Definitions on market sizing views
    • Data sourcing established
    • Market sizing and estimated penetration calculations

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    Market opportunity sizing definitions

    Your goal is to assess whether or not the opportunity is significantly sized and if you are well positioned to capture it

    1. This exercise is designed to help size the market opportunity for this particular product GTM launch and not the market opportunity for the entire product line or company. First a few market sizes to define:
      1. Penetrated – is your current revenues and can be expressed in your percentage vs. competitors’.
      2. Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) – larger than your currently penetrated market, and a percentage of SAM that can realistically be achieved. It accounts for your current limitations to reach and your ability to sell to buyers. It is restricted by your go-to-market ability and reduced by competitive market share. SOM answers: What increased market can we obtain by further penetrating accounts within current geographical coverage and go-to-market abilities and within our ability to finance our growth?
      3. Serviceable Available Market (SAM) – larger than SOM yet smaller than TAM, SAM accounts for current products and current go-to-market capabilities and answers: What if every potential buyer bought the products we have today and via the type of go-to-market (GTM) especially geographical coverage, we have today? SAM calls for applying our current GTM into unpenetrated portions of currently covered customer segments and regions.
      4. Total Available Market (TAM) – larger than SAM, TAM sizes a market assuming we could penetrate other customer segments within currently covered regions without regard for resources, capabilities, or competition. It answers the question: If every potential buyer within our available market – covered regions – bought, how big would the market be?
      5. Total Global Market – estimates market opportunity if all orgs in all segments and regions bought – with full disregard for resources and without the restrictions of our current GTM abilities.
      6. Develop your market opportunity sizing using the Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook.

    Download the Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook

    SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
    Product marketers that size the product market opportunity and account for the limitations posed by competitors, current sales coverage, brand permission, and awareness, provide their organizations with valuable insights into which inhibitors to growth should be addressed.

    Visualization of market opportunity sizes as circles within bigger circles, 'Penetrated Market' being the smallest and 'Global Market' being the largest.

    1.4.1 Size the product market opportunity

    Your goal is two-fold: Determine the target market size, and develop a realistic 12–24 month forecast to support your business case
    1. Open the Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook.
    2. Follow the instructions within.
    3. When finished, download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation and update the Product Market Opportunity Size slide with your calculated Product Market Opportunity Size.

    Download the Product Market Opportunity Sizing Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    “Segmentation, targeting and positioning are the three pillars of modern marketing. Great segmentation is the bedrock for GTM success but is overlooked by so many.” (Product Marketing Alliance)

    Step 1.5

    Outline Digital and Tech Requirements

    Activities

    Designing your go-to-market strategy does not require a robust customer experience management (CXM) platform, but implementing your strategy during the next steps of Go-to-Market – Build then Launch – certainly does.

    Review info-Tech’s CXM blueprint to build a more complete, end-to-end customer interaction solution portfolio that encompasses CRM alongside other critical components.

    The CXM blueprint also allows you to develop strategic requirements for CRM based on customer personas and external market analysis called for during your GTM Strategy design.

    Diagram of 'Customer Relationship Management' surrounded by its components: 'Web Experience Management Platform', 'E-Commerce & Point-of-Sale Solutions', 'Social Media Management Platform', 'Customer Intelligence Platform', 'Customer Service Management Tools', and 'Marketing Management Suite'.

    These steps outlined in the CXM blueprint, will help you:

    • Assess your CRM application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.
    • Validate CRM capabilities, user satisfaction, issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an optimization strategy
    • Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Marketing Operations, Digital, IT
    • Project workstream leads as appropriate

    Outcomes of this step

    • After inquiries with appropriate analysts, client will be able to assess what new application and technology support is required to support Go To Market process.

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    Step 1.6

    Identify features and capabilities that will drive competitive differentiation

    Activities
    • 1.6.1 Hold a session with key stakeholders including sales, customer success, product, and product marketing to develop a hypothesis of features and capabilities vs. competitors: differentiators, parity areas, and gaps (DPG).
    • Optional for clients with buyer reviews and key competitive reviews within target product category:
      • 1.6.2 Request from SoftwareReviews a 2X2 Matrix Report of Importance vs. Satisfaction for both features and capabilities within your product market/category to identify areas of competitive DPG.
      • 1.6.3 Hold an Inquiry with covering ITRG analysts in your product category to have them validate key areas of competitive DPG.
    • 1.6.4 Document competitive DPG and build out your hypothesis for product build as you ready for customer interviews to validate that hypothesis.

    This step will provide processes to help you:

    • Understand and document competitive differentiation, parity, and gaps

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project workstream leads in product marketing, competitive intelligence, product management, and customer success

    Outcomes of this step

    • Develop a clear understanding of what differentiated capabilities to promote, which parity items to mention in marketing, and which areas are competitive gaps
    • Develop a hypothesis of what areas need to be developed during the Build phase of the Go-to-Market lifecycle

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    Assess current capabilities and competitive differentiation vs. buyer needs

    Taking buyer needs ratings from step 1.3, assess your current and key competitive capabilities against buyer needs for both feature and non-feature capabilities. Incorporate into your initial product hypothesis.

    Example bar chart for 'Competitive Differentiation, Parity and Gaps – Features' comparing ratings of 'Buyer Need', 'Our Current Capabilities', and 'Competitive Capabilities' for each 'Feature'.

    • Rank features in order of buyer need from step 1.3.
    • Prioritize development needs where current capabilities are rated low. Spot areas for competitive differentiation especially in high buyer-need areas.
    Perform the analysis for non-feature capabilities such as:
    • ease of use
    • security
    • availability of training
    • service model

    Optional: Validate feature and capability importance with buyer reviews

    Request from your SoftwareReviews Engagement Manager the “Importance vs. Satisfaction” analysis for your product(s) feature and non-feature capabilities under consideration for your GTM Strategy

    Satisfaction
    Fix Promote
    Importance

    Low Satisfaction
    High Importance

    These features are important to their market and will highlight any differentiators to avoid market comparison.

    High Satisfaction
    High Importance

    These are real strengths for the organization and should be promoted as broadly as possible.

    Low Satisfaction
    Low Importance

    These features are not important for the market and are unlikely to drive sales if marketing material focuses on them. Rationalize investment in these areas.

    High Satisfaction
    Low Importance

    Features are relatively strong, so highlight that these features can meet customer needs
    Review Maintain

    Overall Category Product Feature Satisfaction Importance

    • Importance is based on how strongly satisfaction for a feature of a software suite correlates to the overall Likeliness to Recommend
    • Importance is relative – low scores do not necessarily indicate the product is not important, just that it’s not as important as other features

    (Optional for clients with buyer reviews and key competitive reviews within target product category.)

    Optional: Feature importance vs. satisfaction

    Example: ERP “Vendor A” ratings and recommended key actions. Incorporate this analysis into your product concept if updating an existing solution. Have versions of the below run for specific competitors.

    Importance vs. Satisfaction map for Features, as shown on the previous slide, but with examples mapped onto it using a legend, purple squares are 'Enterprise Resource Planning' and green triangles are 'Vendor A'.

    Features in the “Fix” quadrant should be addressed in this GTM Strategy cycle.

    Features in the “Review” quadrant are low in both buyer satisfaction and importance, so vendors are wise to hold on further investments and instead focus on “Fix.”

    Features in the “Promote” quadrant are high in buyer importance and satisfaction, and should be called out in marketing and selling.

    Features in the “Maintain” quadrant are high in buyer satisfaction, but lower in importance than other features – maintain investments here.

    (Optional for clients with buyer reviews and key competitive reviews within target product category.)

    Optional: Capabilities importance vs. satisfaction

    Example: ERP “Vendor A” capabilities ratings and recommended key actions. Incorporate this analysis into your product concept for non-feature areas if updating an existing solution. Have versions of the below run for specific competitors.

    Importance vs. Satisfaction map for Capabilities with examples mapped onto it using a legend, purple squares are 'Enterprise Resource Planning' and green triangles are 'Vendor A'.

    Capabilities in the “Fix” quadrant should be addressed in this GTM Strategy cycle.

    Capabilities in the “Review” quadrant are low in both buyer satisfaction and importance, so vendors are wise to hold on further investments and instead focus on “Fix.”

    Capabilities in the “Promote” quadrant are high in buyer importance and satisfaction, and should be called out in marketing and selling.

    Capabilities in the “Maintain” quadrant are high in buyer satisfaction, but lower in importance than other features – maintain investments here.

    (Optional for clients with buyer reviews and key competitive reviews within target product category.)

    Develop a competitively differentiated value proposition

    Combining internal competitive knowledge with insights from buyer interviews and buyer reviews; establish which key features that will competitively differentiate your product when delivered

    Example bar chart for 'Competitive Differentiation, Parity and Gaps – Features and Capabilities' comparing ratings of 'Your Product' and 'Competitor A' with high buyer importance at the top, low at the bottom, and rankings of each 'Differentiator', 'Parity', and 'Gap'.

    • Identify what buyers need that will differentiate your product features and company capabilities from key competitors.
    • Determine which features and company capabilities, ideally lower in buyer importance, can achieve/maintain competitive parity.
    • Determine which features and company capabilities, ideally much lower in buyer importance, that can exist in a state of competitive gap.

    Step 1.7

    Select the Most Effective Routes to Market

    Activities
    • 1.7.1 Understand a framework for deciding how to approach evaluating each available channel including freemium/ecommerce, inside sales, field sales, and channel partner.
    • 1.7.2 Gather data that will inform option consideration.
    • 1.7.3 Apply to decision framework and present to key stakeholders for a decision.

    This step will provide processes to help you:

    • Understand the areas to consider when choosing a sales channel
    • Support your decision by making a specific channel recommendation

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project workstream leads in Sales, Sales Operations, Product Marketing, and Customer Success

    Outcomes of this step

    • Clarity around channel choice for this specific go-to-market strategy cycle
    • Pros and cons of choices with rationale for selected channel

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    Your “route-to-market” – channel strategy

    Capture buyer channel preferences in Step 1.3, and research alternatives using the following framework

    Inside vs. Field Sales – Selling software during COVID has taught us that you can successfully sell software using virtual conferencing tools, social media, the telephone, and even texting and webchat – so is the traditional model of field/territory-based sellers being replaced with inside/virtual sellers who can either work at home, or is there a benefit to being in the office with colleagues?

    Solutions vs. Individual Products – Do your buyers prefer to buy a complete solution from a channel partner or a solutions integrator that puts all the pieces together, and can handle training and servicing, for a more complete buyer solution?

    Channel Partner vs. Build Sales Force – Are there channel partners that, given your product is targeting a new buyer with whom you have no relationship, can leverage their existing relationships, quicken adoption of your products, and lower your cost of sales?

    Fully Digital – Is your application one where users can get started for free then upgrade with more advanced features without the use of a field or inside sales person? Do you possess the e-commerce platform to support this?

    While there are other considerations beyond the above to consider, decide which channel approach will work best for this GTM Strategy.

    Flowchart on how to capture 'Buyer Channel Preferences' with five possible outcomes: 'Freemium/e-commerce', 'Use specified channel partner', 'Establish channel partner', 'Use Inside Sales', and 'Use Field Sales'.

    Channel Partnerships are Expanding

    “One estimate is that for every dollar a firm spends on its SaaS platform, it spends four times that amount with systems integrators and other channel partners.

    And as technologies are embedded inside other products, services, and solutions, effective selling requires more partners.

    Salesforce, for example, is recruiting thousands of new partners, while Microsoft is reportedly adding over 7,000 partners each month.” (HBR, 2021)

    Step 1.8

    Craft an Initial GTM Strategy Presentation for Executive Review and Status Check

    Activities
    • 1.8.1 Finalize the set of slides within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation that best illustrates the many key findings and recommended decisions that have been made during the Explore phase of the GTM Strategy.
      • Test whether all key deliverables have been created, especially those that must be in place in order to support future phases and steps.
      • Schedule a Steering Committee meeting and present your findings with the goal to gain support to proceed to the Design phase of GTM Strategy.

    This step will provide processes to help you:

    • Work with your colleagues to consolidate the findings from Phase 1 of the GTM Strategy
    • Create a slide deck with your colleagues for presentation to the Steering Committee to gain approvals to proceed to Phase 2

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project workstream leads in Sales, Sales Operations, Product Marketing, and Customer Success
    • Steering Committee

    Outcomes of this step

    • Slide deck to present to the Steering Committee
    • Approvals to move to Phase 2 of the GTM Strategy

    Phase 1 - Formulate a hypothesis and run discovery on key fundamentals

    Step 1.1 Step 1.2 Step 1.3 Step 1.4 Step 1.5 Step 1.6 Step 1.7 Step 1.8

    1.8.1 Build your GTM Strategy deck for Steering Committee approval

    1. As you near completion of the Go-to-Market Strategy Phase, Explore Step, an important test to pass before proceeding to the Design step of GTM Strategy, is to answer several key questions:
      1. Have you properly sized the market opportunity for the focus of this GTM cycle?
      2. Have you defined a unique value proposition of what buyers are looking for?
      3. And have you aligned stakeholders on the target customer persona and flushed out an accurate buyer journey?
    2. If the answer is “no” you need to return to these steps and ensure completion.
    3. Pull together a summary review deck, schedule a meeting with the Steering Committee, present to-date findings for approval to move on to Phase 2.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Sample of the 'PLAN' section of the GTM Strategy optimization diagram with 'GTM Explore Review' circled in red.

    The presentation you create contains:

    • Team composition and roles and responsibilities
    • Steps in overall process
    • Goals and objectives
    • Timelines and work plan
    • Initial product and launch concept
    • Buyer persona and journey
    • Competitive differentiation
    • Channel strategy

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    Phase 2

    Design your initial product and business case

    Phase 1

    1.1 Select Steering Cmte/team, build aligned vision for GTM

    1.2 Buyer personas, journey, initial messaging

    1.3 Build initial product hypothesis

    1.4 Size market opportunity

    1.5 Outline digital/tech requirements

    1.6 Competitive SWOT

    1.7 Select routes to market

    1.8 Craft GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 2

    2.1 Brand consistency check

    2.2 Formulate packaging and pricing

    2.3 Craft buyer-valid product concept

    2.4 Build campaign plan and targets

    2.5 Develop cost budgets across all areas

    2.6 Draft product business case

    2.7 Update GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases

    3.2 Outline sales enablement and Customer Success plan

    3.3 Build awareness plan

    3.4 Finalize business case

    3.5 Final GTM Plan deck

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Branding consistency check
    • Formulate packaging and pricing
    • Craft buyer-validated product concept
    • Build initial campaign plan and targets
    • Develop budgets for creative, content, and media purchases
    • Draft product business case
    • Update GTM Strategy deck

    This phase involves the following stakeholders:

    • Steering Committee
    • Working group leaders

    To complete this phase, you will need:

    Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation TemplateGo-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist WorkbookBuyer Persona and Journey blueprintGo-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook
    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template deliverable.Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook deliverable.Sample of the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint deliverable.Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook deliverable.
    Use the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:
    • Documenting your GTM strategy stakeholders
    • Documenting your GTM strategy working team
    Use the Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook to:
    • Review the scope of roles and responsibilities required
    • Document the roles and responsibilities of your teams
    Use the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint to:
    • Interview sales and customers/prospects to inform product concepts, understand persona and later, flesh out buyer journeys
    Use the Go-to-Market Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook to:
    • Tally budgets from across key functions involved in GTM Strategy
    • Compare with forecasted revenues to assess gross margins

    Step 2.1

    Compare Emerging Messaging and Positioning With Existing Brand for Consistency

    Activities

    Share messaging documented with the buyer journey with branding/creative and/or Marketing VP/CMO to ensure consistency with overall corporate messaging. Use the “Brand Diagnostic” on the following slide as a quick check.

    For those marketers that see the need for a re-brand, please:
    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Later during the Build phase of GTM, marketing assets, digital platforms, sales enablement, and sales training will be created where actual messaging can be written with brand guidelines aligned.

    This step is to assess whether you we need to budget extra funds for any rebranding.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • After completing the buyer journey and identifying messaging, test with branding/CMO that new messaging aligns with current:
      • Company positioning
      • Messaging
      • Brand imagery

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Product marketing
    • Branding/creative
    • CMO

    Outcomes of this step

    • Check – Y/N on brand alignment
    • Adjustments made to current branding or new product messaging to gain alignment

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    Brand identity

    Re-think tossing a new product into the same old marketing engine. Ask if your branding today and on this new offering needs help.

    If you answer “no” to any of the following questions, you may need to re-think your brand. Does your brand:

    • recognize buyer pain points and convey clear pain-relief?
    • convey unique value that is clearly distanced from key competitors?
    • resonate with how target personas see themselves (e.g. rebellious, intelligent, playful, wise, etc.) and convey the “feeling” (e.g. relief, security, confidence, inspiration, etc.) buyers seek?
    • offer proof points via customer testimonials (vs. claimed value)?
    • tell a truly customer-centric story that is all about them (vs. what you want them to know about you)?
    • use words (e.g. quality, speed, great service, etc.) that equate to how buyers actually see you? Is your tone of voice going to resonate with your target buyer?
    • present in a clean, simple, and truly unique way? And will your brand identity stand the test of time?
    • represent feedback gleaned from prospects as well as customers?

    “Nailing an impactful brand identity is a critical part of Growth Marketing.

    Without a well-crafted and maintained brand identity, your marketing will always feel flat and one-dimensional.” (Lean Labs, 2021)

    Step 2.2

    Formulate Packaging and Pricing

    Activities
    • 2.2.1 Leverage what was learned in Phase 1 from buyer interviews to create an initial packaging and initial pricing approach.
      • Packaging success is driven by knowing what the buyer values are, how newly proposed functionality may work with other applications, and how well the buyer(s) work in teams.
      • Develop pricing using cost-plus, value/ROI, and competitive/market pricing comparisons.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Approaches to establishing price points for software products
    • Checking if pricing supports emerging product revenue plan

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Product Marketing
    • Product Management
    • Pricing (if a function)

    Outcomes of this step

    • Pricing that is validated through buyer interviews and consistent with overall company pricing guardrails
    • Packaging that can be delivered

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    2.2.1 Formulate packaging and pricing

    Goal: Incorporate buyer benefits into your MVP that delivers the buyer value that compels them to purchase and drives the business case

    1. Leverage findings from buyer interviews and feature prioritization found in Step 1.3 to arrive at initial feature inclusion.
    2. Leverage feedback from customer interviews and competitive pricing analysis to arrive at an initial target price offer.
    3. Go to the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation and use the slides labeled “Go-to-Market Strategy, Overall Project Plan.”

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Refer to the findings from buyer persona interviews

    Sample of the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint deliverable.

    Step 2.3

    Build a Buyer-Validated Product Concept

    Activities
    • 2.2.1 Add to your initial product concept from Phase 1, the pricing and packaging approach.
      • Take the concept out to buyers to get their feedback – not on UX design, that will come later, but to ensure the value is clear to the buyers, and to raise confidence in the product concept.
      • As with previous customer and prospect interviews, use the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint with its accompanying interview guide and focus on the product related questions.
      • Generate your slides to present and discuss with buyers, capture feedback, and refine the product concept.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Hold buyer interviews to review the product design
    • Validate concept and commercial variables – not UX design, that comes later

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Product Marketing
    • Product Management

    Outcomes of this step

    • Customer validated product concept that meets the business plan

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    2.3.1 The best new product hypothesis doesn’t always come from your best customers

    Goal: Validate your product concept and business case

    1. Key areas to validate during product concept feedback:
      1. Feature/capability-build priorities – Which set of features and capabilities (i.e. service model, etc.) must be delivered in a minimum viable product (MVP) that delivers unique and competitively differentiating buyer value so we have win rates that support the business case?
      2. Packaging/Pricing – Are their features/capabilities that are not in base offering but offered as add-ons or not at all? Are their different packaging options that must be delivered given different customer segments and appropriate price points? (E.g. a small- to-medium sized business (SMB) version, Freemium, or Basic vs. Premium offerings?
      3. Routes to Market/Channel – Ensure you validate your channel strategy as work/effort will be needed to arrive at channel sales and marketing enablement.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    “Innovation opportunities almost always come from understanding a company’s worst customers or customers it doesn’t serve” (Harvard Business School Press, 1997)

    2.3.2 How your prospects buy will inform upcoming campaign design

    Goal: During product validation interviews, further validate the buyer journey to identify asset types to be created/sourced for launch campaign design

    1. Leverage findings from buyer interviews with a focus on buyer journey questions/answers found in Step 1.3 and further validated during product concept feedback in step 2.3.
    2. Your goal is to uncover the following key areas (see next slide for illustration):
      1. Validate the steps buyers take throughout the buyer journey – when you validate buyer steps and what the buyer is doing and thinking as they make a buying decision determines if you are supporting the right process.
      2. Validate the human vs. non-human/digital interaction type for each step – this determines whether your lead gen engine or your salesforce (or channel partner) will deliver the marketing assets and sales collateral.
      3. Describe the asset-types most valued by buyers during each step – this will provide the guidance your demand gen/field marketers need to either work with product marketing and creative to design and build, or source the right marketing asset and sales collateral for your lead gen engine and to support sales enablement.
      4. Identify which channels – this will give your digital team the guidance they need to design the “where” to place the assets within your lead gen engine. Feedback from customer interviews and competitive pricing analysis to arrive at an initial target price for offering is shown on the next slide.
    3. Use the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation to complete the buyer journey slide with key findings.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Refer to the findings from buyer persona interviews

    Sample of the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint deliverable.

    Answers you need to map buyer journey

    Your buyer interviews – whether during earlier steps or here during product concept validation – will give specific answers to all areas in green text below. Understanding channels, asset-types, and crafting your key messaging are essential for next steps.

    Table outlining an example buyer's journey with fields in green text that are to be to replaced with answers from your buyer interviews.

    Step 2.4

    Build Your Initial Campaign Plan and Targets

    Activities
    • 2.4.1. While product management and marketing is working on the business case, the campaign team is designing their launch campaign.
    • Expand from the product concept and build out the entire launch campaign identifying dates, CTA’s, channels, and asset types needed that will be built during the Build phase.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Outline deployment plan of activities and outcomes
    • Draw up specs for needed assets, web-page changes, emails, target segments, and targets for leads generated

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Field Marketing
    • Product Marketing

    Outcomes of this step

    • The initial draft of the campaign plan that outlines multichannel activities, dates, and assets that need to be sourced and/or created

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    2.4.1 Document your campaign plan

    2 hours

    On the following Awareness and Lead Gen Engine slide:
    1. Tailor the slide to describe your lead generation engine as you will use it when you get to latter steps to describe the activities in your lead gen engine and weigh them for go-to-market strategy.
    2. Use the template to see what makes up a typical lead gen and awareness building engine to see what you may be missing, as well as to record your current engine “parts.”
      • Note: The “Goal” image in upper right is meant as a reminder that marketers should establish a goal for Sales Qualified Leads (SQL’s) delivered to field sales for each campaign.

    On the Product and Launch Concept slides:

    1. Update the slides with findings from 2.3 and 2.4.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    “Only 32% of marketers – and 29% of B2B marketers – said the process of planning campaigns went very well. Just over half were sure they had selected the right business goal for a given marketing project and only 42% were confident they identified the right audience – which is, of course, a critical determinant for achieving success.” (MIT Sloan Management Review)

    Launch campaign

    Our Goal for [Campaign name] is to generate X SQL’s

    Flowchart of the steps to take when a campaign is launched, from 'Organic Website Visits' and 'Go Live' to future 'Sales Opportunities'. A key is present to decipher various icons.

    Awareness

    PR/EXTERNAL COMMS:

    Promote release in line with company story

    • [Executive Name] interview with [Publication Y] on [Launch Topic X] – Mo./Day
    • Press Release on new enhancements – Mo./Day
    • [Executive Name] interview with [Publication Z] on [Launch Topic X] – Mo./Day
    ANALYST RELATIONS:

    Receive analyst feedback pre-launch and brief with final releases messaging/positioning

    • Inquiry with [Key Analysts] on [Launch Topic X] – Mo./Day, pre launch
    • Press Release shared on new enhancements – Launch day minus two days
    • Analyst briefing with [Key Analysts] on [Launch Topic X] – Launch day minus two days

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    2.4.2 Campaign targets

    Goal: Establish a Marketing-Influenced Win target that will be achieved for this launch

    We advise setting a target for the launch campaign. Here is a suggested approach:
    1. Understand what % of all sales wins are touched by marketing either through first or last touch attribution. This is the % of Marketing-Influenced Wins (MIWs).
    2. Determine what sales wins are needed to attain product revenue targets for this launch.
    3. Apply the actual company MIW % to the number of deals that must be closed to achieve target product launch revenues. This becomes the MIW target for this launch campaign.
    4. Then, using your average marketing funnel conversion rates working backwards from MIWs to Opportunities, Sales Accepted Leads (SALs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), up to website visits.
    5. Update the slides with findings from 2.3 and 2.4.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    “Marketing should quantify its contribution to the business. One metric many clients have found valuable is Marketing Influenced Wins (MIW). Measured by what % of sales wins had a last-touch marketing attribution, marketers in the 30% – 40% MIW range are performing well.” (SoftwareReviews Advisory Research)

    Step 2.5

    Develop Initial Budgets Across All Areas

    Activities
    • 2.5.1 Use the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and work with your workstream leads.
      • Capture the costs associated with this GTM Strategy and Launch.
      • Summarize your GTM budget in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, including the details behind the gross margin calculation for your GTM Strategy/campaign if required.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Field marketing, product marketing, creative, others to identify the specific budget elements needed for this campaign/launch

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Field Marketing
    • Product Marketing
    • Branding/creative

    Outcomes of this step

    • The initial marketing budget for this campaign/launch

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    2.5.1 Develop your GTM Strategy/product launch campaign budget

    Goal: Work with your workstream leads to identify all incremental costs associated with this GTM strategy and product launch

    1. Use the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and adjust to include the areas that are identified by your workstream leads as being applicable to this GTM Strategy and Launch.
      • These should be incremental costs to normal operating and capital budgets and those areas that are fully approved for inclusion by your Steering Committee/Sponsoring Executive.
    2. Begin to Catalog all applicable costs to include all key areas such as:
      • Technology costs for internal use (typically from Marketing Ops), and “core” to product technology costs working with the product team
      • Channel marketing programs, agency (e.g. branding, naming, web design, SEO, content marketing, etc.), T&E, paid media, events, marketing assets, etc.
    3. Note that in the Align Step – Step 3, you will see your workstream leads each develop their individual contributions to both the launch plan as well a budget.

    4. Summarize your initial GTM budget findings in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, including the details behind the gross margin calculation for your GTM Strategy/campaign if required. Again, you will flush out the final costs within each workstream areas in Phase 3, ”Align.”

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Step 2.6

    Draft Initial Product Business Case

    Activities
    • 2.6.1 Here’s where you begin to pull together all the essential elements of your final business case.
      • For many organizations that require a view of return on investment, you will begin here to shape the key elements that your organization requires for a complete business case to go ahead with the needed investments.
      • The goal is to compare estimated costs to estimated revenues to ensure acceptable margins will be delivered for this GTM strategy/product launch.
      • The culmination of work to get to this calculation will continue through Phase 3; however, the following slide illustrates the kind of visualization that will be possible with our approach.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • A product revenue forecast is created, alignment with sales/sales targets is created for a minimum viable product (MVP) that meets the buyer’s needs at the price point established/validated

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Product management
    • Product marketing
    • Sales leadership

    Outcomes of this step

    • The important measures of:
      • Product revenue forecast
      • Supported MVP features

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    Gross Margin Estimates – part of a complete product business case

    Your goal: Earn more than you spend! This projection of estimated gross margins should be part of your product launch business case. The GTM initiative lead and workstream leads are charged with estimating incremental costs, and product and sales must work together on the revenue forecast.

    Net Return

    We estimate our 12 month gross profit to be ….

    Quarterly Revenues

    Based on sales forecast, our quarterly/monthly revenues are ….

    Estimated Expenses

    Incremental up-front costs are expected to be ….

    Example 'P&L waterfall for Product X Launch' with notes. Green bars are 'Increase', red bars are 'Decrease', and blue bars are 'Total'. Red bar note: 'Your estimated incremental up-front costs', Green bar note: 'Your estimated net incremental revenues vs. costs', Blue bar note: 'Your estimated net gross profit for this product launch and campaign', 'END' note: 'Extend for suitable period'.

    2.6.1 Develop your initial product business case

    Goal: Focused on the Product Concept areas related to product Market Fit, Buyer Needs and Market Opportunity, Product Managers will summarize in order to gain approval for Build

    1. Using the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, product managers should ensure the product concept slide(s) support the rationale to move to Build phase. Key areas include:
      1. Adequate market opportunity size – that is worth the incremental investment
      2. Acceptable costs/investment to pursue the opportunity – design, creative services for branding, web design, product naming, asset creation, copywriting, translation services not available in-house
      3. Well-defined product market fit – review buyer interviews that identify buyer pain points and ideas that will deliver needed business value
      4. Buyer-validated commercials – buyer-validated pricing and packaging
      5. Product development budget and staffing support to build viable MVP & beyond roadmap – development budget and staffing is in place/budgeted to deliver MVP by target date and continue to ensure attainment of product revenue targets
      6. Unique product value proposition that is competitively differentiated – to drive acceptable win rates
      7. Product Sales Forecast – that when compared to costs meets company investment hurdle rates
      8. Sales Leadership support for achieving sales forecast and supported sales/channel resourcing plan – sales leadership has taken on forecasted revenues as an incremental sales quota and has budget for additional hiring, enablement, and training for attainment.
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation and complete the slides summarizing these key areas that support the business case for the next phases of Build and Launch.

    Product Business Case Checklist:

    • Acceptably large enough product market opportunity
    • Well-defined competitive differentiation
    • Buyer-validated product-market fit
    • Buyer-validated and competitive commercials (i.e. pricing, packaging)
    • An MVP with roadmap that aligns to buyer needs and buyer-validated price points
    • A 24–36 month sales forecast with CRO sign-up and support for attainment
    • Costs of launch vs. forecasted revenues to gauge gross margins

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Step 2.7

    Update the GTM Strategy Presentation Deck for Executive Review and Sign-off

    Activities
    • 2.7.1 Update the deck with Phase 2 findings culminating in the business case.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Drop into the GTM Strategy deck the summary findings from the team’s work
    • Write an executive summary that garners executive support for needed funds, signed-up-for sales targets, agreed upon launch timing
    • Steering Committee alignment on above and next steps

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Steering Committee
    • Workstream leads

    Outcomes of this step

    • Executive support for the GTM Strategy plan and approval to proceed to Phase 3

    Phase 2 – Validate designs with buyers and solidify product business case

    Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Step 2.5 Step 2.6 Step 2.7

    2.7.1 Update your GTM Strategy deck for Design Steering Committee approval

    1. As you near completion of the Go-to-Market Strategy Phase – Design Step, while your emerging business case is important, it will be finalized in the Align Step.
    2. An important test to pass before proceeding to the Align step of the GTM Strategy, is to answer several key questions:
      1. Have you validated the product value proposition with buyers?
      2. Is the competitive differentiation clear for this offering?
      3. Did Sales support the business case by signing up for the incremental quota?
      4. Has product defined an MVP that aligns with the buyer value needed to drive purchases?
      • If the answer is “no” you need to return to these steps and ensure completion
    3. Pull together a summary review deck, schedule a meeting with the Steering Committee, and present to-date findings for approval to move onto Phase 3.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Sample of the 'PLAN' section of the GTM Strategy optimization diagram with 'GTM Design Review' circled in red.

    The presentation you create contains:

    • Timelines and a work plan
    • Expanded product concept to include your packaging and pricing approach
    • Feedback from buyers on validated product concept especially commercial elements
    • Expanded campaign plan and marketing budget
    • Initial product business case

    Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    Phase 3

    Align stakeholder plans to prep for build

    Phase 1

    1.1 Select Steering Cmte/team, build aligned vision for GTM

    1.2 Buyer personas, journey, initial messaging

    1.3 Build initial product hypothesis

    1.4 Size market opportunity

    1.5 Outline digital/tech requirements

    1.6 Competitive SWOT

    1.7 Select routes to market

    1.8 Craft GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 2

    2.1 Brand consistency check

    2.2 Formulate packaging and pricing

    2.3 Craft buyer-valid product concept

    2.4 Build campaign plan and targets

    2.5 Develop cost budgets across all areas

    2.6 Draft product business case

    2.7 Update GTM Strategy deck

    Phase 3

    3.1 Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases

    3.2 Outline sales enablement and Customer Success plan

    3.3 Build awareness plan

    3.4 Finalize business case

    3.5 Final GTM Plan deck

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    1. Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases
    2. Map lead generation plan
    3. Outline Customer Success plan
    4. Build awareness plan (PR/AR, etc.)
    5. Finalize product business case
    6. Final GTM planning deck and Steering Committee review

    This phase involves the following stakeholders:

    • Steering Committee
    • Working group leaders

    To complete this phase, you will need:

    Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook
    Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template deliverable. Sample of the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook deliverable.
    Use the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:
    • Documenting your GTM Strategy Stakeholders
    • Documenting your GTM Strategy Working Team
    Use the Go-to-Market Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook to:
    • Tally budgets from across key functions involved in the GTM Strategy
    • Compare with forecasted revenues to assess gross margins

    Step 3.1

    Assess Technology and Tools Support for Your GTM Strategy as Well as Future Phases of GTM

    Activities
    • 3.1.1 Have Marketing Operations document what tech stack improvements are required in order to get the team to a successful launch. Understand costs and implementation timelines and work it into the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • After completing your initial survey in Step 1, complete requirements building for needed technology and tools acquisition/upgrade in campaign management, sales opportunity management, and analytics.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Marketing operations/digital
    • IT

    Outcomes of this step

    • Build a business requirement against which to evaluate new/upgraded vendor tools to support the entire GTM process

    Phase 3 – Align functional plans with a compelling business case for product build

    Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Step 3.3 Step 3.4 Step 3.5

    3.1.1 Technology plan and investments

    Goal: Outline the results of our analysis and Info-Tech analyst guidance regarding supporting systems, tools, and technologies to support our go-to-market strategy

    1. Plans, timings, and incremental costs related to, but not limited to, the following apps/tools/technologies:
      1. Lead management/Marketing automation
      2. Marketing analytics
      3. Sales Opportunity Management System (OMS) and Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) applications
      4. Sales engagement
      5. Sales analytics
      6. Customer service and support/Customer interaction hub
      7. Customer data management and analytics
      8. Customer experience platforms
      9. Marketing content management
      10. Creative tools
      11. Share of voice and social platform management
      12. Etc.
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and complete by adding costs identified in above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build, and Launch initiative. Record in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation completing the areas within the slides related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Step 3.2

    Outline Sales Enablement and Support for Customer Success to Include Onboarding and Ongoing Engagement

    Activities
    • 3.3.1 Sales Enablement – develop the sales enablement and training plan for Launch to include activities, responsible parties, dates for delivery, etc.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Finalize the customer success training and support plan
    • Onboarding scripts
    • Changes to help screens in application
    • Timing to plan for Quality Acceptance

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Customer Success lead
    • Product management
    • Product marketing

    Outcomes of this step

    • Plan for creation of copy, assets, and rollout pan to support clients and client segments for Launch

    Phase 3 – Align functional plans with a compelling business case for product build

    Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Step 3.3 Step 3.4 Step 3.5

    3.2.1 Outline sales enablement

    Goal: Outline sales collateral, updates to sales proposals, CPQ, Opportunity Management Systems, and sales training

    1. Describe the requirements for sales enablement to include elements such as:
      1. Sales collateral
      2. Client-facing presentations
      3. Sales proposal updates
      4. Updates to Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) applications
      5. Updates to Opportunity Management System (OMS) applications
      6. Sales demo versions of the new product
      7. Sales communication plans
      8. Sales training and certification programs
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and add the costs identified in above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build, and Launch initiative. Record as well in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation completing the areas within the slides related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    3.2.2 Outline customer success

    Goal: Outline customer support/success requirements and plan

    1. Plans, timings, and incremental costs for the following:
      1. Onboarding scripts for the new solution
      2. Updates to retention lifecycle
      3. FAQ answers
      4. Updates to online help/support system
      5. “How-to” videos
      6. Live chat updates
      7. Updates to “provide feedback” system
      8. Updates to Quarterly Business Review slides
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and add the costs identified in above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build, and Launch initiative. Record in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation and complete the areas within the slides related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Step 3.3

    Build an Awareness Plan Covering Media, Social Media, and Industry Analysts

    Activities
    • 3.4.1 Corp Comms/PR/AR – develop the overall awareness plans for executive interviews, articles placed, social drops, analyst briefing dates, and internal associate comms if required.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Outline outbound communications plans including press releases, social posts, etc.
    • Describe dates for AR outreach to covering analysts
    • Develop the internal communications plan

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Corporate Comms lead
    • Creative
    • Analyst relations
    • Social media marketing lead

    Outcomes of this step

    • Plan for creation of copy, assets, and rollout pan to support awareness building, external communications, and internal communications if required

    Phase 3 – Align functional plans with a compelling business case for product build

    Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Step 3.3 Step 3.4 Step 3.5

    3.3.1 Internal communications plan

    Goal: Outline complete internal communications plan. For large-scale changes (i.e. rebranding, M&A, etc.) HR may drive significant volume of employee communications working with Corporate Comms

    1. Plans, timings, and incremental costs for the following:
      1. Complete a comms plan with dates, messages, and channels
      2. Team member roles and responsibilities
      3. Intranet article and posting schedules
      4. Creation of new office signage, merchandise, etc. for employee kits
      5. Pre-launch announcements schedule
      6. Launch day communications, events, and activities
      7. Post launch update schedule and messages for launch success
      8. Incremental staffing and resources/budget requirements
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and add costs identified in above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build, and Launch initiative. Record as well in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation completing the areas related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    3.3.2 PR and External Communications Plan

    Goal: Outline complete internal communications plan. For large scale changes (i.e. rebranding, M&A, etc.) HR may drive significant volume of employee communications working with Corporate Comms

    1. Plans, timings, and incremental costs for the following:
      1. List of Tier 1 and Tier 2 media authors covering the [product/initiative] market area
      2. Schedule of launch briefings, with any non-analyst influencers
      3. Timing of press releases
      4. Required supporting executives and stakeholders for each of the above meetings
      5. Slide deck/media kit for the above and planned questions to support needed feedback
      6. Media Site materials especially to support media questions and requests for briefings
      7. Social postings calendar of activities and key messages plan
      8. Publish data of [product/initiative] relevant articles with set-back schedules
      9. Cultivation of reference customers and client testimonials for media outreach
      10. Requirements for additional staffing to cover product/initiative new market and analysts
      11. Internal and external events calendar to invite media
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and add the costs identified in the above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build, and Launch initiative. Record in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation by completing the areas related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    3.3.3 Analyst relations plan

    Goal: Outline incremental costs in analyst communications, engagement, and access to research

    1. Plans, timings, and incremental costs for the following:
      1. List of Tier 1 and Tier 2 analysts for the [product/initiative] market area
      2. Schedule of inquiries, pre-launch briefings, launch briefings, and post-launch feedback
      3. Required supporting executives and stakeholders for each of the above meetings
      4. Analyst deck for each of the above and planned questions to support needed feedback
      5. Analyst Site materials to support 2nd and 3rd Tier analysts’ questions and requests for briefings
      6. Social postings calendar of activities and key messages
      7. Resources to respond to analyst blogs and/or social posts regarding your product/initiative area
      8. Timing of important and relevant analyst document/methodology publishing dates with set-back schedules
      9. Cultivation of reference customers and client testimonials to coincide with analyst outreach for research and for buyer review sites/reviews data gathering
      10. Requirements for additional staffing to cover product/initiative new market and analysts
      11. Events calendar where analysts will be presenting on this product/initiative market
    2. Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook and add the costs identified in the above areas that are specific to this go-to-market strategy, Build and Launch initiative. Record in the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation by completing the areas related to the Product and Launch Concepts and Business Case.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Step 3.4

    Finalize Product Business Case With Collaborative Input From Product, Sales, and Marketing

    Activities
    • 3.5.1 Convene the team to align sales, marketing, and product around the business case.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Refine the product business case initiated in Phase 2
    • Align product revenue forecast with sales revenue forecast
    • Align MVP features to be developed during “GTM – Build” with customer validated product-market fit

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Project lead
    • Product management
    • Product marketing

    Outcomes of this step

    • Product business case

    Phase 3 – Align functional plans with a compelling business case for product build

    Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Step 3.3 Step 3.4 Step 3.5

    3.4.1 Final product Build and Launch business case

    Goal: Beyond the product business case, factor in costs for technology, campaigning, sales enablement, and customer success in order to gain approval for Build and Launch

    1. Using the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation, workstream leads and Go-to-Market Initiative leaders will finalize the anticipated incremental costs, and when compared to projected product revenues, present to the Steering Committee including CFO for final approval before moving to Build and Launch.
    2. To present a complete business case, key cost areas include:
      1. All the areas outlined up through Step 3.4 plus:
      2. Technology/MarTech Stack incremental costs
      3. Channel programs, branding/agency, pricing, packaging/product, and T&E incremental costs
      4. Campaign related – creative, content marketing, paid media, events, SEO, lists/data
      5. Sales Enablement, Customer Support/Success incremental costs
      6. Internal communications/events/activities/signage costs
      7. PR/AR/Media incremental costs
    3. Compare to final Sales/Product agreed projected revenues, in order to calculate estimated gross margins

    Go to the Go-to-Market Budget Workbook as outlined in prior steps and document final incremental costs and projected revenues and summarize within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Product Build and Launch Business Case Checklist:

    • Acceptably large enough product market opportunity
    • Well-defined competitive differentiation
    • Buyer-validated product-market fit
    • Buyer-validated and competitive commercials (i.e. pricing, packaging)
    • An MVP with roadmap that aligns with buyer needs and buyer validated price points
    • A 24–36 month sales forecast with CRO sign-up and support for attainment
    • Incremental product development, tech, marketing, sales, customer success, AR/PR costs vs. forecasted revenues fall within acceptable margins

    Step 3.5

    Develop Your Final Executive Presentation to Request Approval and Proceed to GTM Build Phase

    Activities
    • 3.6.1 Update the Product, Launch, Journey, and Business Case slides included within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template with Phase 3 findings culminating in the business case.

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Update the previously created slides with findings from Phase 3
    • Hold a Steering Committee meeting and present findings for approval

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Steering Committee
    • Workstream leads

    Outcomes of this step

    • GTM Strategy approved to move to GTM Build

    Phase 3 – Align functional plans with a compelling business case for product build

    Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Step 3.3 Step 3.4 Step 3.5

    3.5.1 Update your GTM Strategy deck for Align Steering Committee approval

    1. As you near completion of the Go-to-Market Strategy Phase – Align Step, an important test to pass before proceeding to the Design step of GTM Strategy, is to answer several key questions:
      1. Are Sales, Product, and Marketing all aligned and in agreement on the business case?
      2. Are the gross margin calculations acceptable to the Steering Committee? CFO? CEO?
    2. If the answer is “no” you need to return to prior steps and ensure completion.
    3. Pull together a summary review deck, schedule a meeting with the Steering Committee, present to-date findings for approval to move on to Build Phase.
    4. Once your final business case is accepted, you are ready to move on to the GTM Build and Launch phases. These phases are covered in sperate SoftwareReviews blueprints.

    Download the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

    Sample of the 'PLAN' section of the GTM Strategy optimization diagram with 'GTM Align Review' circled in red.

    The presentation you create contains:

    • Timelines and work plan updates
    • Tech stack needs/modifications
    • An expanded product concept to include packaging and pricing approach
    • Asset-type concepts for marketing campaigns, sales collateral, website, and social
    • Outline of initial Launch dates
    • Outline of initial customer success, awareness/PR/AR plans, and sales training plans
    • Final business case

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Problem Solved – A More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

    By guiding your team through the Go-to-Market planning process applied to an actual GTM Strategy, you have built an important set of capabilities that underpins today’s well-managed software companies. By following the step-by-step process outlined in this blueprint, you have delivered a host of benefits that include the following:

    • Alignment of Product, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success around a deeper understanding of your target buyers and what it takes to build competitive differentiation.
    • You have calculated your product market opportunity and whether it’s worth the investment in the long-term, and for the short term you have estimated gross margins as an important part of the business case.
    • Built executive support and confidence by leading a disparate team in complex decision making that is fact and evidence based to make more effective go/no go decisions related to investing in new products.
    • And finally, because you and your team have demonstrated their ability to align programs toward a common goal and program-manage a complex initiative through to successful completion, you have led your team to develop the “institutional muscle” to take on equally complex initiatives such as acquisition integration, rebranding, launching in a new region, etc.

    Therefore, developing the capabilities to manage a complex go-to-market strategy is akin to building company scalability and is sought after as a professional development opportunity that each executive should have on his/her résumé.

    If you would like additional support, contact us and we’ll make sure you get the professional expertise you need.

    Contact your account representative for more information.

    info@softwarereviews.com 1-888-670-8889

    Bibliography

    Acosta, Danette. “Average Customer Retention Rate by Industry.” Profitwell.com. Accessed Jan. 2022.

    Ashkenas, Ron, and Patrick Finn. “The Go-To-Market Approach Startups Need to Adopt.” Harvard Business Review, June 2016. Accessed Jun. 2021.

    Bilardi, Emma. “ How to Create Buyer Personas.” Product Marketing Alliance, July 2020. Accessed Dec. 2021.

    Cespedes, Frank V. “Defining a Post-Pandemic Channel Strategy.” Harvard Business Review, Apr. 2021. Accessed Jul. 2021.

    Chapman, Lawrence. “A Visual Guide to Product Launches.” Product Marketing Alliance. Accessed Jul. 2021.

    Chapman, Lawrence. “Everything You Need To Know About Go-To-Market Strategies.” Product Marketing Alliance. Accessed Jul. 2021.

    Christiansen, Clayton. “The Innovators Dilemma.” Harvard Business School Press, 1997.

    Drzewicki, Matt. “Digital Marketing Maturity: The Path to Success.” MIT Sloan Management Review. Accessed Dec. 2021.

    “Go-To-Market Refresher,” Product Marketing Alliance. Accessed Jul. 2021

    Harrison, Liz; Dennis Spillecke, Jennifer Stanley, and Jenny Tsai. “Omnichannel in B2B sales: The new normal in a year that has been anything but.” McKinsey & Company, 15 March, 2021. Accessed Dec. 2021.

    Jansen, Hasse. “Buyer Personas – 33 Mind Blowing Stats.” Boardview, 19 Feb. 2016. Accessed Jan. 2022.

    Scott, Ryan. “Creating a Brand Identity: 20 Questions to Consider.” Lean Labs, Jun 2021. Accessed Jul. 2021.

    Smith, Michael L., and James Erwin. “Role and Responsibility Charting (RACI).” DOCSearch. Accessed Jan. 2022. Web.

    “What is the Total Addressable Market (TAM).” Corporate Finance Institute (CFI), n.d. Accessed Jan. 2022.

    Related Software Reviews Research

    Sample of the Create a Buyer Persona and Journey research Create a Buyer Persona and Journey
    • A successful go-to-market strategy depends upon deep buyer understanding. Our Create a Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint will give you a step-by-step process that when followed will provide you and your team with that deep buyer understanding you need.
    • The Create a Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint provides you with an interview containing over 75 questions that, after capturing buyer answers and insights during interviews, will strengthen your value proposition, product market fit, lead gen engine and sales effectiveness.
    Sample of the Optimize Lead Generation With Lead Scoring research Optimize Lead Generation With Lead Scoring
    • Save time and money and improve your sales win rates when you apply our methodology to score contacts with your lead gen engine more accurately and pass better qualified leads over to your sellers.
    • Our methodology teaches marketers to develop your own lead scoring approach based upon lead/contact profile vs. your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and scores contact engagement. Applying the methodology to arrive at your own approach to scoring will mean reduced lead gen costs, higher conversion rates, and increased marketing influenced wins.

    Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}63|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): N/A
    • member rating average dollars saved: N/A
    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: End-User Computing Applications
    • Parent Category Link: /end-user-computing-applications

    Your organization has adopted Microsoft Teams, but users are not maximizing their use of it.

    • IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while also enabling end users to use Teams creatively.
    • IT must follow best practices for evaluation of new functionality when integrating Microsoft and third-party apps and also communicate changes to end users.
    • Due in part to the frequent addition of new features and lack of communication and training, many organizations don’t know which apps would benefit their users.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Collaboration is as much an art as a science. IT can help users collaborate more effectively in Teams by removing friction – while still maintaining guardrails – for users attempting to build out and experiment with features and capabilities.

    Impact and Result

    Use Info-Tech’s Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams to help collaboration flourish:

    • Collate key organizational collaboration use cases.
    • Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases.
    • Implement request process for new Teams apps.
    • Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality.

    Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Deck – Maximize the use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

    Set up your users for Teams collaboration success. Create a process that improves their ability to access, understand, and maximize their use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

    • Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Storyboard

    2. Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey – Capture end-user feedback on their collaborative use of Microsoft Teams.

    The survey responses will inform your organization's collaboration use cases for Teams and help you to identify which features and apps to enable.

    • Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey

    3. Microsoft Teams Planning Tool – A tool to help prioritize features to implement.

    Use this Excel tool to help you document the organization’s key collaboration use cases and prioritize which Teams apps to implement and encourage adoption on.

    • Microsoft Teams Planning Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams

    Empower your users to explore Teams collaboration beyond the basics.

    Analyst Perspective

    Life after Teams implementation

    You have adopted Teams, implemented it, and painted an early picture for your users on the basics. However, your organization is not yet maximizing its use of Teams' collaboration capabilities. Although web conferencing, channel-based collaboration, and chat are the most obvious ways Teams supports collaboration, users must explore Teams' functionality further to harness the application's full potential.

    You should enable your users to expand their collaboration use cases in Teams, but not at the risk of being flooded with app requests, nor user confusion or dissatisfaction. Instead, develop a process to evaluate and integrate new apps that will benefit the organization. Encourage your users to request new apps that will benefit them, while proactively planning for app integration that users should be alerted to.

    Photo of Emily Sugerman, Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Info-Tech Research Group. Emily Sugerman
    Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Your organization has adopted Microsoft Teams, but users are not getting the maximum benefit.

    • IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while enabling end-user creativity.
    • IT must follow best practices for evaluating new functionality when integrating Microsoft and third-party apps, while communicating changes to end users.
    • Due partly to the frequent addition of new features and lack of communication and training, many organizations don't know which apps would benefit their users.

    Common Obstacles

    • Users are unenthusiastic about exploring Teams further due to negative past experiences, preference for other applications, or indifference.
    • End users are unaware of the available range of features. When they become aware and try to add unapproved or unlicensed apps, they experience the frustration of being declined.
    • Users seek support from IT who are unfamiliar with new Teams features an apps, or with supporting Teams beyond the basics.
    • IT teams have no process to raise end-user awareness of these apps and functionality.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    Use Info-Tech's Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams to help collaboration flourish:

    • Collate key organizational collaboration use cases
    • Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases
    • Implement request process for new Teams apps
    • Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality

    Info-Tech Insight

    Collaboration is as much an art as a science. IT can help users collaborate more effectively in Teams by removing friction – while still maintaining guardrails – for users attempting to build out and experiment with features and capabilities.

    Are your users in a Teams rut?

    Are users failing to maximize their use of Teams to collaborate and get work done?

    Teams can do much more than chat, video conferencing, and document sharing. A fully-deployed Teams also lets users leverage apps and advanced collaboration features.

    However, IT must create a process for evaluating and approving Microsoft and third-party apps, and for communicating changes to end users.

    In the end, IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while also enabling end-user creativity.

    Third-party app use in Teams is rising:

    “Within Teams, the third-party apps with 10,000 users and above rose nearly 40% year-over-year.”
    Source: UC Today, 2023.

    Collaborate effectively in Microsoft Teams

    Set up your users for Teams collaboration success. Create a process that improves their ability to access, understand, and maximize their use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

    Challenges with Teams collaboration

    • Lack of motivation to explore available features
    • Scattered information
    • Lack of comfort using Teams beyond the basics
    • Blocked apps
    • Overlapping features
    • Confusing permissions

    Empowering Collaboration in Microsoft Teams

    1. Identify current collaboration challenges and use cases in Teams
    2. Create Teams app request workflows
    3. Set up communication hubs in Teams
    4. Empower end users to customize their Teams for effective collaboration

    Solution

    • Collate key organizational collaboration use cases
    • Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases
    • Implement request process for new Teams apps
    • Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality

    Project deliverables

    Use these tools to develop your plan to enable effective collaboration in Microsoft Teams.

    Key deliverable:

    Microsoft Teams Planning Tool

    An Excel tool for documenting the organization's key collaboration use cases and prioritizing which Teams apps to implement and encourage adoption of.

    Sample of the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool deliverable.

    Additional support:

    Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey

    Use or adapt this survey to capture user perception of how effectively Teams supports collaboration needs.

    Sample of the End-user satisfaction survey deliverable.

    Insight Summary

    Key Insight:

    Collaboration is as much an art as a science. IT can help users collaborate more effectively in Teams by removing friction – while still maintaining guardrails – for users attempting to build out and experiment with features and capabilities.

    Additional insights:

    Insight 1

    Users can browse the Teams app store and attempt to add unapproved apps, but they may not be able to distinguish between available and blocked apps. To avoid a bad user experience, communicate which apps they can add without additional approval and which they will need to send through an approval process.

    Insight 2

    Teams lets you customize the message users see when they request unapproved apps and/or redirect their request to your own URL. Review this step in the request process to ensure users are seeing the instructions that they need to see.

    Insight 3

    A Teams hub is where users can access a service catalog of approved Teams apps and submit service requests for new ones via the Make a Request button.

    Section 1: Collaborating Effectively in Teams for IT

    Section 1

    Collaborating Effectively in Teams for IT

    Section 2

    Collaborating Effectively in Teams for End Users

    Stop: Do you need the Teams Cookbook?

    If you:

    • are at the Teams implementation stage,
    • require IT best practices for initial governance of Teams creation, or
    • require end-user best practices for basic Teams functionality …

    Consult the Microsoft Teams Cookbook first.

    Understand the Microsoft vision of Teams collaboration

    Does it work for you?

    Microsoft's vision for Teams collaboration is to enable end-user freedom. For example, out of the box, users can create their own teams and channels unless IT restricts this ability.

    Teams is meant to be more than just chats and meetings. Microsoft is pushing Teams app integration so that Teams becomes, essentially, a landing page from which users can centralize their work and org updates.

    In partnership with the business, IT must determine which guardrails are necessary to balance end-user collaboration and creativity with the need for governance and control.

    Why is it difficult to increase the caliber of collaboration in Teams?

    Because collaboration is inherently messy, complex, and creative

    Schubert & Glitsch find that enterprise collaboration systems (such as Teams) have characteristics that reflect the unstructured and creative nature of collaboration. These systems “are designed to support joint work among people in the workplace. . . [They] contain, for the most part, unstructured content such as documents, blogs, or news posts,” and their implementations “are often reported to follow a ‘bottom up' and rather experimental introduction approach.” The open-endedness of the tool requires users to be able to creatively and voluntarily apply it, which in turn requires more enterprise effort to help increase adoption over time through trial and error.

    Source: Procedia Computer Science, 2015

    Info-Tech Insight

    Collaboration is as much an art as a science. IT can help users collaborate more effectively in Teams by removing friction – while still maintaining guardrails – for users attempting to build out and experiment with features and capabilities.

    Activity 1: Identify current challenges

    Input: Team input, Survey results
    Output: List of Teams challenges experienced by the organization
    Materials: Whiteboard (digital or physical)
    Participants: Teams collaboration working group

    First, identify what works and what doesn't for your users in Teams

    • Have users reported any challenges with Teams as their primary means of channel-based collaboration? Run a short survey to capture end-user sentiment on how Teams works for them. This survey can be set up and distributed through Microsoft Forms. Distribute either to the whole organization or a specific focus group. Gather feedback from users on the following: What are the major ways they need to collaborate to do their jobs? What IT-supported tools do they need to support this collaboration? What specific aspects of Teams do they want to better exploit?
    • If you send out transactional surveys on service desk tickets, run a report on Teams-related tickets to identify common complaints.
    • Brainstorm Teams challenges IT has experienced personally or have seen reported – especially difficulties with collaboration.
    • Once you have the data, group the challenges into themes. Are the challenges specifically related to collaboration? Data issues? Support issues? Access issues? Technical issues? Document them in tab 2 of the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool.

    Download the Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey template

    Define your organization's key collaboration scenarios

    Next, identify what users need to do in Teams

    The term collaboration scenarios has been proposed to describe the types of collaboration behavior your software – in this case, Teams – must support (Schubert & Glitsch, 2015). A successful implementation of this kind of tool requires that you “identif[y] use cases and collaboration scenarios that best suit a specific company and the people working in it” (Schubert & Glitsch, 2016).

    Teams tends to support the following kinds of collaboration and productivity goals (see list).

    What types of collaboration scenarios arise in the user feedback in the previous activity? What do users most need to do?

    Be proactive: Configure Microsoft Teams to match collaboration scenarios/use cases your users must engage in. This will help prevent an increase in shadow IT, where users attempt to bring in unapproved/unreviewed software that might duplicate your existing service catalog and/or circumvent the proper review and procurement process.

    MS Teams Use Cases

    1. Gather feedback
    2. Collaboratively create content
    3. Improve project & task management
    4. Add media content
    5. Conduct knowledge management
    6. Increase meeting effectiveness
    7. Increase employee engagement
    8. Enhance professional development
    9. Provide or access support
    10. Add third-party apps

    Activity 2: Match your collaboration scenarios to Teams capabilities

    Input: Collaboration scenarios, Teams use cases
    Output: Ranked list of Teams features to implement and/or promote
    Materials: Microsoft Teams Planning Tool
    Participants: Teams collaboration working group

    Which features support the key collaboration use cases?

    1. Using the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool, list your organization's key collaboration scenarios. Draw on the data returned in the previous activity. List them in Tab 2.
    2. See the following slide for the types of collaboration use cases Teams is designed to support. In the planning tool, select use cases that best match your organizational collaboration scenarios.
    3. Dive into more specific features on Tab 3, which are categorized by collaboration use case. Where do users' collaboration needs align with Teams' inherent capabilities? Add lines in Tab C for the third-party apps that you are considering adding to Teams.
    4. In columns B and C of Tab 3, decide and prioritize the candidates for implementation. Review the list of prioritized features on tab 4.

    NB: Microsoft has introduced a Teams Premium offering, with additional capabilities for meetings and webinars (including customized banding, meeting watermarks, and virtual webinar green rooms) and will paywall some features previously available without Premium (live caption translations, meeting data on attendee departure/arrival times) (“What is Microsoft Teams Premium?”, n.d.)

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool

    MS Teams productivity & collab features

    Teams apps & collaboration features enable the following types of work. When designing collaboration use cases, identify which types of collaboration are necessary, then explore each category in depth.

    1. Gather feedback

      Solicit feedback and comments, and provide updates
    2. Collaboratively create content

      Compose as a group, with live-synced changes
    3. Improve project & task management

      Keep track of projects and tasks
    4. Add media content

      Enrich Teams conversations with media, and keep a library of video resources
    5. Knowledge management

      Pull together document libraries and make information easier to find
    6. Increase meeting effectiveness

      Facilitate interactions and document meeting outcomes
    7. Increase employee engagement

      Use features that enhance social interaction among Teams users
    8. Enhance professional development

      Find resources to help achieve professional goals
    9. Provide or access support

      IT and user-facing resources for accessing and/or providing support
    10. Add third-party apps

      Understand the availability/restrictions of the built-in Teams app catalog

    The Teams app store

    • The lure of the app store: Your users will encounter a mix of supported and unsupported applications, some of which they can access, some for which you have no licenses, some built by your organization, some built by Microsoft or third parties. However, the distinction between these categories may not be immediately apparent to users. Microsoft does not remove blocked apps from users' view.
    • Users may attempt to add unsupported apps and then receive error messages or prompts to send a request through Teams to IT for approval.
    • App add-ins are not limited to those built by Microsoft Corporation. The Teams app store also features a plethora of third-party apps that can provide value.
    • However, their third-party status introduces another set of complications.
    • Attempting to add third-party apps may expose users to sales pitches and encourage the implementation of shadow IT, circumventing the IT request process.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Users can browse and attempt to add unapproved apps in the Teams app store, but they may have difficulty distinguishing between available and blocked apps. To avoid a bad user experience, communicate to your users which apps they can add without additional approval, and which must be sent through an approval process.

    Decide how you will evaluate requests for new Teams apps

    • As you encourage users to explore and fully utilize Teams, you may see increased requests for admin approval for apps you do not currently support.
    • To prevent disorganized response and user dissatisfaction, build out a workflow for handling new/unapproved Teams app requests. Ensure the workflow accounts for Microsoft and third-party apps.
    • What must you consider when integrating third-party tools? You must have control over what users may add. These requests should follow, or build upon, your existing process for non-standard requests, including a process for communicating the change.
    • Track the fulfillment time for Teams app requests. The longer the user must wait for a response, the more their satisfaction will decline.

    icrosoft suggests that you regularly review the app usage report in the Teams admin center as “a signal about the demand for an app within your organization.” This will help you proactively determine which apps to evaluate for approval.

    Build request workflow for unsupported Teams apps

    What are the key steps?

    1. Request comes in
    2. Review by a technical review team
    3. Review by service desk or business analyst
    4. Additional operational technical reviews if necessary
    5. Procurement and installation
    6. Communication of result to requester
    7. App added to the catalog so it can be used by others

    Example workflow of a 'Non-Standard Software Request Process'.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Teams allows you to customize the message users see when they request an unapproved app and/or redirect their request to your own URL. Review this step in the request process to ensure your users are seeing the instructions that they need to see.

    Download the Service Request Workflow library

    Incorporate new approved service requests into a service request catalog

    Follow the process in Reduce Shadow IT With a Service Request Catalog to build out a robust request management process and service catalog to continuously incorporate new non-standard requests and advertise new Teams apps:

    • Design the service
    • Design the catalog
    • Build the catalog
    • Market the service

    Sample of the 'Reduce Shadow IT With a Service Request Catalog' blueprint.

    Add a company hub to Teams

    Use Teams to help users access the company intranet for organizational information that is relevant to their roles.

    This can be done in two ways:

    1. By adding a SharePoint home site to Teams.
    2. By leveraging Viva Connections: A hub to access other apps and Viva services. The user sees a personalized dashboard, feed, and resources.

    Venn diagram with two circles 'Viva Connections - App-based employee experience where individuals get their work done' and 'Home Sites - Portal that features organizational news, events, and supplemental resources'. The overlapping middle has a list: 'News, Shared navigation, Integrates with M365, Developer platforms & management, Audience targeting, Web parts, Permissions'. (Venn diagram recreated from Microsoft Learn, 2023.)

    Info-Tech Insight

    The hub is where users can access a service catalog of approved Teams apps and submit service requests for a new one via a Make a Request button.

    Communicate changes to Teams

    Let end users know what's available and how to add new productivity tools.

    Where will users find approved Teams apps? How will you inform people about what's available? Once a new app is available, how is this communicated?

    Options:

    • Communicate new Teams features in high-visibility places (e.g. the Hub).
    • Leverage the Power Apps Bulletins app in Teams to communicate regular announcements about new features.
    • Create a company-wide Team with a channel called “What's New in Teams.” Post updates on new features and integrations, and link to more detailed knowledgebase articles on how to use the new features.
    • Aim for the sweet spot of communication frequency: not too much nor too little.

    Measure your success

    Determine how you will evaluate the success of your efforts to improve the Teams collaboration experience

    Improved satisfaction with Teams: Increased net promoter score (NPS)

    Utilization of features: Increased daily average users on key features, apps, integrations

    Timeliness: % of SLAs met for service request fulfillment

    Improved communication to end users about Teams' functionality: Satisfaction with knowledgebase articles on Teams

    Satisfaction with communication from IT

    Section 2: Collaborating Effectively in Teams for End Users

    Section 1

    Collaborating Effectively in Teams for IT

    Section 2

    Collaborating Effectively in Teams for End Users

    For IT: Use this section to help users understand Teams collaboration features

    Share the collateral in this section with your users to support their deeper exploration of Teams collaboration.

    • Use the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool to prepare a simple service catalog of the features and apps available to your users.
    • Edit Tab 2 (MS Teams Collab Features & Apps) by deleting the blocked apps/features.
    • Share this document with your users by linking to it via this image on the following slides:
    Sample of the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool deliverable.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    End-user customization of Teams

    Consider how you want to set up your Teams view. Add the apps you already use to have them at your fingertips in Teams.

    You can . . .

    1. Customize your navigation bar by pinning your preferred apps and working with them within Teams (Microsoft calls these personal apps).
    2. Customize your message bar by adding the app extensions you find most useful. Screenshot of the message bar with the 3-dot highlighted.
    3. Customize chats and Teams by adding tabs with content your group needs frequent access to. Screenshot of MS Teams tabs with the plus sign highlighted.
    4. Set up connectors to send notifications from apps to a Team and bots to answer questions and automate simple tasks. Screenshot of the 'Set up a connector' button.

    Learn more from Microsoft here

    MS Teams productivity & collab features

    The Apps catalog includes a range of apps that users may add to channels, chat, or the navigation bar. Teams also possesses other collaboration features that may be underused in your organization.

    1. Gather feedback

      Solicit feedback and comments, and provide updates
    2. Collaboratively create content

      Compose as a group, with live-synced changes
    3. Improve project & task management

      Keep track of projects and tasks
    4. Add media content

      Enrich Teams conversations with media, and keep a library of video resources
    5. Knowledge management

      Pull together document libraries and make information easier to find
    6. Increase meeting effectiveness

      Facilitate interactions and document meeting outcomes
    7. Increase employee engagement

      Use features that enhance social interaction among Teams users
    8. Enhance professional development

      Find resources to help achieve professional goals
    9. Provide or access support

      IT and user-facing resources for accessing and/or providing support
    10. Add third-party apps

      Understand the availability/restrictions of the built-in Teams app catalog

    Samples of four features: 'Prioritize with a voting table', 'Launch a live meeting poll', 'Launch a survey', and 'Request an update'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Collaboration Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Use integrated Teams features to gather feedback and provide updates

    • Vote: Create a list of items for teams to brainstorm pros and cons, and then tabulate votes on. This component can be edited inline by anyone with whom the component is shared. The edits will sync anywhere the component is shared.
    • Meeting polls: Capture instant feedback from teams, chat, and call participants. Participant anonymity can be set by the poll organizer. Results can be exported.
    • Create surveys and quizzes and share the results. Results can be exported.
    • Create, track, and review updates and progress reports from teams and individuals.

    Collaboratively create content

    Samples of four features: 'Add Office suite docs', 'Brainstorm in Whiteboard', 'Add Loop components', and 'Take notes in OneNote'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Use integrated Teams features composed as a group, with live-synced changes

    • Microsoft Office documents: Add/upload files to a chat or channel discussion. Find them again in the Files tab or add the file itself as a tab to a chat or channel and edit it within Teams.
    • Brainstorm with the Whiteboard application. Add a whiteboard to a tab or to a meeting.
    • Add Loop components to a chat: Create a list, checklist, paragraph, or table that can be edited in real time by anyone in the chat.
    • Add OneNote to a chat or channel tab or use during a meeting to take notes. Pin OneNote to your app bar if it's one of your most frequently-used apps.

    Improve project & task management

    Samples of four features: 'Request approvals and updates', 'Add & track tasks', 'Create a personal notespace', and 'Manage workflows'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Keep track of projects and tasks

    • Use the Approvals and Update apps to create, track, and respond to requests for approvals and progress reports within Teams.
    • Use Tasks by Planner & To Do to track both individual and team tasks. Pin the Tasks app to the app bar, add a plan as a tab to a Team, and turn any Teams message into a task by right-clicking on it.
    • Start a chat with yourself to maintain a private space to jot down quick notes.
    • Add Lists to a Teams channel.
    • Explore automation: Add pre-built Teams workflows from the Workflows app, or build new ones in PowerAutomate
    • IT teams may leverage Teams apps like Azure Boards, Pipelines, Repos, AD notifications, and GitHub.

    Add media content

    Samples of four features: 'Share news stories', 'Share YouTube videos', 'Share Stream content', and 'Add RSS feeds'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Enrich Teams conversations with media, and keep a library of video resources

    • Search for and add specific news stories to a chat or channel. See recent news stories in search.
    • Search, share, and watch YouTube videos.
    • Share video links from Microsoft Stream.
    • Add RSS feeds.

    Knowledge management

    Samples of four features: 'SharePoint Pages', 'SharePoint document library', 'SharePoint News', and 'Who'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Pull together document libraries and make information easier to find

    • Add a page from an existing SharePoint site to a Team as a tab.
    • Add a SharePoint document library to a Team as a tab.
    • Search names of members of your organization to learn about their role, place in the organizational structure, and contact information.

    Increase meeting effectiveness

    Samples of four features: 'Take meeting notes', 'Set up a Q&A', 'Use live captions', and 'Record and transcribe meetings'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Facilitate interactions and document meeting outcomes

    • Take simple notes during a meeting.
    • Start conversations and ask and answer questions in a dedicated Q&A space during the Teams meeting.
    • Turn on live captions during the meeting.
    • Record a meeting and automatically generate a transcript of the meeting.
    • Assign attendees to breakout rooms.
    • Track the effectiveness of the meeting by producing an attendance report with the number of attendees, the meeting start/end time, a list of the attendees, and participation in activities.

    Increase employee engagement

    Samples of four features: 'Send praise', 'Build an avatar', 'Add video effects', and 'Play games during meetings'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Use features that enhance social interaction among Teams users

    • Send supportive comments to colleagues using Praise.
    • Build out digital avatars to toggle on during meetings instead of your own video.
    • Apply different visual effects, filters, and backgrounds to your screen during meetings.
    • Games for Work: Launch icebreaker games during a meeting.
    • Translate a Teams message from another language to your default language.
    • Send emojis, GIFs, and stickers in messages or as reactions to others' messages. You can also send reactions live during meetings to increase meeting engagement.

    Enhance professional development

    Samples of four features: 'Launch Viva Learning', 'Turn on Speaker Coach', 'Viva Insights', and 'Viva Goals'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    Connect with learning resources and apply data-driven feedback based on Teams usage

    • Add learning materials from various course catalogs in Viva Learning.
    • Speaker Coach: Receive AI feedback on your performance as a speaker during a meeting.
    • Receive automatically generated insights and suggestions from Viva Insights on work habits and time allocation to different work activities.
    • Viva Goals: Track organizational "objectives and key results"/manage organizational goals

    Provide or access support

    Samples of four features: 'Access MS Support', 'Manage Teams & M365', 'Deploy power virtual agents', and 'Consult MS resource center'.

    Download the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool for an expanded list of features & apps

    IT and user-facing resources for accessing or providing support

    • Admin: Carry out simple Teams management tasks (for IT).
    • Power Virtual Agents: Build out chatbots to answer user questions (can be built by IT and end users for their customers).
    • Resource Center: A combination of pre-built Microsoft resources (tips, templates) with resources provided by organizational IT.
    • Support: Access Microsoft self-serve knowledgebase articles (for IT).

    Add third-party apps

    Understand the availability/restrictions of the built-in Teams app catalog

    • App add-ins are not limited to those built by Microsoft Corporation. The Teams app store also features a plethora of third-party apps that may provide value.
    • However, being able to view an app in the app store does not necessarily mean it's supported or licensed by your organization.
    • Teams will allow users to request access to apps, which will then be evaluated by your IT support team. Follow your service desk's recommended request process for requesting and justifying the addition of a new Teams app that is not currently supported.
    • Before making the request, investigate existing Teams features to determine if the functionality is already available.

    Research contributors

    Mike Cavanagh
    Global Service Desk Manager
    Clearwater Seafoods LP

    Info-Tech contributors:

    Benedict Chang, Senior Advisory Analyst

    John Donovan, Principal Research Director

    Allison Kinnaird, Practice Lead

    P.J. Ryan, Research Director

    Natalie Sansone, Research Director

    Christine West, Managing Partner

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Sample of the 'Reduce Shadow IT with a Service Request Catalog' blueprint.

    Reduce Shadow IT With a Service Request Catalog

    Foster business relationships through sourcing-as-a-service. There is a direct correlation between service delivery dissatisfaction and increases in shadow IT. Whether the goal is to reduce shadow IT or gain control, improved customer service and fast delivery are key to making lasting changes.

    Sample of the 'Microsoft Teams Cookbook' blueprint.

    Microsoft Teams Cookbook

    Recipes for best practices and use cases for Teams. Microsoft Teams is not a standalone app. Successful utilization of Teams occurs when conceived in the broader context of how it integrates with M365. Understanding how information flows between Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, for instance, will aid governance with permissions, information storage, and file sharing.

    Sample of the 'Govern Office 365 (M365)' blueprint.

    Govern Office 365

    You bought it. Use it right. Map your organizational goals to the administration features available in the Office 365/M365 console. Your governance should reflect your requirements.

    Bibliography

    Mehta, Tejas. “The Home Site App for Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft Community Hub. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/the-home-site-app-for-microsoft-teams/ba-p/1714255.

    Overview: Viva Connections. 7 Mar. 2023, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/connections/viva-connections-overview.

    Rogers, Laura. “SharePoint Home Site in Teams.” Wonderlaura, 24 Jun 2021. https://wonderlaura.com/2021/06/24/sharepoint-home...

    Schubert, Petra, and Johannes H. Glitsch. “Adding Structure to Enterprise Collaboration Systems: Identification of Use Cases and Collaboration Scenarios.” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 64, Jan. 2015, pp. 161–69. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.08.477.

    Schubert, Petra, and Johannes Glitsch. “Use Cases and Collaboration Scenarios: How Employees Use Socially-Enabled Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS).” International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, vol. 4, no. 2, Jan. 2016, pp. 41–62.

    Thompson, Mark. “User Requests for Blocked Apps in the Teams Store.” Supersimple365, 5 Apr 2022, https://supersimple365.com/user-requests-for-apps-...

    “What is Microsoft Teams Premium?” Breakwater IT, n.d., https://breakwaterit.co.uk/guides/microsoft-teams-...

    Wills, Jonny. “Microsoft Teams Monthly Users Hits 280 Million.” UC Today, 25 Jan. 2023, https://www.uctoday.com/unified-communications/microsoft-teams-monthly-users-hits-280-million/.

    Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}333|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 10.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: 5 Average Days Saved
    • member rating average days saved: After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.
    • Parent Category Name: Strategy and Organizational Design
    • Parent Category Link: /strategy-and-organizational-design
    • Infrastructure & Operations is changing rapidly. It’s a constant challenge to find the right skills to support the next new technology while at the same time maintaining the skills in house that allow you to support your existing platforms.
    • A lack of clarity around required skills makes finding the right skills difficult, and it’s not clear whether you should train, hire, contract, or outsource to address gaps.
    • You need to keep up with changes and new strategy while continuing to support your existing environment.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Take a strategic approach to acquiring skills – looking only as far as the needs of the next project will lead to a constant skills shortage with no plan for it to be addressed.
    • Begin by identifying your future state. Identify needed skills in the organization to support planned projects and initiatives, and to mitigate skills-related risks.

    Impact and Result

    • Leverage your infrastructure roadmap and cloud strategy to identify needed skills in your future state environment.
    • Decide how you’ll acquire needed skills based on the characteristics of need for each skill.
    • Communicate the change and create a plan of action for the skills transformation.

    Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should map technical skills for a changing Infrastructure & Operations organization, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify skills needs for the future state environment

    Identify what skills are needed based on where the organization is going.

    • Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization – Phase 1: Identify Skills Needs for Your Future State Environment
    • Future State Playbook
    • IT/Cloud Solutions Architect
    • IT/Cloud Engineer
    • IT/Cloud Administrator
    • IT/Cloud Demand Billing & Accounting Analyst

    2. Acquire needed skills

    Ground skills acquisition decisions in the characteristics of need.

    • Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization – Phase 2: Acquire Needed Skills
    • Technical Skills Map

    3. Maximize the value of the skills map

    Get stakeholder buy-in; leverage the skills map in other processes.

    • Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization – Phase 3: Maximize the Value of Your Skills Map
    • Technical Skills Map Communication Deck Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Review Initiatives and Skills-Related Risks

    The Purpose

    Identify process and skills changes required by the future state of your environment.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Set foundation for alignment between strategy-defined technology initiatives and needed skills.

    Activities

    1.1 Review the list of initiatives and projects with the group.

    1.2 Identify how key support, operational, and deployment processes will change through planned initiatives.

    1.3 Identify skills-related risks and pain points.

    Outputs

    Future State Playbook

    2 Identify Needed Skills and Roles

    The Purpose

    Identify process and skills changes required by the future state of your environment.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Set foundation for alignment between strategy-defined technology initiatives and needed skills.

    Activities

    2.1 Identify skills required to support the new environment.

    2.2 Map required skills to roles.

    Outputs

    IT/Cloud Architect Role Description

    IT/Cloud Engineer Role Description

    IT/Cloud Administrator Role Description

    3 Create a Plan to Acquire Needed Skills

    The Purpose

    Create a skills acquisition strategy based on the characteristics of need.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Optimal skills acquisition strategy defined.

    Activities

    3.1 Modify impact scoring scale for key skills decision factors.

    3.2 Apply impact scoring scales to needed skills

    3.3 Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to acquire needed skills.

    Outputs

    Technical Skills Map

    4 Develop a Communication Plan

    The Purpose

    Create an effective communication plan for different stakeholders across the organization.

    Identify opportunities to leverage the skills map elsewhere.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Create a concise, clear, consistent, and relevant change message for stakeholders across the organization.

    Activities

    4.1 Review skills decisions and decide how you will acquire skills in each role.

    4.2 Update roles descriptions.

    4.3 Create a change message.

    4.4 Identify opportunities to leverage the skills map in other processes.

    Outputs

    Technical Skills Map Communication Deck

    Take a Realistic Approach to Disaster Recovery Testing

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    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: DR and Business Continuity
    • Parent Category Link: /business-continuity

    You have made significant investments in availability and disaster recovery – but your ability to recover hasn’t been tested in years. Testing will:

    • Improve your DR capabilities.
    • Identify required changes to planning documentation and procedures.
    • Validate DR capabilities for interested customers and auditors.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • If you treat testing as a pass/fail exercise, you aren’t meeting the end goal of improving organizational resilience.
    • Focus on identifying gaps and risks, and addressing them, before a real disaster hits.
    • Take a realistic, iterative approach to resilience testing that starts with small, low-risk tests and builds on lessons learned.

    Impact and Result

    • Identify testing scenarios and scope that can deliver value to your organization.
    • Create practical test plans with Info-Tech’s template.
    • Demonstrate value from testing to gain buy-in for additional tests.

    Take a Realistic Approach to Disaster Recovery Testing Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Take a Realistic Approach to Disaster Recovery Testing Storyboard – A guide to establishing a right-sized approach to DR testing that delivers durable value to your organization.

    Use this research to understand the different types of tests, prioritize and plan tests for your organization, review the results, and establish a cadence for testing.

    • Take a Realistic Approach to Disaster Recovery Testing Storyboard

    2. Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template – A template to document your organization's DR test plan.

    Use this template to document scope and goals, participants, key pre-test milestones, the test-day schedule, and your findings from the testing exercise.

    • Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template

    3. Disaster Recovery Testing Program Summary – A template to outline your organization's DR testing program.

    Identify the tests you will run over the next year and the expertise, governance, process, and funding required to support testing.

    • Disaster Recovery Testing Program Summary

    [infographic]

     

    Further reading

    Take a Realistic Approach to Disaster Recovery Testing

    Reduce costly downtime with a right-sized testing program that improves IT resilience.

    Analyst Perspective

    Reduce costly downtime with a right-sized testing program that improves IT resilience.

    Andrew Sharp

    Most businesses make significant investments in disaster recovery and technology resilience. Redundant sites and systems, monitoring, intrusion prevention, backups, training, documentation: it all costs time and money.

    But does this investment deliver expected value? Specifically, can you deliver service continuity in a way that meets business requirements?

    You can’t know the answer without regularly testing recovery processes and systems. And more than just validation, testing helps you deliver service continuity by finding and addressing gaps in your plans and training your staff on recovery procedures.

    Use the insights, tools, and templates in this research to create a streamlined and effective resilience testing program that helps validate recovery capabilities and enhance service reliability, availability, and continuity.

    Andrew Sharp

    Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    You have made significant investments in availability and disaster recovery (DR) – but your ability to recover hasn’t been tested in years. Testing will:

    • Improve your DR capabilities.
    • Identify required changes to planning documentation and procedures.
    • Validate DR capabilities for interested customers and auditors.

    Common Obstacles

    Despite the value testing can offer, actually executing on DR tests is difficult because:

    • Testing is often an IT-driven initiative, and it can be difficult to secure business buy-in to redirect resources away from other urgent projects or accept risks that come with testing.
    • Previous tests have been overly complex and challenging to coordinate and leave a hangover so bad that no one wants to do them again.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    Take a realistic approach to resilience testing by starting with small, low-risk tests, then iterating with the lessons you’ve learned:

    • Identify testing scenarios and scope that can deliver value to your organization.
    • Create practical test plans with Info-Tech’s template.
    • Get buy-in for regular DR testing from key stakeholders with a testing program summary.

    Info-Tech Insight

    If you treat testing as a pass/fail exercise, you aren’t meeting the end goal of improving organizational resilience. Focus on identifying gaps and risks so you can address them before a real disaster hits.

    Process and Outputs

    This research is accompanied by templates to help you achieve your goals faster.

    1 - Establish the business rationale for DR testing.
    2 - Review a range of options for testing.
    3 - Prioritize tests that are most valuable to your business.
    4 - Create a disaster recovery test plan.
    5 - Establish a Test Program to support a regular testing cycle.

    Outputs:

    DR Test Plan
    DR Testing Program Summary

    Example Orange Activity slide.
    Orange activity slides like the one on the left provide directions to help you make key decisions.

    Key Deliverable:

    Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template

    Build a plan for your first disaster recovery test.

    This document provides a complete example you can use to quickly build your own plan, including goals, milestones, participants, the test-day schedule, and findings from the after-action review.

    Why test?

    Testing helps you avoid costly downtime

    • In a disaster scenario, speed matters. Immediately after an outage, the impact on the organization is small, but impact increases rapidly the longer the outage continues.
    • A quick and reliable response and recovery can protect the organization from significant losses.
    • A DRP testing and maintenance program helps ensure you’re ready to recover when you need to, rather than figuring it out as you go.

    “Routine testing is vital to survive a disaster… that’s when muscle memory sets in. If you don’t test your DR plan it falls [in importance], and you never see how routine changes impact it.”

    – Jennifer Goshorn
    Chief Administrative Officer
    Gunderson Dettmer LLP

    Info-Tech members estimated even one day of system downtime could lead to significant revenue losses. Estimated loss of revenue over 24 hours. Core Infrastructure has the highest potential for lost revenue.

    Average estimated potential loss* in thousands of USD due to a 24-hour outage (N=41)

    *Data aggregated from 41 business impact analyses (BIAs) conducted with Info-Tech advisory assistance. BIAs evaluate potential revenue loss due to a full day of system downtime, at the worst possible time.

    Run tests to enhance disaster recovery plans

    Testing improves organizational resilience

    • Identify and address gaps in your plans before a real disaster strikes.
    • Cross-train staff on systems recovery.
    • Go beyond testing technology to test recovery processes.
    • Establish a culture that centers resilience in everyday decision-making.

    Testing keeps DR documentation ready for action

    • Update documentation ahead of tests to prepare for the testing exercise.
    • Update documentation after testing to incorporate any lessons learned.

    Testing validates that investments in resilience deliver value

    • Confirm your organization can meet defined recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).
    • Provide proof of testing for auditors, prospective customers, and insurance applications

    Overcome testing challenges

    Despite the value of effective recovery testing, most IT organizations struggle to test recovery plans

    Common challenges

    • Key resources don’t have time for testing exercises.
    • You don’t have the technology to support live recovery testing.
    • Tests are done ad hoc and lessons learned are lost.
    • A lack of business support for test exercises as the value isn’t understood.
    • Tests are always artificially simple because RTOs and RPOs must be met to satisfy customer or auditor inquiries

    Overcome challenges with a realistic approach:

    • Start small with tabletop and recovery tests for specific systems.
    • Include recovery tests in operational tasks (e.g. restore systems when you have a maintenance window).
    • Create testing plans for larger testing exercises.
    • Build on successful tests to streamline testing exercises in the future.
    • Don’t make testing a pass-fail exercise. Focus on identifying gaps and risks so you can address them before a real disaster hits.

    Go beyond traditional testing

    Different test techniques help validate recovery against different threats

    • There are many threats to service continuity, including ransomware, severe weather events, geopolitical conflict, legacy systems, staff turnover, and day-to-day outages caused by human error, software updates, hardware failures, or network outages.
    • At its core, disaster recovery planning is about recovery. A plan for service recovery will help you mitigate against many threats at once. The testing approaches on the right will help you validate different aspects of that recovery process.
    • This research will provide an overview of the approaches outlined on the right and help you prioritize tests that are most valuable to your organization.
    Different test techniques for disaster recover training: System Failover tests, tabletop exercises, ransomware recovery tests, etc.

    00 Identify a working group

    30 minutes

    Identify a group of participants who can fill the following roles and inform the discussions around testing in this research. A single person could fill multiple roles and some roles could be filled by multiple people. Many participants will be drawn from the larger DRP team.

    Roles and expectations for Disaster Recovery Planning. DRP sponsor, Testing coordinator, System testers, business liaisons, executive team.

    Input

    • Organizational context

    Output

    • A list of key participants for test planning and execution

    Participants

    • Typically, start by identifying the sponsor and coordinator and have them identify the other members of the working group.

    Start by updating your disaster recovery plan (DRP)

    Use Info-Tech’s Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan research to identify recovery objectives based on business impact and outline recovery processes. Both are tremendously valuable inputs to your test plans.

    Overall Business Continuity Plan

    IT Disaster Recovery Plan

    A plan to restore IT services (e.g. applications and infrastructure) following a disruption. A DRP:

    • Identifies critical applications and dependencies.
    • Defines appropriate recovery objectives based on a business impact analysis (BIA).
    • Creates a step-by-step incident response plan.

    BCP for Each Business Unit

    A set of plans to resume business processes for each business unit. A business continuity plan (BCP) is also sometimes called a continuity of operations plan (COOP).

    BCPs are created and owned by each business unit, and creating a BCP requires deep involvement from the leadership of each business unit.

    Info-Tech’s Develop a Business Continuity Plan blueprint provides a methodology for creating business unit BCPs as part of an overall BCP for the organization.

    Crisis Management Plan

    A plan to manage a wide range of crises, from health and safety incidents to business disruptions to reputational damage.

    Info-Tech’s Implement Crisis Management Best Practices blueprint provides a framework for planning a response to any crisis, from health and safety incidents to reputational damage.

    01 Confirm: why test at all?

    15-30 minutes

    Identify the value recovery testing for your organization. Use language appropriate for a nontechnical audience. Start with the list below and add, modify, or delete bullet points to reflect your own organization.

     

    Drivers for testing – Examples:

     

    • Improve service continuity.
    • Identify and address gaps in recovery plans before a real disaster strikes.
    • Cross-train staff on systems recovery to minimize single points of failure.
    • Identify how we coordinate across teams during a major systems outage.
    • Exercise both recovery processes and technology.
    • Support a culture that centers system resilience in everyday decision-making.
    • Keep recovery documentation up-to-date and ready for action.
    • Confirm that our stated recovery objectives can be met.
    • Provide proof of testing for auditors, prospective customers, and insurance applications.
    • We require proof of testing to pass audits and renew cybersecurity insurance.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Time-strapped technical staff will sometimes push back on planning and testing, objecting that the team will “figure it out” in a disaster. But the question isn’t whether recovery is possible – it’s whether the recovery aligns with business needs. If your plan is to “MacGyver” a solution on the fly, you can’t know if it’s the right solution for your organization.

    Input

    • Business drivers and context for testing

    Output

    • Specific goals that are driving testing

    Participants

    • DR sponsor
    • Test coordinator

    Think about what and how you test

    Different layers of the stack to test: Network, Authentication, compute and storage, visualization platforms, database services, middleware, app servers, web servers.

    Find gaps and risks with tabletop testing

    Tabletop planning had the greatest impact on meeting recovery objectives (RTOs/RPOs).

    In a tabletop planning exercise, the team walks through a disaster scenario to outline the recovery workflow, and risks or gaps that could disrupt that workflow.

    Tabletops are particularly effective because:

    • It enables you to play out a wider range of scenarios than technology-based testing (e.g. full-scale, parallel) due to cost and complexity factors.
    • It is non-intrusive, so it can be executed more easily than other testing methodologies.
    • The exercise translates into recovery documentation: you create a workflow as you go.
    • A major site or service recovery scenario will review all aspects of the recovery process and create the backbone of your recovery plan.

    02 Run a tabletop exercise

    2 hours

    Tabletop testing is part of our core DRP methodology, Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan. This exercise can be run using cue cards, sticky notes, or on a whiteboard; many of our facilitators find building the workflow directly in flowchart software to be very effective.

    Use our Recovery Workflow Template as a starting point.

    Some tips for running your first tabletop exercise:

    Do

    • Review the complete workflow from notification all the way to user acceptance testing.
    • Keep focused; stay on task and on time.
    • Revisit each step and record gaps and risks (and known solutions, but don’t dwell on this).
    • Revise and improve the plan with task owners.

    Don't

    • Get weighed down by tools.
    • Try to find solutions to every gap/risk as you go. Save in-depth research/discussion for later.
    • Document the details right away – stick to the high-level plan for the first exercise.
    1. Ahead of the exercise, decide on a scenario, identify participants, and book a meeting time.
      • For your first walkthrough of a DR scenario, we often recommend a scenario that considers a site failure requiring failover to a DR site.
      • For the first exercise, focus on technical aspects of recovery before bringing in members of the business. The technical team may need space to discuss the appropriate steps in the recovery process before you bring in business liaisons to discuss user acceptance testing (UAT).
      • A complete failover considers all systems, the viability of your second site, and can help identify parts of the process that require additional exercises.
    2. Review the scenario with participants. Then, discuss and document the recovery process, starting with initial notification of an event.
      • Record steps in the process on white cards or boxes.
      • On yellow and red cards, document gaps and risks in people process and technology requirements.
    3. Once you’ve walked through the process, return to the start.
      • Record the time required to complete each step. Consider identifying who is responsible for key steps. Identify any additional gaps and risks.
    4. Clean up and record the results of the workflow. Save a copy with your DRP documentation.

    Input

    • Expert knowledge on systems recovery

    Output

    • Recovery workflow, including gaps and risks

    Participants

    • Test coordinator
    • Technical SMEs

    Move from tabletop testing to functional exercises

    See how your plans fare in the real world

    In live exercises, some portion of your recovery plans are executed in a way that mimics a real recovery scenario. Some advantages of live testing:

    • See how standby systems behave. A tabletop exercise can miss small issues that can make or break the recovery process. For example, connectivity or integration issues on a new subnet might be difficult to predict prior to actually running services in that environment.
    • Hands-on practice: Familiarize the team with the steps, commands, and interfaces of your recovery toolset.
    • Manage the pressure of the DR scenario: Nothing’s quite like the real thing, but a live exercise may be the closest your team can get to a disaster situation without experiencing it firsthand.

    Examples of live exercises

    Boot and smoke test Turn on a standby system and confirm it boots up correctly.
    Restore and validate data Restore data or servers from backup. Confirm data integrity.
    Parallel testing Send familiar transactions to production and standby systems. Confirm both systems produce the same result.
    Failover systems Shut down the production system and use the standby system in production.

    Run local tests ahead of releases

    Think small

    Most unacceptable downtime is caused by localized issues, such as hardware or software failures, rather than widespread destructive events. Regular local testing can help validate the recovery plan for local issues and improve overall service continuity.

    Make local testing a standard step in maintenance work and new deployments to embed resilience considerations in day-to-day activities. Run the same tests in both your primary and your DR environment.

    Some examples of localized tests:

    • Review backup logs and check for errors.
    • Restore files or whole systems from backup.
    • Run application-based tests as part of release management, including unit, regression, and performance tests.
      • Ensure application tests are run for both the primary and DR environment.
      • For a deep-dive on application testing, see Info-Tech’s research Automate Testing to Get More Done.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Local tests will vary between different services, and local test design is usually best left to the system SMEs. At the same time, centralize reporting to understand where tests are being done.

    Investigate whether your IT Service Management or ticketing system can create recurring tasks or work orders to schedule, document, and track test exercises. Tasks can be pre-populated with checklists and documentation to support the test and provide a record of completed tests to support oversight and reporting.

    Have the business validate recovery

    If your business doesn’t think a system’s recovered, it’s not recovered.

    User acceptance testing (UAT) after system recovery is a key step in the recovery process. Like any step in the process, there’s value in testing it before it actually needs to be done. Assign responsibility for building UATs to the person who will be responsible for executing them.

    An acceptance test script might look something like the checklist below.

    • Does the application open?
    • Does the interface look right?
    • Do you see any unusual notifications or warnings?
    • Can you conduct a key transaction with dummy data?
    • Can you run key reports?

    “I cannot stress how important it is to assign ownership of responsibilities in a test; this is the only way to truly mitigate against issues in a test.”

    – Robert Nardella
    IT Service Management
    Certified z/OS Mainframe Professional

    Info-Tech Insight

    Build test scripts and test transactions ahead of time to minimize the amount of new work required during a recovery scenario.

    Beyond the Basics: Full Failover Testing

    • A failover test – a full failover of your production environment to a secondary environment – is what many IT and businesspeople think about when they think of disaster recovery testing.
    • A full test can validate previous local or tabletop tests, identify additional gaps and risks, and provide hands-on training experience with recovery processes and technologies.
    • Setting a date for failover testing can also inject some urgency into otherwise low-priority (but high importance) disaster recovery planning and documentation exercises, which need to be completed prior to the test.
    • Despite these benefits, full failover tests carry significant risk and require a great deal of effort and cost. Typically, only businesses that already have an active-active environment capable of supporting in-scope production systems are able to run a full environment failover.
    • This is especially true the first time you test. While in theory a DR plan should be ready to go at any time, there will be documents to update, gaps to address, and risks to mitigate before you go ahead with the test.

    Full Failover Testing

    What you get:

    • Provide hands-on experience with recovery processes and technology.
    • Confirm that site failover works in practice as you assumed in tabletop or local testing exercises.
    • Identify critical gaps you might have missed without a full failover test.

    What you need:

    • An active-active secondary site, with sufficient standby equipment, data, and licensed standby software to support production.
    • A completed tabletop exercise and documented recovery workflow.
    • A documented test plan, backout plan, and formal sign-off.
    • An off-hours downtime window.
    • Time from technical SMEs and business resources, both for creating the plan and executing the test.

    Beyond the Basics: Site Reliability Engineering

    • Site reliability engineering (SRE) is an application of skills and approaches from software engineering to improve system resilience.
    • SRE is focused on “availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and capacity planning” across a set portfolio of services (Sloss, 2017).
    • In many organizations, SRE is implemented as a team that supports separate applications teams.
    • Applications must have defined and granular resilience requirements, translated into service objectives. The SRE team and applications teams will work together to meet these objectives.
    • Site reliability engineers (the folks that do SRE, and often also abbreviated as SREs) are expected to build solutions and processes to ensure services remain stable and performant, not just respond when they fail. For example, Google allows their SREs to spend just half their time on incident response, with the rest of their time focused on development and automation tasks.

    Site Reliability Testing

    What you get:

    • Improved reliability and reduced frequency and impact of downtime.
    • Increased use of automation to address problems before they cause an incident.
    • Granular resilience objectives.

    What you need:

    • Systems running on software-defined infrastructure.
    • Specialized skills in programming, infrastructure-as-code.
    • Business & product owners able to define and fund acceptable and appropriate resilience objectives.
    • Technical experts able to translate product requirements into technical design requirements.

    Beyond the Basics: Chaos Engineering

    • Chaos engineering, a term and approach first popularized by the team at Netflix, aims to improve the resilience of particularly large and distributed systems by simulating system failures and evaluating performance against a baseline.
    • Experiments simulate a variety of real-world events that could cause outages (e.g. network slowdowns or server failures). Experiments run continuously, and the recommendation is to run them in production where feasible while minimizing the impact on customers.
    • Tools to help you run chaos testing exist, including open-source toolkits like Chaos Monkey or Mangle and paid software as a service (SaaS) solutions like Gremlin.
    • Deciding whether the long-term benefits of tests that can degrade production are worth the potential risk of system slowdowns or outages is a business or product decision. Technical considerations aside, if the business owner of a particular system doesn’t see the value of continuous testing outweighing the introduced risk, this approach to testing isn’t going to happen.

    Chaos Engineering

    What you get:

    • Confidence that systems can weather volatile and unpredictable conditions in a production environment.
    • An embedded resilience culture.

    What you need:

    • High-maturity IT incident, monitoring and event practices.
    • Standby/resilient systems to minimize downtime impact.
    • Business buy-in for introducing risk into the production environment.
    • Specialized skills to identify, develop, and run tests that degrade production performance in a controlled way.
    • Budget and time to act on issues identified through testing.

    Beyond the Basics: Security Event Simulations

    • Ransomware is driving demands for proof of recovery testing from customers, executives, auditors, and insurance companies. Systems recovery is part of ransomware recovery, but recovering from a breach includes detection, analysis, containment, and eradication of the attack vector before systems recovery can begin.
    • Beyond technical recovery, internal legal and communications teams will have a role, as will your insurance provider, consultants specialized in ransomware recovery, or professional ransom negotiators.
    • A tabletop exercise focused on ransomware incident response is a key first step. You can find Info-Tech’s methodology for a ransomware tabletop in Phase 3 of Build Resilience Against Ransomware Attacks.
    • Live testing approaches can offer hands-on experience and further insight into how your systems are vulnerable to malware. A variety of open source and proprietary tools can simulate ransomware and help you identify problems, though it’s important to understand the limitations of different simulators (Allon, 2022).
    • A “red team” exercise simulates an adversarial attack against your processes and systems. A specialized penetration tester will often take on the role of the red team and provide a report of identified gaps and risks after the engagement.

    Security Event Simulation

    What you get:

    • Hands-on experience managing and recovering from a ransomware attack in a controlled environment.
    • A better understanding of gaps in your response process.

    What you need:

    • A completed ransomware tabletop exercise and mature security incident response processes.
    • For Ransomware Simulators: An air-gapped sandbox environment hosting a copy of your production systems and security tools, and time from your technical SMEs.
    • For Red Team Exercises: A trusted provider, scope for your testing plans, and time from your security incident response team.

    Prioritize tests by asking these three questions

    1. Will the scope of this test deliver sufficient value?

    • Yes, these are critical systems with low tolerance for downtime or data loss.
    • Yes, major changes or new systems require validation of DR capabilities.
    • Yes, there’s high probability of an outage, or recent experience of an outage.
    • •Yes, we have audit requirements or customer demands for testing.

    2. Are we ready for this test?

    • Yes, recovery plans and recovery objectives are documented.
    • Yes, key technical and business resources have time to commit to testing exercises.
    • Yes, technology is currently able to support proposed tests.

    3. Is it easy to do?

    • Yes, effort required to complete the test is low (i.e. minimal work, few participants).
    • Yes, the risks related to testing are low.
    • Yes, it won’t cost much.

    Info-Tech Insight

    More complex, challenging, risky, or costly tests, such as full failover tests, can deliver value. But do the high-value, low-effort stuff first!

    03 Brainstorm and prioritize test ideas

    30-60 minutes

    Even if you have an idea of what you need to test and how you want to run those tests, this brainstorming exercise can generate useful ideas for testing that might otherwise have been missed.

      1. Review the slides above to develop ideas on how and what you want to test. These slides may be enough to kickstart a brainstorming process. Don’t debate or discount ideas at this point. Write down these ideas in a space where all participants can see them (e.g. whiteboard or shared screen).

    The next steps will help you prioritize the list – if needed – to tests that are highest value and lowest effort.

    1. Discuss where you have the greatest need to test. Assign a score of 0 – 3 for each test, with a score of 3 being high-need and a score of zero being low-need. Consider whether:
      • These applications have a low tolerance for downtime.
      • There’s a high chance of an outage, or recent experience with an outage.
      • There’s a need to train or cross-train staff on recovery for the system(s) in question.
      • Major changes require a review or validation of DR capabilities.
      • Audit requirements or customer/executive demands can be met via testing.
    2. Discuss which tests will require the least effort to complete – where readiness is high and tests are easier to do. Assign a score between 0 and 3 for each test, with a score of 3 being least effort and a score of 0 being high effort. Consider whether:
      • Recovery plans and recovery objectives are documented for these systems.
      • Technical experts are available to work on testing exercises.
      • For active testing, standby/sandbox systems are available and capable of supporting proposed tests.
      • The effort required to complete the test is low (e.g. minimal new work, few participants).
      • The risks related to testing are low.
      • You will need to secure additional funding.
    3. Sum together the assigned scores for each test. Higher scores should be the highest priority, but of course use your judgement to validate the results and select one or two tests to execute in the coming year.

    “There are different levels of testing and it is very progressive. I do not recommend my clients to do anything, unless they do it in a progressive fashion. Don’t try to do a live failover test with your users, right out of the box.”

    – Steve Tower
    Principal Consultant
    Prompta Consulting Group

    Input

    • Organizational and technical context

    Output

    • Prioritize list of DR testing ideas

    Participants

    • DR sponsor
    • Test coordinator

    04 Build a test plan

    3-5 days

    Building a test plan helps the test run smoothly and can uncover issues with the underlying DRP as you dig into the details.

    The test coordinator will own the plan document but will rely on the sponsor to confirm scope and goals, technical SMEs to develop system recovery plans, and business liaisons to create UAT scripts.

    Download Info-Tech’s Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template. Use the structure of the template to build your own document, deleting example data as you go. Consider saving a separate copy of this document as an example and working from a second copy.

    Key sections of the document include:

    • Goals, scenario, and scope of the test.
    • Assumptions, constraints, risks, and mitigation strategies.
    • Test participants.
    • Key pre-test milestones, and test-day schedule.
    • After-action review.

    Download the Disaster Recovery Test Plan Template

    Input

    • Scope
    • High-level goals

    Output

    • Test plan, including goals, scope, key milestones, risks and mitigations, and test-day schedule

    Participants

    • Test coordinator develops the plan with support from:
      • Technical SMEs
      • Business liaisons
      • DR sponsor

    05 Run an after-action review

    30-60 minutes

    Take time after test exercises – especially large-scale tests with many participants – to consider what went well, what didn’t, and where you can improve future testing exercises. Track lessons learned and next steps at the bottom of your test plan.

    1. Start with a short (5-10 minute) debrief of the test and allow participants to ask questions. Confirm:
      • Did we meet the goals we set for the exercise, including RTOs and RPOs?
      • What was done well? What issues, gaps, and risks were identified?
    2. Work through variations of the following questions:
      • Was the test plan effective, and was the test well organized?
      • Was the documentation effective? Where did we follow the plan as documented, and where did we deviate from the plan?
      • Was our communication/collaboration during the test effective?
      • Have gaps and issues found during the test been reported to the testing coordinator? Could some of the issues uncovered apply more broadly to other IT services as well?
      • What could we test next, based on what was discovered?
      • Are there other tools or approaches that could be useful?

    Input

    • Insights and experience from a recent testing exercise

    Output

    • Identified gaps and risks, and action items to address them
    • Ideas to improve future test exercises

    Participants

    • Test coordinator develops the plan with support from:
      • Test coordinator
      • Test participants

    Follow a testing cycle

    All tests are expected to drive actions to improve resilience, as appropriate. Experience from previous tests will be applied to future testing exercises.

    The testing cycle: 1. Plan a test, 2. Run test, 3. Take action.

    Use your experience to simplify testing

    The fifth testing exercise should be easier than the first

    Outputs and lessons learned from testing should help you run future tests.

    • With past experience under their belt, participants should have a better understanding of their role, and of their peers’ roles, and the goal of the exercise.
    • Facilitators will be more comfortable facilitating the exercise, and everyone should be more confident in the steps required to recover their systems.
    • Gather feedback from participants through after-action reviews to identify what worked and what didn’t.
    • Documentation from previous tests can provide a template for future tests.
    • Gaps identified in previous tests can provide ideas for future tests.

    Experience, lessons learned, improved process, new test targets, repeat.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Testing should get easier over time. But if you’re easily passing every test, it’s a sign that you’re ready to run more challenging tests.

    06 Create a test program summary

    2-4 hours

    Regular testing allows you to build on prior tests and helps keep plans current despite changes to your environment.

    Keeping a regular testing schedule requires expertise, a process to coordinate your efforts, and a level of governance to provide oversight and ensure testing continues to deliver value. Create a call to action using Info-Tech’s Disaster Recovery Testing Program Summary Template.

    The result is a summary document that:

    • Identifies key takeaways and testing goals
    • Presents key elements of the testing program
    • Outlines the testing cycle
    • Lists expected milestones for the next year
    • Identifies participants
    • Recommends next steps

    “It is extremely important in the early stages of development to concentrate the focus on actual recoverability and data protection, enhancing these capabilities over time into a fully matured program that can truly test the recovery, and not simply focusing on the testing process itself.”

    – Joe Starzyk
    Senior Business Development Executive
    IBM Global Services

    Research Contributors and Experts

    • Bernard A. Jones, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Expert
    • Robert Nardella, IT Service Management, Certified z/OS Mainframe Professional
    • Larry Liss, Chief Technology Officer, Blank Rome LLP
    • Jennifer Goshorn, Chief Administrative and Chief Compliance Officer, Gunderson Dettmer LLP
    • Paul Kirvan, FBCI, CISA, Independent IT Consultant/Auditor, Paul Kirvan Associates
    • Steve Tower, Principal Consultant, Prompta Consulting Group
    • Joe Starzyk, Senior Business Development Executive, IBM Global Services
    • Thomas Bronack, Enterprise Resiliency and Corporate Certification Consultant, DCAG
    • Paul S. Randal, CEO & Owner, SQLskills.com
    • Tom Baumgartner, Disaster Recovery Analyst, Catholic Health

    Bibliography

    Alton, Yoni. “Ransomware simulators – reality or a bluff?” Palo Alto Blog, 2 May 2022. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/ransomware-simulators-reality-or-a-bluff/

    Brathwaite, Shimon. “How to Test your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan,” Security Made Simple, 13 Nov 2022. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://www.securitymadesimple.org/cybersecurity-blog/how-to-test-your-business-continuity-and-disaster-recovery-plan

    The Business Continuity Institute. Good Practice Guidelines: 2018 Edition. The Business Continuity Institute, 2017.

    Emigh, Jacqueline. “Disaster Recovery Testing: Ensuring Your DR Plan Works,” Enterprise Storage Forum, 28 May 2019. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    Disaster Recovery Testing: Ensuring Your DR Plan Works | Enterprise Storage Forum

    Gardner, Dana. "Case Study: Strategic Approach to Disaster Recovery and Data Lifecycle Management Pays off for Australia's SAI Global." ZDNet. BriefingsDirect, 26 Apr 2012. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/case-study-strategic-approach-to-disaster-recovery-and-data-lifecycle-management-pays-off-for-australias-sai-global/.

    IBM. “Section 11. Testing the Disaster Recovery Plan.” IBM, 2 Aug 2021. Accessed 31 Jan 2023. Section 11. Testing the disaster recovery plan - IBM Documentation Lutkevich, Ben and Alexander Gillis. “Chaos Engineering”. TechTarget, Jun 2021. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/definition/chaos-engineering

    Monperrus, Martin. “Principles of Antifragility.” Arxiv Forum, 7 June 2017. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1404/1404.3056.pdf

    “Principles of Chaos Engineering.” Principles of Chaos Engineering, 2019 March. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://principlesofchaos.org/

    Sloss, Benjamin Treynor. “Introduction.” Site Reliability Engineering. Ed. Betsy Beyer. O’Reilly Media, 2017. Accessed 31 Jan 2023.
    https://sre.google/sre-book/introduction/

    Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography

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    • Fault-tolerant quantum computers, capable of breaking existing encryption algorithms and cryptographic systems, are widely expected to be available sooner than originally projected.
    • Data considered secure today may already be at risk due to the threat of harvest-now-decrypt-later schemes.
    • Many current security controls will be completely useless, including today's strongest encryption techniques.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    The advent of quantum computing is closer than you think: some nations have already demonstrated capability with the potential to break current asymmetric-key encryption. Traditional encryption methods will no longer provide sufficient protection. You need to act now to begin your transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.

    Impact and Result

    • Developing quantum-resistant cryptography capabilities is crucial to maintaining data security and integrity for critical applications.
    • Organizations need to act now to begin their transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.
    • Data security (especially for sensitive data) should be an organization’s top priority. Organizations with particularly critical information need to be on top of this quantum movement.

    Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography Storyboard – Research to help organizations to prepare and implement quantum-resistance cryptography solutions.

    Developing quantum-resistant cryptography capabilities is crucial to maintaining data security and integrity for critical applications. Organizations need to act now to begin their transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.

    • Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography Storyboard
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography

    It is closer than you think, and you need to act now.

    Analyst Perspective

    It is closer than you think, and you need to act now.

    The quantum realm presents itself as a peculiar and captivating domain, shedding light on enigmas within our world while pushing the boundaries of computational capabilities. The widespread availability of quantum computers is expected to occur sooner than anticipated. This emerging technology holds the potential to tackle valuable problems that even the most powerful classical supercomputers will never be able to solve. Quantum computers possess the ability to operate millions of times faster than their current counterparts.

    As we venture further into the era of quantum mechanics, organizations relying on encryption must contemplate a future where these methods no longer suffice as effective safeguards. The astounding speed and power of quantum machines have the potential to render many existing security measures utterly ineffective, including the most robust encryption techniques used today. To illustrate, a task that currently takes ten years to crack through a brute force attack could be accomplished by a quantum computer in under five minutes.

    Amid this transition into a quantum future, the utmost priority for organizations remains data security, particularly safeguarding sensitive information. Organizations must proactively prepare for the development of countermeasures and essential resilience measures to attain a state of being "quantum safe."

    This is a picture of Alan Tang

    Alan Tang
    Principal Research Director, Security and Privacy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    • Anticipated advancements in fault-tolerant quantum computers, surpassing existing encryption algorithms and cryptographic systems, are expected to materialize sooner than previously projected. The timeframe for their availability is diminishing daily.
    • Data that is presently deemed secure faces potential vulnerability due to the emergence of harvest-now-decrypt-later strategies.
    • Numerous contemporary security controls, including the most robust encryption techniques, have become obsolete and offer little efficacy.

    Common Obstacles

    • The complexity involved makes it challenging for organizations to incorporate quantum-resistant cryptography into their current IT infrastructure.
    • The endeavor of transitioning to quantum-resilient cryptography demands significant effort and time, with the specific requirements varying for each organization.
    • A lack of comprehensive understanding regarding the cryptographic technologies employed in existing IT systems poses difficulties in identifying and prioritizing systems for upgrading to post-quantum cryptography.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    • The development of quantum-resistant cryptography capabilities is essential for safeguarding the security and integrity of critical applications.
    • Organizations must proactively initiate their transition toward quantum-resistant encryption to ensure data protection.
    • Ensuring the security of corporate data assets should be of utmost importance for organizations, with special emphasis on those possessing highly critical information in light of the advancements in quantum technology.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The advent of quantum computing (QC) is closer than you think: some nations have demonstrated capability with the potential to break current asymmetric-key encryption. Traditional encryption methods will no longer be sufficient as a means of protection. You need to act now to begin your transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.

    Evolvement of QC theory and technologies

    1900-1975

    1976-1997

    1998-2018

    2019-Now

    1. 1900: Max Planck – The energy of a particle is proportional to its frequency: E = hv, where h is a relational constant.
    2. 1926: Erwin Schrödinger – Since electrons can affect each other's states, their energies change in both time and space. The total energy of a particle is expressed as a probability function.
    1. 1976: Physicist Roman Stanisław Ingarden publishes the paper "Quantum Information Theory."
    2. 1980: Paul Benioff describes the first quantum mechanical model of a computer.
    3. 1994: Peter Shor publishes Shor's algorithm.
    1. 1998: A working 2-qubit NMR quantum computer is used to solve Deutsch's problem by Jonathan A. Jones and Michele Mosca at Oxford University.
    2. 2003: DARPA Quantum Network becomes fully operational.
    3. 2011: D-Wave claims to have developed the first commercially available quantum computer, D-Wave One.
    4. 2018: the National Quantum Initiative Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump.
    1. 2019: A paper by Google's quantum computer research team was briefly available, claiming the project has reached quantum supremacy.
    2. 2020: Chinese researchers claim to have achieved quantum supremacy, using a photonic peak 76-qubit system known as Jiuzhang.
    3. 2021: Chinese researchers reported that they have built the world's largest integrated quantum communication network.
    4. 2022: The Quantinuum System Model H1-2 doubled its performance claiming to be the first commercial quantum computer to pass quantum volume 4096.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The advent of QC will significantly change our perception of computing and have a crucial impact on the way we protect our digital economy using encryption. The technology's applicability is no longer a theory but a reality to be understood, strategized about, and planned for.

    Fundamental physical principles and business use cases

    Unlike conventional computers that rely on bits, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits. QC technology surpasses the limitations of current processing powers. By leveraging the properties of superposition, interference, and entanglement, quantum computers have the capacity to simultaneously process millions of operations, thereby surpassing the capabilities of today's most advanced supercomputers.

    A 2021 Hyperion Research survey of over 400 key decision makers in North America, Europe, South Korea, and Japan showed nearly 70% of companies have some form of in-house QC program.

    Three fundamental QC physical principles

    1. Superposition
    2. Interference
    3. Entanglement

    This is an image of two headings, Optimization; and Simulation. there are five points under each heading, with an arrow above pointing left to right, labeled Qbit Count.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Organizations need to reap the substantial benefits of QC's power, while simultaneously shielding against the same technologies when used by cyber adversaries.

    Percentage of Surveyed Companies That Have QC Programs

    • 31% Have some form of in-house QC program
    • 69% Have no QC program

    Early adopters and business value

    QC early adopters see the promise of QC for a wide range of computational workloads, including machine learning applications, finance-oriented optimization, and logistics/supply chain management.

    This is an image of the Early Adopters, and the business value drivers.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Experienced attackers are likely to be the early adopters of quantum-enabled cryptographic solutions, harnessing the power of QC to exploit vulnerabilities in today's encryption methods. The risks are particularly high for industries that rely on critical infrastructure.

    The need of quantum-safe solution is immediate

    Critical components of classical cryptography will be at risk, potentially leading to the exposure of confidential and sensitive information to the general public. Business, technology, and security leaders are confronted with an immediate imperative to formulate a quantum-safe strategy and establish a roadmap without delay.

    Case Study – Google, 2019

    In 2019, Google claimed that "Our Sycamore processor takes about 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times—our benchmarks currently indicate that the equivalent task for a state-of-the-art classical supercomputer would take approximately 10,000 years."
    Source: Nature, 2019

    Why You Should Start Preparation Now

    • The complexity with integrating QC technology into existing IT infrastructure.
    • The effort to upgrade to quantum-resilient cryptography will be significant.
    • The amount of time remaining will decrease every day.

    Case Study – Development in China, 2020

    On December 3, 2020, a team of Chinese researchers claim to have achieved quantum supremacy, using a photonic peak 76-qubit system (43 average) known as Jiuzhang, which performed calculations at 100 trillion times the speed of classical supercomputers.
    Source: science.org, 2020

    Info-Tech Insight

    The emergence of QC brings forth cybersecurity threats. It is an opportunity to regroup, reassess, and revamp our approaches to cybersecurity.

    Security threats posed by QC

    Quantum computers have reached a level of advancement where even highly intricate calculations, such as factoring large numbers into their primes, which serve as the foundation for RSA encryption and other algorithms, can be solved within minutes.

    Threat to data confidentiality

    QC could lead to unauthorized decryption of confidential data in the future. Data confidentiality breaches also impact improperly disposed encrypted storage media.

    Threat to authentication protocols and digital governance

    A recovered private key, which is derived from a public key, can be used through remote control to fraudulently authenticate a critical system.

    Threat to data integrity

    Cybercriminals can use QC technology to recover private keys and manipulate digital documents and their digital signatures.

    Example:

    Consider RSA-2048, a widely used public-key cryptosystem that facilitates secure data transmission. In a 2021 survey, a majority of leading authorities believed that RSA-2048 could be cracked by quantum computers within a mere 24 hours.
    Source: Quantum-Readiness Working Group, 2022

    Info-Tech Insight

    The development of quantum-safe cryptography capabilities is of utmost importance in ensuring the security and integrity of critical applications' data.

    US Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act

    The US Congress considers cryptography essential for the national security of the US and the functioning of the US economy. The Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act was introduced on April 18, 2022, and became a public law (No: 117-260) on December 21, 2022.

    Purpose

    The purpose of this Act is to encourage the migration of Federal Government information technology systems to quantum-resistant cryptography, and for other purposes.

    Scope and Exemption

    • Scope: Systems of government agencies.
    • Exemption: This Act shall not apply to any national security system.

    Main Obligations

    Responsibilities

    Requirements
    Inventory Establishment Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of OMB, shall issue guidance on the migration of information technology to post-quantum cryptography.
    Agency Reports "Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, and on an ongoing basis thereafter, the head of each agency shall provide to the Director of OMB, the Director of CISA, and the National Cyber Director— (1) the inventory described in subsection (a)(1); and (2) any other information required to be reported under subsection (a)(1)(C)."
    Migration and Assessment "Not later than 1 year after the date on which the Director of NIST has issued post-quantum cryptography standards, the Director of OMB shall issue guidance requiring each agency to— (1) prioritize information technology described under subsection (a)(2)(A) for migration to post-quantum cryptography; and (2) develop a plan to migrate information technology of the agency to post-quantum cryptography consistent with the prioritization under paragraph (1)."

    "It is the sense of Congress that (1) a strategy for the migration of information technology of the Federal Government to post-quantum cryptography is needed; and (2) the government wide and industry-wide approach to post- quantum cryptography should prioritize developing applications, hardware intellectual property, and software that can be easily updated to support cryptographic agility." – Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act

    The development of post-quantum encryption

    Since 2016, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been actively engaged in the development of post-quantum encryption standards. The objective is to identify and establish standardized cryptographic algorithms that can withstand attacks from quantum computers.

    NIST QC Initiative Key Milestones

    Date Development
    Dec. 20, 2016 Round 1 call for proposals: Announcing request for nominations for public-key post-quantum cryptographic algorithms
    Nov. 30, 2017 Deadline for submissions – 82 submissions received
    Dec. 21, 2017 Round 1 algorithms announced (69 submissions accepted as "complete and proper")
    Jan. 30, 2019 Second round candidates announced (26 algorithms)

    July 22, 2020

    Third round candidates announced (7 finalists and 8 alternates)

    July 5, 2022

    Announcement of candidates to be standardized and fourth round candidates
    2022/2024 (Plan) Draft standards available

    Four Selected Candidates to be Standardized

    CRYSTALS – Kyber

    CRYSTALS – Dilithium

    FALCON

    SPHINCS+

    NIST recommends two primary algorithms to be implemented for most use cases: CRYSTALS-KYBER (key-establishment) and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (digital signatures). In addition, the signature schemes FALCON and SPHINCS+ will also be standardized.

    Info-Tech Insight

    There is no need to wait for formal NIST PQC standards selection to begin your post-quantum mitigation project. It is advisable to undertake the necessary steps and allocate resources in phases that can be accomplished prior to the finalization of the standards.

    Prepare for post-quantum cryptography

    The advent of QC is closer than you think: some nations have demonstrated capability with the potential to break current asymmetric-key encryption. Traditional encryption methods will no longer be sufficient as a means of protection. You need to act now to begin your transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.

    This is an infographic showing the three steps: Threat is Imminent; Risks are Profound; and Take Acton Now.

    Insight summary

    Overarching Insight

    The advent of QC is closer than you think as some nations have demonstrated capability with the potential to break current asymmetric-key encryption. Traditional encryption methods will no longer be sufficient as a means of protection. You need to act now to begin your transformation to quantum-resistant encryption.

    Business Impact Is High

    The advent of QC will significantly change our perception of computing and have a crucial impact on the way we protect our digital economy using encryption. The technology's applicability is no longer a theory but a reality to be understood, strategized about, and planned for.

    It's a Collaborative Effort

    Embedding quantum resistance into systems during the process of modernization requires collaboration beyond the scope of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) alone. It is a strategic endeavor shaped by leaders throughout the organization, as well as external partners. This comprehensive approach involves the collective input and collaboration of stakeholders from various areas of expertise within and outside the organization.

    Leverage Industry Standards

    There is no need to wait for formal NIST PQC standards selection to begin your post-quantum mitigation project. It is advisable to undertake the necessary steps and allocate resources in phases that can be accomplished prior to the finalization of the standards.

    Take a Holistic Approach

    The advent of QC poses threats to cybersecurity. It's a time to regroup, reassess, and revamp.

    Blueprint benefits

    IT Benefits

    Business Benefits

    • This blueprint will help organizations to discover and then prioritize the systems to be upgraded to post-quantum cryptography.
    • This blueprint will enable organizations to integrate quantum-resistant cryptography into existing IT infrastructure.
    • Developing quantum-resistant cryptography capabilities is crucial to maintaining data security and integrity for critical applications.
    • This blueprint will help organizations to save effort and time needed upgrade to quantum-resilient cryptography.
    • Organizations will reap the substantial benefits of QC's power, while simultaneously shielding against the same technologies when used by cyber adversaries.
    • Avoid reputation and brand image by preventing data breach and leakage.
    • This blueprint will empower organizations to protect corporate data assets in the post-quantum era.
    • Be compliant with various security and privacy laws and regulations.

    Info-Tech Project Value

    Time, value, and resources saved to obtain buy-in from senior leadership team using our research material:

    1 FTEs*10 days*$100,000/year = $6,000

    Time, value, and resources saved to implement quantum-resistant cryptography using our research guidance:

    2 FTEs* 30 days*$100,000/year = $24,000

    Estimated cost and time savings from this blueprint:

    $6,000 + $24,000 =$30,000

    Get prepared for a post-quantum world

    The advent of sufficiently powerful quantum computers poses a risk of compromising or weakening traditional forms of asymmetric and symmetric cryptography. To safeguard data security and integrity for critical applications, it is imperative to undertake substantial efforts in migrating an organization's cryptographic systems to post-quantum encryption. The development of quantum-safe cryptography capabilities is crucial in this regard.

    Phase 1 - Prepare

    • Obtain buy-in from leadership team.
    • Educate your workforce about the upcoming transition.
    • Create defined projects to reduce risks and improve crypto-agility.

    Phase 2 - Discover

    • Determine the extent of your exposed data, systems, and applications.
    • Establish an inventory of classical cryptographic use cases.

    Phase 3 - Assess

    • Assess the security and data protection risks posed by QC.
    • Assess the readiness of transforming existing classical cryptography to quantum-resilience solutions.

    Phase 4 - Prioritize

    • Prioritize transformation plan based on criteria such as business impact, near-term technical feasibility, and effort, etc.
    • Establish a roadmap.

    Phase 5 - Mitigate

    • Implement post-quantum mitigations.
    • Decommissioning old technology that will become unsupported upon publication of the new standard.
    • Validating and testing products that incorporate the new standard.

    Phase 1 – Prepare: Protect data assets in the post-quantum era

    The rise of sufficiently powerful quantum computers has the potential to compromise or weaken conventional asymmetric and symmetric cryptography methods. In anticipation of a quantum-safe future, it is essential to prioritize crypto-agility. Consequently, organizations should undertake specific tasks both presently and in the future to adequately prepare for forthcoming quantum threats and the accompanying transformations.

    Quantum-resistance preparations must address two different needs:

    Reinforce digital transformation initiatives

    To thrive in the digital landscape, organizations must strengthen their digital transformation initiatives by embracing emerging technologies and novel business practices. The transition to quantum-safe encryption presents a unique opportunity for transformation, allowing the integration of these capabilities to evolve business transactions and relationships in innovative ways.

    Protect data assets in the post-quantum era

    Organizations should prioritize supporting remediation efforts aimed at ensuring the quantum safety of existing data assets and services. The implementation of crypto-agility enables organizations to respond promptly to cryptographic vulnerabilities and adapt to future changes in cryptographic standards. This proactive approach is crucial, as the need for quantum-safe measures existed even before the complexities posed by QC emerged.

    Preparation for the post-quantum world has been recommended by the US government and other national bodies since 2016.

    In 2016, NIST, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Security Service stated in their Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite and QC FAQ: "NSA believes the time is now right [to start preparing for the post-quantum world] — consistent with advances in quantum computing."
    Source: Cloud Security Alliance, 2021

    Phase 1 – Prepare: Key tasks

    Preparing for quantum-resistant cryptography goes beyond simply acquiring knowledge and conducting experiments in QC. It is vital for senior management to receive comprehensive guidance on the challenges, risks, and potential mitigations associated with the post-quantum landscape. Quantum and post-quantum education should be tailored to individuals based on their specific roles and the impact of post-quantum mitigations on their responsibilities. This customized approach ensures that individuals are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills relevant to their respective roles.

    Leadership Buy-In

    • Get senior management commitment to post-quantum project.
    • Determine the extent of exposed data, systems, and applications.
    • Identify near-term, achievable cryptographic maturity goals, creating defined projects to reduce risks and improve crypto-agility.

    Roles and Responsibilities

    • The ownership should be clearly defined regarding the quantum-resistant cryptography program.
    • This should be a cross-functional team within which members represent various business units.

    Awareness and Education

    • Senior management needs to understand the strategic threat to the organization and needs to adequately address the cybersecurity risk in a timely fashion.
    • Educate your workforce about the upcoming transition. All training and education should seek to achieve awareness of the following items with the appropriate stakeholders.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Embedding quantum resistance into systems during the process of modernization requires collaboration beyond the scope of a CISO alone. It is a strategic endeavor shaped by leaders throughout the organization, as well as external partners. This comprehensive approach involves the collective input and collaboration of stakeholders from various areas of expertise within and outside the organization.

    Phase 2 – Discover: Establish a data protection inventory

    During the discovery phase, it is crucial to locate and identify any critical data and devices that may require post-quantum protection. This step enables organizations to understand the algorithms in use and their specific locations. By conducting this thorough assessment, organizations gain valuable insights into their existing infrastructure and cryptographic systems, facilitating the implementation of appropriate post-quantum security measures.

    Inventory Core Components

    1. Description of devices and/or data
    2. Location of all sensitive data and devices
    3. Criticality of the data
    4. How long the data or devices need to be protected
    5. Effective cryptography in use and cryptographic type
    6. Data protection systems currently in place
    7. Current key size and maximum key size
    8. Vendor support timeline
    9. Post-quantum protection readiness

    Key Things to Consider

    • The accuracy and thoroughness of the discovery phase are critical factors that contribute to the success of a post-quantum project.
    • It is advisable to conduct this discovery phase comprehensively across all aspects, not solely limited to public-key algorithms.
    • Performing a data protection inventory can be a time-consuming and challenging phase of the project. Breaking it down into smaller subtasks can help facilitate the process.
    • Identifying all information can be particularly challenging since data is typically scattered throughout an organization. One approach to begin this identification process is by determining the inputs and outputs of data for each department and team within the organization.
    • To ensure accountability and effectiveness, it is recommended to assign a designated individual as the ultimate owner of the data protection inventory task. This person should have the necessary responsibilities and authority to successfully accomplish the task.

    Phase 3 – Assess: The workflow

    Quantum risk assessment entails evaluating the potential consequences of QC on existing security measures and devising strategies to mitigate these risks. This process involves analyzing the susceptibility of current systems to attacks by quantum computers and identifying robust security measures that can withstand QC threats.

    Risk Assessment Workflow

    This is an image of the Risk Assessment Workflow

    By identifying the security gaps that will arise with the advent of QC, organizations can gain insight into the substantial vulnerabilities that core business operations will face when QC becomes a prevalent reality. This proactive understanding enables organizations to prepare and implement appropriate measures to address these vulnerabilities in a timely manner.

    Phase 4 – Prioritize: Balance business value, security risks, and effort

    Organizations need to prioritize the mitigation initiatives based on various factors such as business value, level of security risk, and the effort needed to implement the mitigation controls. In the diagram below, the size of the circle reflects the degree of effort. The bigger the size, the more effort is needed.

    This is an image of a chart where the X axis represents Security Risk level, and the Y axis is Business Value.

    QC Adopters Anticipated Annual Budgets

    This is an image of a bar graph showing the Anticipated Annual Budgets for QC Adopters.
    Source: Hyperion Research, 2022

    Hyperion's survey found that the range of expected budget varies widely.

    • The most selected option, albeit by only 38% of respondents, was US$5 million to US$15 million.
    • About one-third of respondents foresaw annual budgets that exceeded US$15 million, and one-fifth expected budgets to exceed US$25 million.

    Build your risk mitigation roadmap

    2 hours

    1. Review the quantum-resistance initiatives generated in Phase 3 – Assessment.
    2. With input from all stakeholders, prioritize the initiatives based on business value, security risks, and effort using the 2x2 grid.
    3. Review the position of all initiatives and adjust accordingly considering other factors such as dependency, etc.
    4. Place prioritized initiatives to a wave chart.
    5. Assign ownership and target timeline for each initiative.

    This is an image the Security Risk Vs. Business value graph, above an image showing Initiatives Numbered 1-7, divided into Wave 1; Wave 2; and Wave 3.

    Input

    • Data protection inventory created in phase 2
    • Risk assessment produced in phase 3
    • Business unit leaders' and champions' understanding (high-level) of challenges posed by QC

    Output

    • Prioritization of quantum-resistance initiatives

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Sticky notes
    • Pen/whiteboard markers

    Participants

    • Quantum-resistance program owner
    • Senior leadership team
    • Business unit heads
    • Chief security officer
    • Chief privacy officer
    • Chief information officer
    • Representatives from legal, risk, and governance

    Phase 5 – Mitigate: Implement quantum-resistant encryption solutions

    To safeguard against cybersecurity risks and threats posed by powerful quantum computers, organizations need to adopt a robust defense-in-depth approach. This entails implementing a combination of well-defined policies, effective technical defenses, and comprehensive education initiatives. Organizations may need to consider implementing new cryptographic algorithms or upgrading existing protocols to incorporate post-quantum encryption methods. The selection and deployment of these measures should be cost-justified and tailored to meet the specific needs and risk profiles of each organization.

    Governance

    Implement solid governance mechanisms to promote visibility and to help ensure consistency

    • Update policies and documents
    • Update existing acceptable cryptography standards
    • Update security and privacy audit programs

    Industry Standards

    • Stay up to date with newly approved standards
    • Leverage industry standards (i.e. NIST's post-quantum cryptography) and test the new quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms

    Technical Mitigations

    Each type of quantum threat can be mitigated using one or more known defenses.

    • Physical isolation
    • Replacing quantum-susceptible cryptography with quantum-resistant cryptography
    • Using QKD
    • Using quantum random number generators
    • Increasing symmetric key sizes
    • Using hybrid solutions
    • Using quantum-enabled defenses

    Vendor Management

    • Work with key vendors on a common approach to quantum-safe governance
    • Assess vendors for possible inclusion in your organization's roadmap
    • Create acquisition policies regarding quantum-safe cryptography

    Research Contributors and Experts

    This is a picture of Adib Ghubril

    Adib Ghubril
    Executive Advisor, Executive Services
    Info-Tech Research Group

    This is a picture of Erik Avakian

    Erik Avakian
    Technical Counselor
    Info-Tech Research Group

    This is a picture of Alaisdar Graham

    Alaisdar Graham
    Executive Counselor
    Info-Tech Research Group

    This is a picture of Carlos Rivera

    Carlos Rivera
    Principal Research Advisor
    Info-Tech Research Group

    This is a picture of Hendra Hendrawan

    Hendra Hendrawan
    Technical Counselor
    Info-Tech Research Group

    This is a picture of Fritz Jean-Louis

    Fritz Jean-Louis
    Principal Cybersecurity Advisor
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Bibliography

    117th Congress (2021-2022). H.R.7535 - Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act. congress.gov, 21 Dec 2022.
    Arute, Frank, et al. Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor. Nature, 23 Oct 2019.
    Bernhardt, Chris. Quantum Computing for Everyone. The MIT Press, 2019.
    Bob Sorensen. Quantum Computing Early Adopters: Strong Prospects For Future QC Use Case Impact. Hyperion Research, Nov 2022.
    Candelon, François, et al. The U.S., China, and Europe are ramping up a quantum computing arms race. Here's what they'll need to do to win. Fortune, 2 Sept 2022.
    Curioni, Alessandro. How quantum-safe cryptography will ensure a secure computing future. World Economic Forum, 6 July 2022.
    Davis, Mel. Toxic Substance Exposure Requires Record Retention for 30 Years. Alert presented by CalChamber, 18 Feb 2022.
    Eddins, Andrew, et al. Doubling the size of quantum simulators by entanglement forging. arXiv, 22 April 2021.
    Gambetta, Jay. Expanding the IBM Quantum roadmap to anticipate the future of quantum-centric supercomputing. IBM Research Blog, 10 May 2022.
    Golden, Deborah, et al. Solutions for navigating uncertainty and achieving resilience in the quantum era. Deloitte, 2023.
    Grimes, Roger, et al. Practical Preparations for the Post-Quantum World. Cloud Security Alliance, 19 Oct 2021.
    Harishankar, Ray, et al. Security in the quantum computing era. IBM Institute for Business Value, 2023.
    Hayat, Zia. Digital trust: How to unleash the trillion-dollar opportunity for our global economy. World Economic Forum, 17 Aug 2022.
    Mateen, Abdul. What is post-quantum cryptography? Educative, 2023.
    Moody, Dustin. Let's Get Ready to Rumble—The NIST PQC 'Competition.' NIST, 11 Oct 2022.
    Mosca, Michele, Dr. and Dr. Marco Piani. 2021 Quantum Threat Timeline Report. Global Risk Institute, 24 Jan 2022.
    Muppidi, Sridhar and Walid Rjaibi. Transitioning to Quantum-Safe Encryption. Security Intelligence, 8 Dec 2022.
    Payraudeau, Jean-Stéphane, et al. Digital acceleration: Top technologies driving growth in a time of crisis. IBM Institute for Business Value, Nov 2020.
    Quantum-Readiness Working Group (QRWG). Canadian National Quantum-Readiness- Best Practices and Guidelines. Canadian Forum for Digital Infrastructure Resilience (CFDIR), 17 June 2022.
    Rotman, David. We're not prepared for the end of Moore's Law. MIT Technology Review, 24 Feb 2020.
    Saidi, Susan. Calculating a computing revolution. Roland Berger, 2018.
    Shorter., Ted. Why Companies Must Act Now To Prepare For Post-Quantum Cryptography. Forbes.com, 11 Feb 2022.
    Sieger, Lucy, et al. The Quantum Decade, Third edition. IBM, 2022.
    Sorensen, Bob. Broad Interest in Quantum Computing as a Driver of Commercial Success. Hyperion Research, 17 Nov 2021.
    Wise, Jason. How Much Data is Created Every Day in 2022? Earthweb, 22 Sept 2022.
    Wright, Lawrence. The Plague Year. The New Yorker, 28 Dec 2020.
    Yan, Bao, et al. Factoring integers with sublinear resources on a superconducting quantum processor. arXiv, 23 Dec 2022.
    Zhong, Han-Sen, et al. Quantum computational advantage using photons. science.org, 3 Dec 2020.

    Portfolio Management

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    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.6/10
    • member rating average dollars saved: $40,234
    • member rating average days saved: 30
    • Parent Category Name: Applications
    • Parent Category Link: /applications

    The challenge

    • Typically your business wants much more than your IT development organization can deliver with the available resources at the requested quality levels.
    • Over-damnd has a negative influence on delivery throughput. IT starts many projects (or features) but has trouble delivering most of them within the set parameters of scope, time, budget, and quality. Some requested deliverables may even be of questionable value to the business.
    • You may not have the right project portfolio management (PPM) strategy to bring order in IT's delivery activities and to maximize business value.

    Our advice

    Insight

    • Many in IT mix PPM and project management. Your project management playbook does not equate to the holistic view a real PPM practice gives you.
    • Some organizations also mistake PPM for a set of processes. Processes are needed, but a real strategy works towards tangible goals.
    • PPM works at the strategic level of the company; hence executive buy-in is critical. Without executive support, any effort to reconcile supply and demand will be tough to achieve.

    Impact and results 

    • PPM is a coherent business-aligned strategy that maximizes business value creation across the entire portfolio, rather than in each project.
    • Our methodology tackles the most pressing challenge upfront: get executive buy-in before you start defining your goals. With senior management behind the plan, implementation will become easier.
    • Create PPM processes that are a cultural fit for your company. Define your short and long-term goals for your strategy and support them with fully embedded portfolio management processes.

    The roadmap

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    Get started.

    Read our executive brief to understand why you should develop a PPM strategy and understand how our methodology can help you. We show you how we can support you.

    Obtain executive buy-in for your strategy

    Ensure your strategy is a cultural fit or cultural-add for your company.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 1: Get Executive Buy-In for Your PPM Strategy (ppt)
    • PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator (xls)
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template (ppt)
    • PPM Strategy-Process Goals Translation Matrix Template (xls)

    Align the PPM processes to your company's strategic goals

    Use the advice and tools in this stage to align the PPM processes.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 2: Align PPM Processes to Your Strategic Goals (ppt)
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool (xls)

    Refine and complete your plan

    Use the inputs from the previous stages and add a cost-benefit analysis and tool recommendation.

    • Streamline Application Maintenance – Phase 3: Optimize Maintenance Capabilities (ppt)

    Streamline your maintenance delivery

    Define quality standards in maintenance practices. Enforce these in alignment with the governance you have set up. Show a high degree of transparency and open discussions on development challenges.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 3: Complete Your PPM Strategic Plan (ppt)
    • Project Portfolio Analyst / PMO Analyst (doc)

     

     

    Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization

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    • Parent Category Name: Vendor Management
    • Parent Category Link: /vendor-management
    • More than any other time, our world is changing. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level.
    • A new global change will impact your organization at any given time. Ensure that you monitor threats appropriately and that your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Identifying and managing a vendor’s potential security risk impacts on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes could introduce new risks.
    • Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility needed to adjust to significant market upheavals and surprise incidents.

    Impact and Result

    • Vendor management practices educate organizations on the potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and manage them.
    • Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.
    • Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors.
    • Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Security Risk Impact Tool.

    Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization Deck – Use the research to better understand the negative impacts of vendor actions on your security.

    Use this research to identify and quantify the potential security impacts caused by vendors. Use Info-Tech’s approach to look at the security impacts from various perspectives to better prepare for issues that may arise.

    • Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization Storyboard

    2. Security Risk Impact Tool – Use this tool to help identify and quantify the security impacts of negative vendor actions.

    By playing the “what if” game and asking probing questions to draw out – or eliminate – possible negative outcomes, everyone involved adds their insight into parts of the organization to gather a comprehensive picture of potential impacts.

    • Security Risk Impact Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization

    Know where the attacks are coming from so you know where to protect.

    Analyst perspective

    It is time to start looking at risk realistically and move away from “trust but verify” toward zero trust.

    Frank Sewell, Research Director, Vendor Management

    Frank Sewell,
    Research Director, Vendor Management
    Info-Tech Research Group

    We are inundated with a barrage of news about security incidents on what seems like a daily basis. In such an environment, it is easy to forget that there are ways to help prevent such things from happening and that they have actual costs if we relax our diligence.

    Most people are aware of defense strategies that help keep their organization safe from direct attack and inside threats. Likewise, they expect their trusted partners to perform the same diligence. Unfortunately, as more organizations use cloud service vendors, the risks with n-party vendors are increasing.

    Over the last few years, we have learned the harsh lesson that downstream attacks affect more businesses than we ever expected as suppliers, manufacturers of base goods and materials, and rising transportation costs affect the global economy.

    “Trust but verify” – while a good concept – should give way to the more effective zero-trust model in favor of knowing it’s not a matter of if an incident happens but when.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    More than any other time, our world is changing. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level.

    A new global change will impact your organization at any given time. Ensure that you monitor threats appropriately and that your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences.

    Common Obstacles

    Identifying and managing a vendor’s potential security risk impacts on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes could introduce new risks.

    Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility needed to adjust to significant market upheavals and surprise incidents.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Vendor management practices educate organizations on the potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and manage them.

    Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.

    Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors.

    Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Security Risk Impact Tool.

    Info-Tech Insight
    Organizations must evolve their security risk assessments to be more adaptive to respond to global changes in the market. Ongoing monitoring of third-party vendor risks and holding those vendors accountable throughout the vendor lifecycle are critical to preventing disastrous impacts.

    Info-Tech’s multi-blueprint series on vendor risk assessment

    There are many individual components of vendor risk beyond cybersecurity.

    Multi-blueprint series on vendor risk assessment

    This series will focus on the individual components of vendor risk and how vendor management practices can facilitate organizations’ understanding of those risks.

    Out of Scope:
    This series will not tackle risk governance, determining overall risk tolerance and appetite, or quantifying inherent risk.

    Security risk impacts

    Potential losses to the organization due to security incidents

    • In this blueprint we’ll explore security risks, particularly from third-party vendors, and their impacts.
    • Identify potentially disruptive events to assess the overall impact on organizations and implement adaptive measures to correct security plans.

    The world is constantly changing

    The IT market is constantly reacting to global influences. By anticipating changes, leaders can set expectations and work with their vendors to accommodate them.

    When the unexpected happens, being able to adapt quickly to new priorities ensures continued long-term business success.

    Below are some things no one expected to happen in the last few years:

    62% 83% 84%
    Ransomware attacks spiked 62% globally (and 158% in North America alone). 83% of companies increased organizational focus on third-party risk management in 2020. In a 2020 survey, 84% of organizations reported having experienced a third-party incident in the last three years.
    One Trust, 2022 Help Net Security, 2021 Deloitte, 2020

    Identify and manage security risk impacts on your organization

    Identify and manage security risk impacts on your organization

    Due diligence will enable successful outcomes.

    What is third-party risk?

    Third-Party Vendor: Anyone who provides goods or services to a company or individual in exchange for payment transacted with electronic instructions (Law Insider).

    Third-Party Risk: The potential threat presented to organizations’ employee and customer data, financial information, and operations from the organization’s supply chain and other outside parties that provide products and/or services and have access to privileged systems (Awake Security).

    It is essential to know not only who your vendors are but also who their vendors are (n-party vendors). Organizations often overlook that their vendors rely on others to support their business, and those layers can add risk to your organization.

    Identify and manage security risks

    Global Pandemic

    Very few people could have predicted that a global pandemic would interrupt business on the scale experienced today. Organizations should look at their lessons learned and incorporate adaptable preparations into their security planning and ongoing monitoring moving forward.

    Vendor Breaches

    The IT market is an ever-shifting environment; more organizations are relying on cloud service vendors, staff augmentation, and other outside resources. Organizations should hold these vendors (and their downstream vendors) to the same levels of security and standards of conduct that they hold their internal resources.

    Resource Shortages

    A lack of resources is often overlooked, but it’s easily recognized as a reason for a security incident. All too often, companies are unwilling to dedicate resources to their vendors’ security risk assessment and ongoing monitoring needs. Only once an incident occurs do companies decide it is time to reprioritize.

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}534|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.5/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $17,249 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 7 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Customer Relationship Management
    • Parent Category Link: /customer-relationship-management
    • Today’s customers expect to be able to transact with you in the channels of their choice. The proliferation of e-commerce, innovations in brick-and-mortar retail, and developments in mobile commerce and social media selling mean that IT organizations are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for commerce enablement.
    • The right technology stack is critical in order to support world-class e-commerce and brick-and-mortar interactions with customers.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Support the right transactional channels for the right customers: there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to commerce enablement – understand your customers to drive selection of the right transactional channels.
    • Don’t assume that “traditional” commerce channels have stagnated: IoT, customer analytics, and blended retail are reinvigorating brick-and-mortar selling.
    • Don’t buy best-of-breed; buy best-for-you. Base commerce vendor selection on your requirements and use cases, not on the vendor’s overall performance.

    Impact and Result

    • Leverage Info-Tech’s proven, road-tested approach to using personas and scenarios to build strong business drivers for your commerce strategy.
    • Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a cohesive channel matrix outlining which channels your organization will support with transactional capabilities.
    • Understand evolving trends in the commerce solution space, such as AI-driven product recommendations and integration with other essential enterprise applications (i.e. CRM and marketing automation platforms).
    • Understand and apply operational best practices such as content optimization and dynamic personalization to improve the conversion rate via your e-commerce channels.

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Enable Omnichannel Commerce Deck – A deck outlining the importance of creating a cohesive omnichannel framework to improve your customer experience.

    E-commerce channels have proliferated, and traditional brick-and-mortar commerce is undergoing reinvention. In order to provide your customers with a strong experience, it's imperative to create a strategy – and to deploy the right enabling technologies – that allow for robust multi-channel commerce. This storyboard provides a concise overview of how to do just that.

    • Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers – Phases 1-2

    2. Create Personas to Drive Omnichannel Requirements Template – A template to identify key customer personas for e-commerce and other channels.

    Customer personas are archetypal representations of your key audience segments. This template (and populated examples) will help you construct personas for your omnichannel commerce project.

    • Create Personas to Drive Omnichannel Requirements Template
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

    Create a cohesive, omnichannel framework that supports the right transactions through the right channels for the right customers.

    Analyst Perspective

    A clearly outlined commerce strategy is a necessary component of a broader customer experience strategy.

    This is a picture of Ben Dickie, Research Lead, Research – Applications at Info-Tech Research Group

    Ben Dickie
    Research Lead, Research – Applications
    Info-Tech Research Group

    “Your commerce strategy is where the rubber hits the road, converting your prospects into paying customers. To maximize revenue (and provide a great customer experience), it’s essential to have a clearly defined commerce strategy in place.

    A strong commerce strategy seeks to understand your target customer personas and commerce journey maps and pair these with the right channels and enabling technologies. There is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to selecting the right commerce channels: while many organizations are making a heavy push into e-commerce and mobile commerce, others are seeking to differentiate themselves by innovating in traditional brick-and-mortar sales. Hybrid channel design now dominates many commerce strategies – using a blend of e-commerce and other channels to deliver the best-possible customer experience.

    IT leaders must work with the business to create a succinct commerce strategy that defines personas and scenarios, outlines the right channel matrix, and puts in place the right enabling technologies (for example, point-of-sale and e-commerce platforms).”

    Stop! Are you ready for this project?

    This Research Is Designed For:

    • IT leaders and business analysts supporting their commercial and marketing organizations in developing and executing a technology enablement strategy for e-commerce or brick-and-mortar commerce.
    • Any organization looking to develop a persona-based approach to identifying the right channels for their commerce strategy.

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Identify key personas and customer journeys for a brick-and-mortar and/or e-commerce strategy.
    • Select the right channels for your commerce strategy and build a commerce channel matrix to codify the results.
    • Review the “art of the possible” and new developments in brick-and-mortar and e-commerce execution.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • Sales managers, brand managers, and any marketing professional looking to build a cohesive commerce strategy.
    • E-commerce or POS project teams or working groups tasked with managing an RFP process for vendor selection.

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Build a persona-centric commerce strategy.
    • Understand key technology trends in the brick-and-mortar and e-commerce space.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Today’s customers expect to be able to transact with you in the channels of their choice.

    The proliferation of e-commerce, innovations in brick-and-mortar retail, and developments in mobile commerce and social media selling mean that IT organizations are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for commerce enablement.

    The right technology stack is critical to support world-class e-commerce and brick-and-mortar interactions with customers.

    Common Obstacles

    Many organizations do not define strong, customer-centric drivers for dictating which channels they should be investing in for transactional capabilities.

    As many retailers look to move shopping experiences online during the pandemic, the impetus for having a strong e-commerce suite has markedly increased. The proliferation of commerce vendors has made it difficult to identify and shortlist the right solution, while the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of adopting new vendors quickly and efficiently: companies need to understand the top players in different commerce market landscapes.

    IT is receiving a growing number of commerce platform requests and must be prepared to speak intelligently about requirements and the “art of the possible.”

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    • Leverage Info-Tech’s proven, road-tested approach to using personas and scenarios to build strong business drivers for your commerce strategy.
    • Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a cohesive channel matrix outlining which channels your organization will support with transactional capabilities.
    • Understand evolving trends in the commerce solution space, such as AI-driven product recommendations and integration with other essential enterprise applications (i.e. customer relationship management [CRM] and marketing automation platforms).
    • Understand and apply operational best practices such as content optimization and dynamic personalization to improve the conversion rate via your e-commerce channels.

    Info-Tech Insight

    • Support the right transactional channels for the right customers: there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to commerce enablement – understand your customers to drive selection of the right transactional channels.
    • Don’t assume that “traditional” commerce channels have stagnated: IoT, customer analytics, and blended retail are reinvigorating brick-and-mortar selling.
    • Don’t buy best-of-breed; buy best-for-you: base commerce vendor selection on your requirements and use cases, not on the vendor’s overall performance.

    A strong commerce strategy is an essential component of a savvy approach to customer experience management

    A commerce strategy outlines an organization’s approach to selling its products and services. A strong commerce strategy identifies target customers’ personas, commerce journeys that the organization wants to support, and the channels that the organization will use to transact with customers.

    Many commerce strategies encompass two distinct but complementary branches: a commerce strategy for transacting through traditional channels and an e-commerce strategy. While the latter often receives more attention from IT, it still falls on IT leaders to provide the appropriate enabling technologies to support traditional brick-and-mortar channels as well. Traditional channels have also undergone a digital renaissance in recent years, with forward-looking companies capitalizing on new technology to enhance customer experiences in their stores.

    Traditional Channels

    • Physical Stores (Brick and Mortar)
    • Kiosks or Pop-Up Stores
    • Telesales
    • Mail Orders
    • EDI Transactions

    E-Commerce Channels

    • E-Commerce Websites
    • Mobile Commerce Apps
    • Embedded Social Shopping
    • Customer Portals
    • Configure Price Quote Tool Sets (CPQ)
    • Hybrid Retail

    Info-Tech Insight

    To better serve their customers, many companies position themselves as “click-and-mortar” shops – allowing customers to transact at a store or online.

    Customers’ expectations are on the rise: meet them!

    Today’s consumers expect speed, convenience, and tailored experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Successful organizations strive to support these expectations.

    58%
    of retail customers admitted that their expectations now are higher than they were a year ago (FinancesOnline).

    70%
    of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 have increasing customer expectations year after year (FinancesOnline).

    69%
    of consumers now expect store associates to be armed with a mobile device to deliver value-added services, such as looking up product information and checking inventory (V12).

    73%
    of support leaders agree that customer expectations are increasing, but only…

    42%
    of support leaders are confident that they’re actually meeting those expectations.

    How can you be sure that you are meeting your customers’ expectations?

    1. Offer more personalization throughout the entire customer journey
    2. Practice quality customer service – ensure staff have up-to-date knowledge and offer quick resolution time for complaints
    3. Focus on offering low-effort experiences and easy-to-use platforms (i.e. “one-click buying”)
    4. Ensure your products and services perform well and do what they’re meant to do
    5. Ensure omnichannel availability – 9 in 10 consumers want a seamless omnichannel experience

    Info-Tech Insight

    Customers expect to interact with organizations through the channels of their choice. Now more than ever, you must enable your organization to provide tailored commerce and transactional experiences.

    Omnichannel commerce is the way of the future

    Create a strategy that embraces this reality with the right tools!

    Get ahead of the competition by doing omnichannel right! Devise a strategy that allows you to create and maintain a consistent, seamless commerce experience by optimizing operations with an omnichannel framework. Customers want to interact with you on their own terms, and it falls to IT to ensure that applications are in place to support and manage both traditional and e-commerce channels. There must also be consistency of copy, collateral, offers, and pricing between commerce channels.

    71%
    of consumers want a consistent experience across all channels, but only…

    29%
    say that they actually get it.

    (Source: Business 2 Community, 2020)

    Omnichannel is a “multichannel approach that aims to provide customers with a personalized, integrated, and seamless shopping experience across diverse touchpoints and devices.”
    Source: RingCentral, 2021

    IT is responsible for providing technology enablement of the commerce strategy: e-commerce platforms are a cornerstone

    An e-commerce platform is an enterprise application that provides end-to-end capabilities for allowing customers to purchase products or services from your company via an online channel (e.g. a traditional website, a mobile application, or an embedded link in a social media post). Modern e-commerce platforms are essential for delivering a frictionless customer journey when it comes to purchasing online.

    $6.388
    trillion dollars worth of sales will be conducted online by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

    44%
    of all e-commerce transactions are expected to be completed via a mobile device by 2024 (Insider).

    21.8%
    of all sales will be made from online purchases by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

    Strong E-Commerce Platforms Enable a Wide Range of Functional Areas:

    • Product Catalog Management
    • Web Content Delivery
    • Product Search Engine
    • Inventory Management
    • Shopping Cart Management
    • Discount and Coupon Management
    • Return Management and Reverse Logistics
    • Dynamic Personalization
    • Dynamic Promotions
    • Predictive Re-Targeting
    • Predictive Product Recommendations
    • Transaction Processing
    • Compliance Management
    • Commerce Workflow Management
    • Loyalty Program Management
    • Reporting and Analytics

    An e-commerce solution boosts the effectiveness and efficiency of your operations and drives top-line growth

    Take time to learn the capabilities of modern e-commerce applications. Understanding the “art of the possible” will help you to get the most out of your e-commerce platform.

    An e-commerce platform helps marketers and sales staff in three primary ways:

    1. It allows the organization to effectively and efficiently operate e-commerce operations at scale.
    2. It allows commercial staff to have a single system for managing and monitoring all commercial activity through online channels.
    3. It allows the organization to improve the customer-facing e-commerce experience, boosting conversions and top-line sales.

    A dedicated e-commerce platform improves the efficiency of customer-commerce operations

    • Workflow automation reduces the amount of time spent executing dynamic e-commerce campaigns.
    • The use of internal or third-party data increases conversion effectiveness from customer databases across the organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    A strong e-commerce provides marketers with the data they need to produce actionable insights about their customers.

    Case Study

    INDUSTRY - Retail
    SOURCE - Salesforce (a)

    PetSmart improves customer experience by leveraging a new commerce platform in the Salesforce ecosystem

    PetSmart

    PetSmart is a leading retailer of pet products, with a heavy footprint across North America. Historically, PetSmart was a brick-and-mortar retailer, but it has placed a heavy emphasis on being a true multi-channel “click-and-mortar” retailer to ensure it maintains relevance against competitors like Amazon.

    E-Commerce Overhaul Initiative

    To improve its e-commerce capabilities, PetSmart recognized that it needed to consolidate to a single, unified e-commerce platform to realize a 360-degree view of its customers. A new platform was also required to power dynamic and engaging experiences, with appropriate product recommendations and tailored content. To pursue this initiative, the company settled on Salesforce.com’s Commerce Cloud product after an exhaustive requirements definition effort and rigorous vendor selection approach.

    Results

    After platform implementation, PetSmart was able to effortlessly handle the massive transaction volumes associated with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and deliver 1:1 experiences that boosted conversion rates.

    PetSmart standardized on the Commerce Cloud from Salesforce to great effect.

    This is an image of the journey from Discover & Engage to Retain & Advocate.

    Case Study

    Icebreaker exceeds customer expectations by using AI to power product recommendations

    INDUSTRY - Retail
    SOURCE - Salesforce (b)

    Icebreaker

    Icebreaker is a leading outerwear and lifestyle clothing company, operating six global websites and owning over 5,000 stores across 50 countries. Icebreaker is focused on providing its shoppers with accurate, real-time product suggestions to ensure it remains relevant in an increasingly competitive online market.

    E-Commerce Overhaul Initiative

    To improve its e-commerce capabilities, Icebreaker recognized that it needed to adopt a predictive recommendation engine that would offer its customers a more personalized shopping experience. This new system would need to leverage relevant data to provide both known and anonymous shoppers with product suggestions that are of interest to them. To pursue this initiative, Icebreaker settled on using Salesforce.com’s Commerce Cloud Einstein, a fully integrated AI.

    Results

    After integrating Commerce Cloud Einstein on all its global sites, Icebreaker was able to cross-sell and up-sell its merchandise more effectively by providing its shoppers with accurate product recommendations, ultimately increasing average order value.

    IT must also provide technology enablement for other channels, such as point-of-sale systems for brick-and-mortar

    Point-of-sale systems are the “real world” complement to e-commerce platforms. They provide functional capabilities for selling products in a physical store, including basic inventory management, cash register management, payment processing, and retail analytics. Many firms struggle with legacy POS environments that inhibit a modern customer experience.

    $27.338
    trillion dollars in retail sales are expected to be made globally in 2022 (eMarketer, 2022).

    84%
    of consumers believe that retailers should be doing more to integrate their online and offline channels (Invoca).

    39%
    of consumers are unlikely or very unlikely to visit a retailer’s store if the online store doesn’t provide physical store inventory information (V12).

    Strong Point-of-Sale Platforms Enable a Wide Range of Functional Areas:

    • Product Catalog Management
    • Discount Management
    • Coupon Management and Administration
    • Cash Management
    • Cash Register Reconciliation
    • Product Identification (Barcode Management)
    • Payment Processing
    • Compliance Management
    • Basic Inventory Management
    • Commerce Workflow Management
    • Exception Reporting and Overrides
    • Loyalty Program Management
    • Reporting and Analytics

    E-commerce and POS don’t live in isolation

    They’re key components of a well-oiled customer experience ecosystem!

    Integrate commerce solutions with other customer experience applications – and with ERP or logistics systems – to handoff transactions for order fulfilment.

    Having a customer master database – the central place where all up-to-the-minute data on a customer profile is stored – is essential for traditional and e-commerce success. Typically, the POS or e-commerce platform is not the system of record for the master customer profile: this information lives in a CRM platform or customer data warehouse. Conceptually, this system is at the center of the customer-experience ecosystem.

    Strong POS and e-commerce solutions orchestrate transactions but typically do not do the heavy lifting in terms of order fulfilment, shipping logistics, economic inventory management, and reverse logistics (returns). In an enterprise-grade environment, these activities are executed by an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution – integrating your commerce systems with a back-end ERP solution is a crucial step from an application architecture point of view.

    This is an example of a customer experience ecosystem.  Core Apps (CRM, ERP): MMS Suite; E-Commerce; POS; Web CMS; Data Marts/BI Tools; Social Media Platforms

    Case Study

    INDUSTRY - Retail
    SOURCES - Amazon, n.d. CNET, 2020

    Amazon is creating a hybrid omnichannel experience for retail by introducing innovative brick-and-mortar stores

    Amazon

    Amazon began as an online retailer of books in the mid-1990s, and rapidly expanded its product portfolio to nearly every category imaginable. Often hailed as the foremost success story in online commerce, the firm has driven customer loyalty via consistently strong product recommendations and a well-designed site.

    Bringing Physical Retail Into the Digital Age

    Beginning in 2016 (and expanding in 2018), Amazon introduced Amazon Go, a next-generation grocery retailer, to the Seattle market. While most firms that pursue an e-commerce strategy traditionally come from a brick-and-mortar background, Amazon upended the usual narrative: the world’s largest online retailer opening physical stores to become a true omnichannel, “click-and-mortar” vendor. From the get-go, Amazon Go focused on innovating the physical retail experience – using cameras, IoT capabilities, and mobile technologies to offer “checkout-free” virtual shopping carts that automatically know what products customers take off the shelves and bill their Amazon accounts accordingly.

    Results

    Amazon received a variety of industry and press accolades for re-inventing the physical store experience and it now owns and operates seven separate store brands, with more still on the horizon.

    Case Study

    INDUSTRY - Retail
    SOURCES - Glossy, 2020

    Old Navy

    Old Navy is a clothing and accessories retail company that owns and operates over 1,200 stores across North America and China. Typically, Old Navy has relied on using traditional marketing approaches, but recently it has shifted to producing more digitally focused campaigns to drive revenue.

    Bringing Physical Retail Into the Digital Age

    To overcome pandemic-related difficulties, including temporary store closures, Old Navy knew that it had to have strong holiday sales in 2020. With the goal of stimulating retail sales growth and maximizing its pre-existing omnichannel capabilities, Old Navy decided to focus more of its holiday campaign efforts online than in years past. With this campaign centered on connected TV platforms, such as Hulu, and social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, Old Navy was able to take a more unique, fun, and good-humored approach to marketing.

    Results

    Old Navy’s digitally focused campaign was a success. When compared with third quarter sales figures from 2019, third quarter net sales for 2020 increased by 15% and comparable sales increased by 17%.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

    Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.

    Call #2: Assess current maturity.

    Call #4: Identify relationship between current initiatives and capabilities.

    Call #6: Identify strategy risks.

    Call #8: Identify and prioritize improvements.

    Call #3: Identify target-state capabilities.

    Call #5: Create initiative profiles.

    Call #7: Identify required budget.

    Call #9: Summarize results and plan next steps.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers – Project Overview

    1. Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy 2. Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies
    Best Practice Toolkit

    1.1 Assess Personas and Scenarios

    1.2 Create Key Drivers and Metrics

    2.1 Build the Commerce Channel Matrix

    2.2 Review Technology and Trends Primer

    Guided Implementations
    • Validate customer personas.
    • Validate commerce scenarios.
    • Review key drivers and metrics.
    • Build the channel matrix.
    • Discuss technology and trends.
    Onsite Workshop

    Module 1:

    Module 2:

    Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

    Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

    Phase 1 Outcome:

    Phase 2 Outcome:

    An initial shortlist of customer-centric drivers for your channel strategy and supporting metrics.

    A completed commerce channel matrix tailored to your organization, and a snapshot of enabling technologies and trends.

    Phase 1

    Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

    1.1 Assess Personas and Scenarios

    1.2 Create Key Drivers and Metrics

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

    Step 1.1

    Assess Personas and Scenarios

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    1.1.1 Build key customer personas for your commerce strategy.

    1.1.2 Create commerce scenarios (journey maps) that you need to enable.

    Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
    • IT project team

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Critical customer personas
    • Key traditional and e-commerce scenarios

    Use customer personas to picture who will be using your commerce channels and guide scenario design and key drivers

    What Are Personas?

    Personas are detailed descriptions of the targeted audience of your e-commerce presence. Effective personas:

    • Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups.
    • Give a clear picture of the typical user’s behavior.
    • Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality.
    • Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values.

    Source: Usability.gov, n.d.

    Why Are Personas Important?

    Personas help:

    • Focus the development of commerce platform features on the immediate needs of the intended audience.
    • Detail the level of customization needed to ensure content is valuable to the user.
    • Describe how users may behave when certain audio and visual stimulus are triggered from the website.
    • Outline the special design considerations required to meet user accessibility needs.

    Key Elements of a Persona:

    • Persona Group (e.g. executives)
    • Demographics (e.g. nationality, age, language spoken)
    • Purpose of Using Commerce Channels (e.g. product search versus ready to transact)
    • Typical Behaviors and Tendencies (e.g. goes to different websites when cannot find products in 20 seconds)
    • Technological Environment of User (e.g. devices, browsers, network connection)
    • Professional and Technical Skills and Experiences (e.g. knowledge of websites, area of expertise)

    Use Info-Tech’s guidelines to assist in the creation of personas

    How many personas should I create?

    The number of personas that should be created is based on the organizational coverage of your commerce strategy. Here are some questions you should ask:

    • Do the personas cover a majority of your revenues or product lines?
    • Is the number manageable for your project team to map out?

    How do I prioritize which personas to create?

    The identified personas should generate the most revenue – or provide a significant opportunity – for your business. Here are some questions that you should ask:

    • Are the personas prioritized based on the revenue they generate for the business?
    • Is the persona prioritization process considering both the present and future revenues the persona is generating?

    Sample: persona for e-commerce platform

    Example

    Persona quote: “After I call the company about the widget, I would usually go onto the company’s website and look at further details about the product. How am I supposed to do so when it is so hard to find the company’s website on everyday search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing?”

    Michael is a middle-aged manager working in the financial district. He wants to buy the company’s widgets for use in his home, but since he is distrusting of online shopping, he prefers to call the company’s call center first. Afterwards, if Michael is convinced by the call center representative, he will look at the company’s website for further research before making his purchase.

    Michael does not have a lot of free time on his hands, and tries to make his free time as relaxing as possible. Due to most of his work being client-facing, he is not in front of a computer most of the time during his work. As such, Michael does not consider himself to be skilled with technology. Once he makes the decision to purchase, Michael will conduct online transactions and pay most delivery costs due to his shortage of time.

    Needs:

    • Easy-to-find website and widget information.
    • Online purchasing and delivery services.
    • Answer to his questions about the widget.
    • To maintain contact post-purchase for easy future transactions.

    Info-Tech Tip

    The quote attached to a persona should be from actual quotes that your customers have used when you reviewed your voice of the customer (VoC) surveys or focus groups to drive home the impact of their issues with your company.

    1.1.1 Activity: Build personas for your key customers that you’ll need to support via traditional and e-commerce channels

    1 hour

    1. In two to four groups, list all the major, target customer personas that need to be built. In doing so, consider the people who interact with your e-commerce site (or other channels) most often.
    2. Build a demographic profile for each customer persona. Include information such as age, geographic location, occupation, and annual income.
    3. Augment the persona with a psychographic profile. Consider the goals and objectives of each customer persona and how these might inform buyer behaviors.
    4. Introduce your group’s personas to the entire group, in a round-robin fashion, as if you are introducing your persona at a party.
    5. Summarize the personas in a persona map. Rank your personas according to importance and remove any duplicates.
    6. Use Info-Tech’s Create Personas to Drive Omnichannel Requirements Template to assist.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Persona building is typically used for understanding the external customer; however, if you need to gain a better understanding of the organization’s internal customers (those who will be interacting with the e-commerce platform), personas can also be built for this purpose. Examples of useful internal personas are sales managers, brand managers, and customer service directors.

    1.1.1 Activity: Build personas for your key customers that you’ll need to support via traditional and e-commerce channels (continued)

    Input

    • Customer demographics and psychographics

    Output

    • List of prioritized customer personas

    Materials

    • Whiteboard
    • Markers

    Participants

    • Project team

    Build use-case scenarios to model the transactional customer journey and inform drivers for your commerce strategy

    A use-case scenario is a story or narrative that helps explore the set of interactions that a customer has with an organization. Scenario mapping will help identify key business and technology drivers as well as more granular functional requirements for POS or e-commerce platform selection.

    A GOOD SCENARIO…

    • Describes specific task(s) that need to be accomplished.
    • Describes user goals and motivations.
    • Describes interactions with a compelling but not overwhelming amount of detail.
    • Can be rough, as long as it provokes ideas and discussion.

    SCENARIOS ARE USED TO...

    • Provide a shared understanding about what a user might want to do and how they might want to do it.
    • Help construct the sequence of events that are necessary to address in your user interface(s).

    TO CREATE GOOD SCENARIOS…

    • Keep scenarios high level, not granular, in nature.
    • Identify as many scenarios as possible. If you’re time constrained, try to develop two to three key scenarios per persona.
    • Sketch each scenario out so that stakeholders understand the goal of the scenario.

    1.1.2 Exercise: Build commerce user scenarios to understand what you want your customers to do from a transactional viewpoint

    1 hour

    Example

    Simplified E-Commerce Workflow Purchase Products

    This image contains an example of a Simplified E-Commerce Workflow Purchase Products

    Step 1.2

    Create Key Drivers and Metrics

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Create the business drivers you need to enable with your commerce strategy.
    • Enumerate metrics to track the efficacy of your commerce strategy.

    Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
    • IT project team

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Business drivers for the commerce strategy
    • Metrics and key performance indicators for the commerce strategy

    1.2 Finish elaboration of your scenarios and map them to your personas: identify core business drivers for commerce

    1.5 hours

    1. List all commerce scenarios required to satisfy the immediate needs of your personas.
      1. Does the use-case scenario address commonly felt user challenges?
      2. Can the scenario be used by those with changing behaviors and tendencies?
    2. Look for recurring themes in use-case scenarios (for example, increasing average transaction cost through better product recommendations) and identify business drivers: drivers are common thematic elements that can be found across multiple scenarios. These are the key principles for your commerce strategy.
    3. Prioritize your use cases by leveraging the priorities of your business drivers.

    Example

    This is an example of how step 1.2 can help you identify business drivers

    1.2 Finish elaboration of your scenarios and map them to your personas: identify core business drivers for commerce (continuation)

    Input

    • User personas

    Output

    • List of use cases
    • Alignment of use cases to business objectives

    Materials

    • Whiteboard
    • Markers

    Participants

    • Business Analyst
    • Developer
    • Designer

    Show the benefits of commerce solution deployment with metrics aimed at both overall efficacy and platform adoption

    The ROI and perceived value of the organization’s e-commerce and POS solutions will be a critical indication of the success of the suite’s selection and implementation.

    Commerce Strategy and Technology Adoption Metrics

    EXAMPLE METRICS

    Commerce Performance Metrics

    Average revenue per unique transaction

    Quantity and quality of commerce insights

    Aggregate revenue by channel

    Unique customers per channel

    Savings from automated processes

    Repeat customers per channel

    User Adoption and Business Feedback Metrics

    User satisfaction feedback

    User satisfaction survey with technology

    Business adoption rates

    Application overhead cost reduction

    Info-Tech Insight

    Even if e-commerce metrics are difficult to track right now, the implementation of a dedicated e-commerce platform brings access to valuable customer intelligence from data that was once kept in silos.

    Phase 2

    Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

    2.1 Build the Commerce Channel Matrix

    2.2 Review Technology and Trends Primer

    Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

    Step 2.1

    Build the Commerce Channel Matrix

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Based on your business drivers, create a blended mix of e-commerce channels that will suit your organization’s and customers’ needs.

    Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
    • IT project team

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Commerce channel map

    Pick the transactional channels that align with your customer personas and enable your target scenarios and drivers

    Traditional Channels

    E-Commerce Channels

    Hybrid Channels

    Physical stores (brick and mortar) are the mainstay of retailers selling tangible goods – some now also offer intangible service delivery.

    E-commerce websites as exemplified by services like Amazon are accessible by a browser and deliver both goods and services.

    Online ordering/in-store fulfilment is a model whereby customers can place orders online but pick the product up in store.

    Telesales allows customers to place orders over the phone. This channel has declined in favor of mobile commerce via smartphone apps.

    Mobile commerce allows customers to shop through a dedicated, native mobile application on a smartphone or tablet.

    IoT-enabled smart carts/bags allow customers to shop in store, but check-out payments are handled by a mobile application.

    Mail order allows customers to send (”snail”) mail orders. A related channel is fax orders. Both have diminished in favor of e-commerce.

    Social media embedded shopping allows customers to order products directly through services such as Facebook.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Your channel selections should be driven by customer personas and scenarios. For example, social media may be extensively employed by some persona types (i.e. millennials) but see limited adoption in other demographics or use cases (i.e. B2B).

    2.1 Activity: Build your commerce channel matrix

    30 minutes

    1. Inventory which transactional channels are currently used by your firm (segment by product lines if variation exists).
    2. Interview product leaders, sales leaders, and marketing managers to determine if channels support transactional capabilities or are used for marketing and service delivery.
    3. Review your customer personas, scenarios, and drivers and assess which of the channels you will use in the future to sell products and services. Document below.

    Example: Commerce Channel Map

    Product Line A Product Line B Product Line C
    Currently Used? Future Use? Currently Used? Future Use? Currently Used? Future Use?
    Store Yes Yes No No No No
    Kiosk Yes No No No No No
    E-Commerce Site/Portal No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Mobile App No No Yes Yes No Yes
    Embedded Social Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

    Input

    • Personas, scenarios, and driver

    Output

    • Channel map

    Materials

    • Whiteboard
    • Markers

    Participants

    • Project team

    Step 2.2

    Review Technology and Trends Primer

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Review the scope of e-commerce and POS solutions and understand key drivers impacting e-commerce and traditional commerce.

    Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
    • IT project team

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Understanding of key technologies
    • Understanding of key trends

    Application spotlight: e-commerce platforms

    How It Enables Your Strategy

    • Modern e-commerce platforms provide capabilities for end-to-end orchestration of online commerce experiences, from product site deployment to payment processing.
    • Some e-commerce platforms are purpose-built for business-to-business (B2B) commerce, emphasizing customer portals and EDI features. Other e-commerce vendors place more emphasis on business-to-consumer (B2C) capabilities, such as product catalog management and executing transactions at scale.
    • There has been an increasing degree of overlap between traditional web experience management solutions and the e-commerce market; for example, in 2018, Adobe acquired Magento to augment its overall web experience offering within Adobe Experience Manager.
    • E-commerce platforms typically fall short when it comes to order fulfilment and logistics; this piece of the puzzle is typically orchestrated via an ERP system or logistics management module.
    • This research provides a starting place for defining e-commerce requirements and selection artefacts.

    Key Trends

    • E-commerce vendors are rapidly supporting a variety of form factors and integration with other channels such as social media. Mobile is sufficiently popular that some vendors and industry commentators refer to it as “m-commerce” to differentiate app-based shopping experiences from those accessed through a traditional browser.
    • Hybrid commerce is driving more interplay between e-commerce solutions and POS.

    E-Commerce KPIs

    Strong e-commerce applications can improve:

    • Bounce Rates
    • Exit Rates
    • Lead Conversion Rates
    • Cart Abandonment Rates
    • Re-Targeting Efficacy
    • Average Cart Size
    • Average Cart Value
    • Customer Lifetime Value
    • Aggregate Reach/Impressions

    Familiarize yourself with the e-commerce market

    How it got here

    Initial Traction as the Dot-Com Era Came to Fruition

    Unlike some enterprise application markets, such as CRM, the e-commerce market appeared almost overnight during the mid-to-late nineties as the dot-com explosion fueled the need to have reliable solutions for executing transactions online.

    Early e-commerce solutions were less full-fledged suites than they were mediums for payment processing and basic product list management. PayPal and other services like Digital River were pioneers in the space, but their functionality was limited vis-à-vis tools such as web content management platforms, and their ability to amalgamate and analyze the data necessary for dynamic personalization and re-targeting was virtually non-existent.

    Rapidly Expanding Scope of Functional Capabilities as the Market Matured

    As marketers became more sophisticated and companies put an increased focus on customer experience and omnichannel interaction, the need arose for platforms that were significantly more feature rich than their early contemporaries. In this context, vendors such as Shopify and Demandware stepped into the limelight, offering far richer functionality and analytics than previous offerings, such as asset management, dynamic personalization, and the ability to re-target customers who abandoned their carts.

    As the market has matured, there has also been a series of acquisitions of some players (for example, Demandware by Salesforce) and IPOs of others (i.e. Shopify). Traditional payment-oriented services like PayPal still fill an important niche, while newer entrants like Square seek to disrupt both the e-commerce market and point-of-sale solutions to boot.

    Familiarize yourself with the e-commerce market

    Where it’s going

    Support for a Proliferation of Form Factors and Channels

    Modern e-commerce solutions are expanding the number of form factors (smartphones, tablets) they support via both responsive design and in-app capabilities. Many platforms now also support embedded purchasing options in non-owned channels (for example, social media). With the pandemic leading to a heightened affinity for online shopping, the importance of fully using these capabilities has been further emphasized.

    AI and Machine Learning

    E-commerce is another customer experience domain ripe for transformation via the potential of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms are being used to enhance the effectiveness of dynamic personalization of product collateral, improve the accuracy of product recommendations, and allow for more effective re-targeting campaigns of customers who did not make a purchase.

    Merger of Online Commerce and Traditional Point-of-Sale

    Many e-commerce vendors – particularly the large players – are now going beyond traditional e-commerce and making plays into brick-and-mortar environments, offering point-of-sale capabilities and the ability to display product assets and customizations via augmented reality – truly blending the physical and virtual shopping experience.

    Emphasis on Integration with the Broader Customer Experience Ecosystem

    The big names in e-commerce recognize they don’t live on an island: out-of-the-box integrations with popular CRM, web experience, and marketing automation platforms have been increasing at a breakneck pace. Support for digital wallets has also become increasingly popular, with many vendors integrating contactless payment technology (i.e. Apple Pay) directly into their applications.

    E-Commerce Vendor Snapshot: Part 1

    Mid-Market E-Commerce Solutions

    This image contains the logos for the following Companies: Magento; Spryker; Bigcommerce; Woo Commerce; Shopify

    E-Commerce Vendor Snapshot: Part 2

    Large Enterprise and Full-Suite E-Commerce Platforms

    This image contains the logos for the following Companies: Salesforce commerce cloud; Oracle Commerce Cloud; Adobe Commerce Cloud; Sitecore; Sap Hybris Commerce

    Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

    • Fact-based reviews of business software from IT professionals.
    • Product and category reports with state-of-the-art data visualization.
    • Top-tier data quality backed by a rigorous quality assurance process.
    • User-experience insight that reveals the intangibles of working with a vendor.

    Software Reviews is powered by Info-Tech

    Technology coverage is a priority for Info-Tech, and SoftwareReviews provides the most comprehensive unbiased data on today’s technology. The insights of our expert analysts provide unparalleled support to our members at every step of their buying journey.

    CLICK HERE to access SoftwareReviews Comprehensive software reviews to make better IT decisions.

    We collect and analyze the most detailed reviews on enterprise software from real users to give you an unprecedented view into the product and vendor before you buy.

    Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

    SoftwareReviews

    This is an image of the data quarant report

    The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions.

    This is an image of the data quarant report chart

    Vendors are ranked by their Composite Score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.

    This is a image of the Emotional Footprint Report

    The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.

    This is a image of the Emotional Footprint Report chart

    Vendors are ranked by their Customer Experience (CX) Score, which combines the overall Emotional Footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

    Leading B2B E-Commerce Platforms

    As of February 2022

    Data Quadrant

    This image contains a screenshot of the Data Quadrant chart for B2B E-commerce

    Emotional Footprint

    This image contains a screenshot of the Emotional Footprint chart for B2B E-commerce

    Leading B2C E-Commerce Platforms

    As of February 2022

    Data Quadrant

    This image contains a screenshot of the Data Quadrant chart for B2C E-commerce

    Emotional Footprint

    This image contains a screenshot of the Emotional Footprint chart for B2C E-commerce

    Application spotlight: point-of-sale solutions

    How It Enables Your Strategy

    • Point-of-sale solutions provide capabilities for cash register/terminal management, transaction processing, and lightweight inventory management.
    • Many POS vendors also offer products that have the ability to create orders from EDI, phone, or fax channels.
    • An increasing emphasis has been placed on retail analytics by POS vendors – providing reporting and analysis tools to help with inventory planning, promotion management, and product recommendations.
    • Integration of POS systems with a central customer data warehouse or other system of record for customer information allows for the ability to build richer customer profiles and compare shopping habits in physical stores against other transactional channels that are offered.
    • POS vendors often offer (or integrate with) loyalty management solutions to track, manage, and redeem loyalty points. See this note on loyalty management systems.
    • Legacy and/or homegrown POS systems tend to be an area of frustration for customer experience management modernization.

    Key Trends

    • POS solutions are moving from “cash-register-only” solutions to encompass mobile POS form factors like smartphones and tablets. Vendors such as Square have experienced tremendous growth in opening up the market via “mPOS” platforms that have lower costs to entry than the traditional hardware needed to support full-fledged POS solutions.
    • This development puts robust POS toolsets in the hands of small and medium businesses that otherwise would be priced out of the market.

    POS KPIs

    Strong POS applications can improve:

    • Customer Data Collection
    • Inventory or Cash Shrinkage
    • Cost per Transaction
    • Loyalty Program Administration Costs
    • Cycle Time for Transaction Execution

    Point-of-Sales Vendor Snapshot: Part 1

    Mid-Market POS Solutions

    This image contains the following company Logos: Square; Shopify; Vend; Heartland|Retail

    Point-of-Sales Vendor Snapshot: Part 2

    Large Enterprise POS Platforms

    This image contains the following Logos: Clover; Oracle Netsuite; RQ Retail Management; Salesforce Commerce Cloud; Korona

    Leading Retail POS Systems

    As of February 2022

    Data Quadrant

    This is an image of the Data Quadrant Chart for the Leading Retail Pos Systems

    Emotional Footprint

    This is an image of the Emotional Footprint chart for the Leading Retail POS Systems

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • Commerce channel framework
    • Customer affinities
    • Commerce channel overview
    • Commerce-enabling technologies

    Processes Optimized

    • Persona definition for commerce strategy
    • Persona channel shortlist

    Deliverables Completed

    • Customer personas
    • Commerce user scenarios
    • Business drivers for traditional commerce and e-commerce
    • Channel matrix for omnichannel commerce

    Bibliography

    “25 Amazing Omnichannel Statistics Every Marketer Should Know (Updated for 2021).” V12, 29 June 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    “Amazon Go.” Amazon, n.d. Web.

    Andersen, Derek. “33 Statistics Retail Marketers Need to Know in 2021.” Invoca, 19 July 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    Andre, Louie. “115 Critical Customer Support Software Statistics: 2022 Market Share Analysis & Data.” FinancesOnline, 14 Jan. 2022. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

    Chuang, Courtney. “The future of support: 5 key trends that will shape customer care in 2022.” Intercom, 10 Jan. 2022. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

    Cramer-Flood, Ethan. “Global Ecommerce Update 2021.” eMarketer, 13 Jan. 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    Cramer-Flood, Ethan. “Spotlight on total global retail: Brick-and-mortar returns with a vengeance.” eMarketer, 3 Feb. 2022. Accessed 12 Apr. 2022.

    Fox Rubin, Ben. “Amazon now operates seven different kinds of physical stores. Here's why.” CNET, 28 Feb. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    Krajewski, Laura. “16 Statistics on Why Omnichannel is the Future of Your Contact Center and the Foundation for a Top-Notch Competitive Customer Experience.” Business 2 Community, 10 July 2020. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

    Manoff, Jill. “Fun and convenience: CEO Nany Green on Old Navy’s priorities for holiday.” Glossy, 8 Dec. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    Meola, Andrew. “Rise of M-Commerce: Mobile Ecommerce Shopping Stats & Trends in 2021.” Insider, 30 Dec. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    “Outdoor apparel retailer Icebreaker uses AI to exceed shopper expectations.” Salesforce, n.d.(a). Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

    “Personas.” Usability.gov., n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2018.

    “PetSmart – Why Commerce Cloud?” Salesforce, n.d.(b). Web. 30 April 2018.

    Toor, Meena. “Customer expectations: 7 Types all exceptional researchers must understand.” Qualtrics, 3 Dec. 2020. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

    Westfall, Leigh. “Omnichannel vs. multichannel: What's the difference?” RingCentral, 10 Sept. 2021. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

    “Worldwide ecommerce will approach $5 trillion this year.” eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

    Knowledge Management

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    • Parent Category Name: People and Resources
    • Parent Category Link: /people-and-resources
    Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss

    Requirements Gathering

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    • Parent Category Name: Project Portfolio Management and Projects
    • Parent Category Link: /ppm-and-projects

    The challenge

    • The number reason projects fail because from the outset, what people wanted was not clear.
    • Without proper due diligence, IT will deliver projects that fail to meet business expectations and fail to provide business value.
    • If you failed to accurately capture the needs and desires, your projects are set up for costly rework. That will hurt your business's financial performance and result in damage to your relationship with your business partners.
    • Even with requirements gathering processes in place, your business analysts may not have the required competencies to execute them.

    Our advice

    Insight

    • You need to gather requirements with your organizations' end-state in mind. That requires IT and business alignment.
    • You would be good to create a set of standard operating procedures around requirements gathering. But many companies fail to do so.
    • Bring standardization and conformity to your requirements gathering processes via a centralized center of excellence. That brings cohesion and uniformity to your practice.
    • It is critical that your business analysts have the necessary competencies to execute your processes and that they ask the right questions.

    Impact and results 

    • Better requirements analysis will result in shorter cycle timed and reduced project rework and overhead.
    • You will enjoy better relationships with your business partners, greater stakeholder satisfaction, and gradually a better standing of IT.
    • Most importantly, the applications and systems you deliver will contain all must-haves and some nice-to-haves. Your minimal viable deliverable will start to create business value immediately.

    The roadmap

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    Get started.

    Read our executive brief to understand why you should invest in optimizing requirements gathering in your company. We show you how we can support you.

    Build the target state

    Fully understand the target needs of the requirements gathering process.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 1: Build the Target State for the Requirements Gathering Process (ppt)
    • Requirements Gathering SOP and BA Playbook (doc)
    • Requirements Gathering Maturity Assessment (xls)
    • Project Level Selection Tool (xls)
    • Business Requirements Analyst (doc)
    • Requirements Gathering Communication Tracking Template (xls)

    Develop best practices to gather business requirements

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 2: Define the Elicitation Process (ppt)
    • Business Requirements Document Template (xls)
    • Scrum Documentation Template (doc)

    Analyze and validate requirements

    Standardize your frameworks for analysis and validation of the business requirements

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 3: Analyze and Validate Requirements (ppt)
    • Requirements Gathering Documentation Tool (xls)
    • Requirements Gathering Testing Checklist (doc)

    Build your requirements gathering governance action plan

    Formalize governance.

    • Build a Strong Approach to Business Requirements Gathering – Phase 4: Create a Requirements Governance Action Plan (ppt)
    • Requirements Traceability Matrix (xls)

     

     

    Enterprise Network Design Considerations

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    Security, risk, and trust models play into how networks are designed and deployed. If these models are not considered during network design, band-aids and workarounds will be deployed to achieve the needed goals, potentially bypassing network controls.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    The cloud “gold rush” has made it attractive for many enterprises to migrate services off the traditional network and into the cloud. These services are now outside of the traditional network and associated controls. This shifts the split of east-west vs. north-south traffic patterns, as well as extending the network to encompass services outside of enterprise IT’s locus of control.

    Impact and Result

    Where users access enterprise data or services and from which devices dictate the connectivity needed. With the increasing shift of work that the business is completing remotely, not all devices and data paths will be under the control of IT. This shift does not allow IT to abdicate from the responsibility to provide a secure network.

    Enterprise Network Design Considerations Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Enterprise Network Design Considerations Deck – A brief deck that outlines key trusts and archetypes when considering enterprise network designs.

    This blueprint will help you:

    • Enterprise Network Design Considerations Storyboard

    2. Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool – Build an infrastructure assessment in an hour.

    Dispense with detailed analysis and customizations to present a quick snapshot of the road ahead.

    • Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Enterprise Network Design Considerations

    It is not just about connectivity.

    Executive Summary

    Info-Tech Insight

    Connectivity and security are tightly coupled

    Security, risk, and trust models play into how networks are designed and deployed. If these models are not considered during network design, band-aids and workarounds will be deployed to achieve the needed goals, potentially bypassing network controls.

    Many services are no longer within the network

    The cloud “gold rush” has made it attractive for many enterprises to migrate services off the traditional network and into the cloud. These services are now outside of the traditional network and associated controls. This shifts the split of east-west vs. north-south traffic patterns, as well as extending the network to encompass services outside of enterprise IT’s locus of control.

    Users are demanding an anywhere, any device access model

    Where users access enterprise data or services and from which devices dictate the connectivity needed. With the increasing shift of work that the business is completing remotely, not all devices and data paths will be under the control of IT. This shift does not allow IT to abdicate from the responsibility to provide a secure network.

    Enterprise networks are changing

    The new network reality

    The enterprise network of 2020 and beyond is changing:

    • Services are becoming more distributed.
    • The number of services provided “off network” is growing.
    • Users are more often remote.
    • Security threats are rapidly escalating.

    The above statements are all accurate for enterprise networks, though each potentially to differing levels depending on the business being supported by the network. Depending on how affected the network in question currently is and will be in the near future, there are different common network archetypes that are best able to address these concerns while delivering business value at an appropriate price point.

    High-Level Design Considerations

    1. Understand Business Needs
    2. Understand what the business needs are and where users and resources are located.

    3. Define Your Trust Model
    4. Trust is a spectrum and tied tightly to security.

    5. Align With an Archetype
    6. How will the network be deployed?

    7. Understand Available Tooling
    8. What tools are in the market to help achieve design principles?

    Understand business needs

    Mission

    Never ignore the basics. Start with revisiting the mission and vision of the business to address relevant needs.

    Users

    Identify where users will be accessing services from. Remote vs. “on net” is a design consideration now more than ever.

    Resources

    Identify required resources and their locations, on net vs. cloud.

    Controls

    Identify required controls in order to define control points and solutions.

    Define a trust model

    Trust is a spectrum

    • There is a spectrum of trust, from fully trusted to not trusted at all. Each organization must decide for their network (or each area thereof) the appropriate level of trust to assign.
    • The ease of network design and deployment is directly proportional to the trust spectrum.
    • When resources and users are outside of direct IT control, the level of appropriate trust should be examined closely.

    Implicit

    Trust everything within the network. Security is perimeter based and designed to stop external actors from entering the large trusted zone.

    Controlled

    Multiple zones of trust within the network. Segmentation is a standard practice to separate areas of higher and lower trust.

    Zero

    Verify trust. The network is set up to recognize and support the principle of least privilege where only required access is supported.

    Align with an archetype

    Archetypes are a good guide

    • Using a defined archetype as a guiding principle in network design can help clarify appropriate tools or network structures.
    • Different aspects of a network can have different archetypes where appropriate (e.g. IT vs. OT [operational technology] networks).

    Traditional

    Services are provided from within the traditional network boundaries and security is provided at the network edge.

    Hybrid

    Services are provided both externally and from within the traditional network boundaries, and security is primarily at the network edge.

    Inverted

    Services are provided primarily externally, and security is cloud centric.

    Traditional networks

    Resources within network boundaries

    Moat and castle security perimeter

    Abstract

    A traditional network is one in which there are clear boundaries defined by a security perimeter. Trust can be applied within the network boundaries as appropriate, and traffic is generally routed through internally deployed control points that may be centralized. Traditional networks commonly include large firewalls and other “big iron” security and control devices.

    Network Design Tenets

    • The full network path from resource to user is designed, deployed, and controlled by IT.
    • Users external to the network must first connect to the network to gain access to resources.
    • Security, risk, and trust controls will be implemented by internal enterprise hardware/software devices.

    Control

    In the traditional network, it is assumed that all required control points can be adequately deployed across hardware/software that is “on prem” and under the control of central IT.

    Info-Tech Insight

    With increased cloud services provided to end users, this network is now more commonly used in data centers or OT networks.

    Traditional networks

    The image contains an example of what traditional networks look like, as described in the text below.

    Defining Characteristics

    • Traffic flows in a defined path under the control of IT to and from central IT resources.
    • Due to visibility into, and the control of, the traffic between the end user and resources, IT can relatively simply implement the required security controls on owned hardware.

    Common Components

    • Traditional offices
    • Remote users/road warriors
    • Private data center/colocation space

    Hybrid networks

    Resources internal and external to network

    Network security perimeter combined with cloud protection

    Abstract

    A hybrid network is one that combines elements of a traditional network with cloud resources. As some of these resources are not fully under the control of IT and may be completely “offnet” or loosely coupled to the on-premises network, the security boundaries and control points are less likely to be centralized. Hybrid networks allow the flexibility and speed of cloud deployment without leaving behind traditional network constructs. This generally makes them expensive to secure and maintain.

    Network Design Tenets

    • The network path from resource to user may not be in IT’s locus of control.
    • Users external to the network must first connect to the network to gain access to internal resources but may directly access publicly hosted ones.
    • Security, risk, and trust controls may potentially be implemented by a mixture of internal enterprise hardware/software devices and external control points.

    Control

    The hallmark of a hybrid network is the blending of public and private resources. This blending tends to necessitate both public and private points of control that may not be homogenous.

    Info-Tech Insight

    With multiple control points to address, take care in simplifying designs while addressing all concerns to ease operational load.

    Hybrid networks

    The image contains an example of what hybrid networks look like, as described in the text below.

    Defining Characteristics

    • Traffic flows to central resources across a defined path under the control of IT.
    • Traffic to cloud assets may be partially under the control of IT.
    • For central resources, the traffic to and from the end user can have the required security controls relatively simply implemented on owned hardware.
    • For public cloud assets, IT may or may not have some control over part of the path.

    Common Components

    • Traditional offices
    • Remote users/road warriors
    • Private data center/colocation space
    • Public cloud assets (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS)

    Inverted perimeter

    Resources primarily external to the network

    Security control points are cloud centric

    Abstract

    An inverted perimeter network is one in which security and control points cover the entire workflow, on or off net, from the consumer of services through to the services themselves with zero trust. Since the control plane is designed to encompass the workflow in a secure manner, much of the underlying connectivity can be abstracted. In an extreme version of this deployment, IT would abstract end-user access, and any cloud-based or on-premises resources would be securely published through the control plane with context-aware precision access.

    Network Design Tenets

    • The network path from resource to user is abstracted and controlled by IT through services like secure access service edge (SASE).
    • Users only need internet access and appropriate credentials to gain access to resources.
    • Security, risk, and trust controls will be implemented through external cloud based services.

    Control

    An inverted network abstracts the lower-layer connectivity away and focuses on implementing a cloud-based zero trust control plane.

    Info-Tech Insight

    This model is extremely attractive for organizations that consume primarily cloud services and have a large remote work force.

    Inverted networks

    The image contains an example of what inverted networks look like, as described in the text below.

    Defining Characteristics

    • The end user does not have to be in a defined location.
    • All central resources that are to be accessed are hosted on cloud resources.
    • IT has little to no control of the path between the end user and central resources.

    Common Components

    • Traditional offices
    • Regent offices/shared workspaces
    • Remote users/road warriors
    • Public cloud assets (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS)

    Understand available tooling

    Don’t buy a hammer and go looking for nails

    • A network archetype must be defined in order to understand what tools (hardware or software) are appropriate for consideration in a network build or refresh.
    • Tools are purpose built and generally designed to solve specific problems if implemented and operated correctly. Choose the tools to align with the challenges that you are solving as opposed to choosing tools and then trying to use those purchases to overcome challenges.
    • The purchase of a tool does not allow for abdication of proper design. Tools must be chosen appropriately and integrated properly to orchestrate the best solutions. Purchasing a tool and expecting the tool to solve all your issues rarely succeeds.

    “It is essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tools should be used in the right way.” — Wallace D. Wattles

    Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN)

    Simplified branch office connectivity

    Archetype Value: Traditional Networks

    What It Is Not

    SD-WAN is generally not a way to slash spending by lowering WAN circuit costs. Though it is traditionally deployed across lower cost access, to minimize risk and realize the most benefits from the platform many organizations install multiple circuits with greater bandwidths at each endpoint when replacing the more costly traditional circuits. Though this maximizes the value of the technology investment, it will result in the end cost being similar to the traditional cost plus or minus a small percentage.

    What It Is

    SD-WAN is a subset of software-defined networking (SDN) designed specifically to deploy a secure, centrally managed, connectivity agnostic, overlay network connecting multiple office locations. This technology can be used to replace, work in concert with, or augment more traditional costly connectivity such as MPLS or private point to point (PtP) circuits. In addition to the secure overlay, SD-WAN usually also enables policy-based, intelligent controls, based on traffic and circuit intelligence.

    Why Use It

    You have multiple endpoint locations connected by expensive lower bandwidth traditional circuits. Your target is to increase visibility and control while controlling costs if and where possible. Ease of centralized management and the ability to more rapidly turn up new locations are attractive.

    Cloud access security broker (CASB)

    Inline policy enforcement placed between users and cloud services

    Archetype Value: Hybrid Networks

    What It Is Not

    CASBs do not provide network protection; they are designed to provide compliance and enforcement of rules. Though CASBs are designed to give visibility and control into cloud traffic, they have limits to the data that they generally ingest and utilize. A CASB does not gather or report on cloud usage details, licencing information, financial costing, or whether the cloud resource usage is aligned with the deployment purpose.

    What It Is

    A CASB is designed to establish security controls beyond a company’s environment. It is commonly deployed to augment traditional solutions to extend visibility and control into the cloud. To protect assets in the cloud, CASBs are designed to provide central policy control and apply services primarily in the areas of visibility, data security, threat protection, and compliance.

    Why Use It

    You a mixture of on-premises and cloud assets. In moving assets out to the cloud, you have lost the traditional controls that were implemented in the data center. You now need to have visibility and apply controls to the usage of these cloud assets.

    Secure access service edge (SASE)

    Convergence of security and service access in the cloud

    Archetype Value: Inverted Networks

    What It Is Not

    Though the service will consist of many service offerings, SASE is not multiple services strung together. To present the value proposed by this platform, all functionality proposed must be provided by a single platform under a “single pane of glass.” SASE is not a mature and well-established service. The market is still solidifying, and the full-service definition remains somewhat fluid.

    What It Is

    SASE exists at the intersection of network-as-a-service and network-security-as-a-service. It is a superset of many network and security cloud offerings such as CASB, secure web gateway, SD-WAN, and WAN optimization. Any services offered by a SASE provider will be cloud hosted, presented in a single stack, and controlled through a single pane of glass.

    Why Use It

    Your network is inverting, and services are provided primarily as cloud assets. In a full realization of this deployment’s value, you would abstract how and where users gain initial network access yet remain in control of the communications and data flow.

    Activity

    Understand your enterprise network options

    Activity: Network assessment in an hour

    • Learn about the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool
    • Complete the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool

    This activity involves the following participants:

    • IT strategic direction decision makers.
    • IT managers responsible for network.
    • Organizations evaluating platforms for mission critical applications.

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Completed Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool

    Info-Tech Insight

    Review your design options with security and compliance in mind. Infrastructure is no longer a standalone entity and now tightly integrates with software-defined networks and security solutions.

    Build an assessment in an hour

    Learn about the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool.

    This workbook provides a high-level analysis of a technology’s readiness for adoption based on your organization’s needs.

    • The workbook then places the technology on a graph that measures both the readiness and fit for your organization. In addition, it provides warnings for specific issues and lets you know if you have considerable uncertainty in your answers.
    • At a glance you can now communicate what you are doing to help the company:
      • Grow
      • Save money
      • Reduce risk
    • Regardless of your specific audience, these are important stories to be able to tell.
    The image contains three screenshots from the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool.

    Build an assessment in an hour

    Complete the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool.

    Dispense with detailed analysis and customizations to present a quick snapshot of the road ahead.

    1. Weightings: Adjust the Weighting tab to meet organizational needs. The provided weightings for the overall solution areas are based on a generic firm; individual firms will have different needs.
    2. Data Entry: For each category, answer the questions for the technology you are considering. When you have completed the questionnaire, go to the next tab for the results.
    3. Results: The Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool provides a value versus readiness assessment of your chosen technology customized to your organization.

    The image contains three screenshots from the Enterprise Network Roadmap Technology Assessment Tool. It has a screenshot for each step as described in the text above.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Effectively Acquire Infrastructure Services

    Acquiring a service is like buying an experience. Don’t confuse the simplicity of buying hardware with buying an experience.

    Outsource IT Infrastructure to Improve System Availability, Reliability, and Recovery

    There are very few IT infrastructure components you should be housing internally – outsource everything else.

    Build Your Infrastructure Roadmap

    Move beyond alignment: Put yourself in the driver’s seat for true business value.

    Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes With a Robust RFP Process

    Leverage your vendor sourcing process to get better results.

    Research Authors

    The image contains a photo of Scott Young.

    Scott Young, Principal Research Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group

    Scott Young is a Director of Infrastructure Research at Info-Tech Research Group. Scott has worked in the technology field for over 17 years, with a strong focus on telecommunications and enterprise infrastructure architecture. He brings extensive practical experience in these areas of specialization, including IP networks, server hardware and OS, storage, and virtualization.

    The image contains a photo of Troy Cheeseman.

    Troy Cheeseman, Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    Troy has over 24 years of experience and has championed large enterprise-wide technology transformation programs, remote/home office collaboration and remote work strategies, BCP, IT DRP, IT operations and expense management programs, international right placement initiatives, and large technology transformation initiatives (M&A). Additionally, he has deep experience working with IT solution providers and technology (cloud) startups.

    Bibliography

    Ahlgren, Bengt. “Design considerations for a network of information.” ACM Digital Library, 21 Dec. 2008.

    Cox Business. “Digital transformation is here. Is your business ready to upgrade your mobile work equation?” BizJournals, 1 April 2022. Accessed April 2022.

    Elmore, Ed. “Benefits of integrating security and networking with SASE.” Tech Radar, 1 April 2022. Web.

    Greenfield, Dave. “From SD-WAN to SASE: How the WAN Evolution is Progressing.” Cato Networks, 19 May 2020. Web

    Korolov, Maria. “What is SASE? A cloud service that marries SD-WAN with security.” Network World, 7 Sept. 2020. Web.

    Korzeniowski, Paul, “CASB tools evolve to meet broader set of cloud security needs.” TechTarget, 26 July 2019. Accessed March 2022.

    Modernize Your SDLC

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    • Parent Category Name: Development
    • Parent Category Link: /development
    • Today’s rapidly scaling and increasingly complex products create mounting pressure on delivery teams to release new features and changes quickly and with sufficient quality.
    • Many organizations lack the critical capabilities and resources needed to satisfy their growing backlog, jeopardizing product success.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Delivery quality and throughput go hand in hand. Focus on meeting minimum process and product quality standards first. Improved throughput will eventually follow.
    • Business integration is not optional. The business must be involved in guiding delivery efforts, and ongoing validation and verification product changes.
    • The software development lifecycle (SDLC) must deliver more than software. Business value is generated through the products and services delivered by your SDLC. Teams must provide the required product support and stakeholders must be willing to participate in the product’s delivery.

    Impact and Result

    • Standardize your definition of a successful product. Come to an organizational agreement of what defines a high-quality and successful product. Accommodate both business and IT perspectives in your definition.
    • Clarify the roles, processes, and tools to support business value delivery and satisfy stakeholder expectations. Indicate where and how key roles are involved throughout product delivery to validate and verify work items and artifacts. Describe how specific techniques and tools are employed to meet stakeholder requirements.
    • Focus optimization efforts on most affected stages. Reveal the health of your SDLC from the value delivery, business and technical practice quality standards, discipline, throughput, and governance perspectives with a diagnostic. Identify and roadmap the solutions to overcome the root causes of your diagnostic results.

    Modernize Your SDLC Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should modernize your SDLC, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Set your SDLC context

    State the success criteria of your SDLC practice through the definition of product quality and organizational priorities. Define your SDLC current state.

    • Modernize Your SDLC – Phase 1: Set Your SDLC Context
    • SDLC Strategy Template

    2. Diagnose your SDLC

    Build your SDLC diagnostic framework based on your practice’s product and process objectives. Root cause your improvement opportunities.

    • Modernize Your SDLC – Phase 2: Diagnose Your SDLC
    • SDLC Diagnostic Tool

    3. Modernize your SDLC

    Learn of today’s good SDLC practices and use them to address the root causes revealed in your SDLC diagnostic results.

    • Modernize Your SDLC – Phase 3: Modernize Your SDLC
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Modernize Your SDLC

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Set Your SDLC Context

    The Purpose

    Discuss your quality and product definitions and how quality is interpreted from both business and IT perspectives.

    Review your case for strengthening your SDLC practice.

    Review the current state of your roles, processes, and tools in your organization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Grounded understanding of products and quality that is accepted across the organization.

    Clear business and IT objectives and metrics that dictate your SDLC practice’s success.

    Defined SDLC current state people, process, and technologies.

    Activities

    1.1 Define your products and quality.

    1.2 Define your SDLC objectives.

    1.3 Measure your SDLC effectiveness.

    1.4 Define your current SDLC state.

    Outputs

    Product and quality definitions.

    SDLC business and technical objectives and vision.

    SDLC metrics.

    SDLC capabilities, processes, roles and responsibilities, resourcing model, and tools and technologies.

    2 Diagnose Your SDLC

    The Purpose

    Discuss the components of your diagnostic framework.

    Review the results of your SDLC diagnostic.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    SDLC diagnostic framework tied to your SDLC objectives and definitions.

    Root causes to your SDLC issues and optimization opportunities.

    Activities

    2.1 Build your diagnostic framework.

    2.2 Diagnose your SDLC.

    Outputs

    SDLC diagnostic framework.

    Root causes to SDLC issues and optimization opportunities.

    3 Modernize Your SDLC

    The Purpose

    Discuss the SDLC practices used in the industry.

    Review the scope and achievability of your SDLC optimization initiatives.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Knowledge of good practices that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your SDLC.

    Realistic and achievable SDLC optimization roadmap.

    Activities

    3.1 Learn and adopt SDLC good practices.

    3.2 Build your optimization roadmap.

    Outputs

    Optimization initiatives and target state SDLC practice.

    SDLC optimization roadmap, risks and mitigations, and stakeholder communication flow.

    Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management

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    • Parent Category Name: Portfolio Management
    • Parent Category Link: /portfolio-management
    • As an IT leader, you’re responsible for steering the realization of business strategy through wise investments in and responsible stewardship of assets, applications, portfolios, programs, products, and projects.
    • You need a tool to help align goals and facilitate processes across business units. You’re aware of a tool space called Strategic Portfolio Management, and it looks like it could help, but you’re unsure of how it’s different from some of the existing tools you already pay for and don’t use to their full functionality.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    As a software space, strategic portfolio management lacks a unified definition. In the same way that it took many years for project portfolio management to stabilize as a concept distinct from traditional enterprise project management, strategic portfolio management is experiencing a similar period of formational uncertainty. Unpacking what’s truly new and valuable in helping to define strategy and drive strategic outcomes versus what’s just repackaged as SPM is an important first step, but it's not an easy undertaking.

    Impact and Result

    In this concise publication, we will cut through the marketing to unpack what strategic portfolio management is, and what makes it distinct from similar capabilities. We’ll help to situate you in the space and assess the extent to which your tooling needs can be met by a strategic portfolio management offering.

    Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management Storyboard – A guide to help you drive strategic outcomes.

    In this concise publication we introduce you to strategic portfolio management and consider the extent to which your organization can leverage an SPM application to help drive strategic outcomes.

    • Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management Storyboard

    2. Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment Tool – Use this tool to determine if your organization can benefit from the features and functionality of an SPM approach.

    Use this Excel workbook to determine if your organization can benefit from the features and functionality of an SPM approach or whether you need something more like a traditional project portfolio management tool.

    • Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management

    Separate what's new and valuable from bloated claims on the hype cycle.

    Analyst Perspective

    Do you need strategic portfolio management, or do you need to do portfolio management more strategically?

    Travis Duncan, Research Director, PPM and CIO Strategy

    Travis Duncan
    Research Director, PPM and CIO Strategy
    Info-Tech Research Group

    While the market is eager to get users into what they're calling "strategic portfolio management," there's a lot of uncertainty out there about what this market is and how it's different from other, more established portfolio disciplines – most significantly, project portfolio management.

    Indeed, if you look at how the space is covered within the industry, you'll encounter a dog's breakfast of players, a comparison of apples and oranges: Jira in the same quadrants as Planisware, Smartsheets in the same profiles as Planview and ServiceNow. While each of the individual players is impressive, their areas of focus are unique and the extent to which they should be compared together under the category of strategic portfolio management is questionable.

    It speaks to some of the grey area within the SPM space more generally, which is at a bit of a crossroads: Will it formally shed the guardrails of its antecedents to become its own space, or will it devolve into a bait and switch through which capabilities that struggled to gain much traction beyond IT settings seek to infiltrate the business and grow their market share under a different name?

    Part of it is up to the rest of us as users and potential customers. Clarifying what we need before we jump into something simply because our prior attempts failed will help determine whether we need a unique space for strategic portfolio management or whether we simply need to do portfolio management more strategically.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge Common Obstacles Info-Tech's Approach
    • As an IT leader, you're responsible for steering the realization of business strategy through wise investments in/ and responsible stewardship of: assets, applications, portfolios, programs, products, and projects.
    • You need a tool to help align goals and facilitate processes and communications across business units. You're aware of a tool space called strategic portfolio management, and it looks like it could help, but you're unsure of how it's different from some of the existing tools you already license.
    • As a software space, strategic portfolio management lacks a unified definition. Unpacking what's truly new in helping to define strategy and drive strategic outcomes versus what's just repackaged as SPM is no small undertaking.
    • Because SPM can span different business units, ways of working, and roles, getting buy-in, alignment, and adoption can be even more precarious than it is when implementing other types of solutions.
    • In this concise publication, we will cut through the marketing to unpack what strategic portfolio management is and what makes it distinct from similar capabilities.
    • Assess the extent to which your tooling needs can be met by a strategic portfolio management offering or the extent to which you may need to look at other software categories.
    • With a better understanding of the space, we hope to help facilitate better internal discussions around the value of SPM for your business needs.

    Info-Tech Insight
    In the same way that it took many years for PPM to stabilize as a concept distinct from traditional enterprise project management, strategic portfolio management is experiencing a similar period of formational uncertainty. In a space that can be all things to all users, clarify your actual needs before jumping onto a bandwagon and ending up with something that you don't need, and that the organization can't adopt.

    Strategic portfolio management is enterprise portfolio management

    Evolved from various other capabilities and vendor solutions, strategic portfolio management (SPM) seeks to connect strategy to execution.

    While the concept of 'strategic portfolio management' has been written about within project portfolio management circles for nearly 20 years, SPM, as a distinct organizational competence and software category, is a relatively new and largely vendor-driven capability.

    First emerging in the discourse during the mid-to-late 2010s, SPM has evolved from its roots in traditional enterprise project portfolio management. Though, as we will discuss, it has other antecedents not limited to PPM.

    In this publication, we'll unpack what SPM is, how it is distinct (and, in turn, how it is not distinct) from PPM and other capabilities, and we will consider the extent to which your organization can and should leverage an SPM application to help drive strategic outcomes.

    –The increasing need to deliver value from digital initiatives is giving rise to strategic portfolio management, a digital investment management discipline that enables strategy realization in complex dynamic environments."
    – OnePlan, "Is Strategic Portfolio Management the Future of PPM?"

    Only 2% of business leaders are confident that they will achieve 80% to 100% of their strategic objectives.
    Source: Smith, 2022

    Put strategic portfolio management in context

    SPM is a new stage in the history of project portfolio management more generally. While it's emerging as a distinct capability, and it borrows from capabilities beyond PPM, unpacking its distinctiveness is best done by first understanding its source.

    Understand the recent triggers for strategic portfolio management

    Triggers for the emergence of strategic portfolio management in the discourse include the pace of technology-introduced change, the waning of enterprise project management, and challenges around enterprise PPM tool adoption.

    Spot the difference?

    Scope, focus, and audience are just a few of the factors distinguishing what the market calls "SPM" from traditional PPM.

    Project Portfolio Management Differentiator Strategic Portfolio Management
    Work-Level (Tactical) Primary Orientation High-Level (Strategic)
    CIO Accountable for Outcomes CxO
    Project Manager Responsible for Outcomes Product Management Organization
    Project Managers, PMO Staff Targeted Users Business Leaders, ePMO Staff
    Project Portfolio(s) Essential Scope Multi-Portfolio (Project, Application, Product, Program, etc.)
    IT Project Delivery and Business Results Delivery Core Focus Business Strategy and Change Delivery
    Project Scope Change Impact Sensitivity Enterprise Scope
    IT and/or Business Benefit Language of Value Value Stream
    Project Timelines Main View Strategy Roadmaps
    Resource Capacity Primary Currency Money
    Work-Assignment Details Modalities of Planning Value Milestones & OKRs
    Work Management Modalities of Execution Governance (Project, Product, Strategy, Program, etc.)
    Project Completion Definitions of "Done" Business Capability Realization

    Info-Tech Insight
    The distinction between the two capabilities is not necessarily as black and white as the table above would have it (some "PPM" tools offer what we're identifying above as "SPM" capabilities), but it can be helpful to think in these binaries when trying to distinguish the two capabilities. At the very least, SPM broadens its scope to target more executive and business users, and functions best when it's speaking at a higher level, to a business audience.

    Strategic portfolio management offers a more holistic view of the enterprise

    At its best, strategic portfolio management can accommodate various paradigms of work management and incorporate different types of portfolio management.

    Perhaps the biggest evolution from traditional PPM that strategic portfolio management promises is that it casts a wider net in terms of the types of work it tracks (and how it tracks that work) and the types of portfolios it accommodates.

    Not bound to the concepts of "projects" and a "project portfolio" specifically, SPM broadens its scope to encompass capabilities like product and product portfolio management, enterprise architecture management, security and risk management, and more.

    • Where a PPM solution only shows one piece of the puzzle, SPM looks at the entire investment ecosystem, tracking strategic goals, the ideas generated to help achieve those goals, and all the various kinds of investments made in the service of those goals.
    • what's more, where traditional PPM tools required users to adhere to a certain way of working and managing tasks, SPM is more flexible, relying on integrations across various ways of working to provide higher-level insight on the progress of work and the achievement of goals.

    Deliver business strategy and change effectively

    Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Framework

    "An SPM tool will capture business strategy, business capabilities, operating models, the enterprise architecture and the project portfolio with unmatched visibility into how they all relate. This will give...a robust understanding of the impact of a proposed IT change " and enable IT and business to act like cocreators driving innovation."
    – Paula Ziehr

    You might need a strategic portfolio management tool if–

    If you find yourself facing any of these situations, it might be time to step away from your PPM tool and into an SPM approach:

    • Your organization is facing a large implementation that will cross multiple departmental units and requires alignment across senior leadership (e.g. a digital transformation initiative).
    • You currently have disparate systems tracking different portfolios (project, product, applications, etc.) and types of investments, but lack insight into the whole in terms of how work efforts and investments tie back to strategy realization.
    • You are an ePMO or a strategy realization office that doesn't manage work necessarily, but that rather ensures that the work, assets, and capabilities that are funded connect to strategy and drive the realization of strategy.

    Sixty one percent of leaders acknowledge their companies struggle to bridge the gap between creating a strategy and executing on that strategy.
    Source: StrategyBlocks, 2020

    Get to know your strategic portfolio management stakeholders

    In terms of users, SPM's focus is further up the org chart than most applications, relying on high-level but usable outputs to help drive decision making.

    ePMO or Strategy Realization Office Senior Leadership and Executive Stakeholders Business Leads and IT Directors and Managers
    SPM tools are best facilitated through enterprise PMOs or strategy realization offices. After all, in enterprises, these are the entities charged with the planning, execution, and tracking of strategy.

    Their roles within the tool typically entail:

    • Helping to facilitate processes and collect data.
    • Data quality and curation.
    • Report distribution and consumption.
    As those with the accountability and authority to drive the organization's strategy, you could argue that these stakeholders are the primary stakeholders for an SPM tool.

    Their roles within the tool typically entail:

    • Using strategy map and ideation functionalities.
    • Using reports to steward strategy realization.
    SPM targets more business users as well as senior IT managers and directors.

    Their roles within the tool typically entail:

    • Using strategy map and ideation functionalities.
    • Providing updates to ePMOs on progress.

    What should you look for in a strategic portfolio management tool? (1 of 2)

    Standard features for SPM include:

    Name Description
    Analytics and Reporting SPM should provide access to real-time dashboards and data interpretation, which can be exported as reports in a range of formats.
    Strategy Mapping and Road Mapping SPM should provide access to up-to-date timeline views of strategies and initiatives, including the ability to map such things as dependencies, market needs, funding, priorities, governance, and accountabilities.
    Value Tracking and Measurement SPM should include the ability to forecast, track, and measure return on investment for strategic investments. This includes accommodations for various paradigms of value delivery (e.g. traditional value delivery and measurement, OKRs, as well as value mapping and value streams).
    Ideation and Innovation Management SPM should include the ability to facilitate innovation management processes across the organization, including the ability to support stage gates from ideation through to approval; to articulate, socialize, and test ideas; perform impact assessments; create value canvas and OKR maps; and prioritize.
    Multi-Portfolio Management SPM should include the ability to perform various modalities of portfolio management and portfolio optimization, including project portfolio management, applications portfolio management, asset portfolio management, etc.
    Interoperability/APIs An SPM tool should enable seamless integration with other applications for data interoperability.

    What should you look for in a strategic portfolio management tool? (2 of 2)

    Advanced features for SPM can include:

    Name Description
    Product Management SPM can include product-management-specific functionality, including the ability to connect product families, roadmaps, and backlogs to enterprise goals and priorities, and track team-level activities at the sprint, release, and campaign levels.
    Enterprise Architecture Management SPM can include the ability to define and map the structure and operation of an organization in order to effectively coordinate various domains of architecture and governance (e.g. business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, security architecture, etc.) in order to effectively plan and introduce change.
    Security and Risk Management SPM can include the ability to identify and track enterprise risks and ensure compliance controls are met.
    Lean Portfolio Management SPM can include the ability to plan and report on portfolio performance independent from task level details of product, program, or project delivery.
    Investment and Financial Management SPM can include the ability to forecast, track, and report on financials at various levels (strategy, product, program, project, etc.).
    Multi-Methodology Delivery SPM can include the ability to plan and execute work in a way that accommodates various planning and delivery paradigms (predictive, iterative, Kanban, lean, etc.).

    What's promising within the space?

    As this space continues to stabilize, the following are some promising associations for business and IT enablement.

    1. SPM accommodates various ways of working.
    • Where traditional PPM and work management tools required that users change their processes and tasking paradigms to fit within the tool's rigid task management and data structures, the best SPM tools are those that are adaptable to various ways of working and can accommodate many tasking and work management models.
    • Sometimes this is done through extensive integrations and APIs that pull data from existing work management applications into a single view within the SPM tool, and other times, this is done by abstracting the task-level details into a higher-level reporting structure (it can depend on the solution). In any event, the best SPMs are bound to one work management model.
    2. SPM puts the focus on value and change.
    • With its focus on the planning and execution of strategy, SPM can't avoid putting a spotlight on value and value realization. The best SPM tools include the ability to forecast, track, and measure return on investment for strategic investments, and they accommodate for various paradigms of value delivery (e.g. traditional value delivery and measurement, OKRs, as well as value mapping and value streams).
    • Of course, you can't realize value without successfully fostering change. And while SPM tools don't necessarily offer functionality explicitly identifiable as organizational change management, they can act as agents of change in putting the spotlight on the execution of change at the executive level.
    3. SPM fosters a coherent approach to demand management.
    • With its goal of ensuring that strategy informs the organization of portfolios and guides the selection of projects and delivery of products, SPM can potentially bring some order to what is often a chaotic demand-management landscape, ensuring that planned and in-progress work is well justified from an ROI perspective.

    What's of concern within the space?

    As a progeny from other capabilities, SPM has some risks and connotations potential users should be wary of.

    1. The space is rife with IT buzzwords and, as a concept, is sometimes used as a repackaging of failing concepts.
    • You don't need to spend too much time engaging with the literature around SPM before you notice the marketing appeals heavily to concepts like "digitalization," "digital transformation," "continual innovation," "agility/Agile," and the like. While these are all important concepts, and the pursuit of them is worthwhile in many cases, there's no denying they're used as consultant and vendor buzzwords, deployed to excite our imaginations, without necessarily providing much meat around what they mean or how they're deployed and successfully sustained.
    • Indeed, many concepts and capabilities that appear in relation to SPM are on the downward swing of industry hype cycles, suggesting that SPM may be being used by vendors and consultants as another attempt to repackage and capitalize on these concepts even as practitioners grow weary and suspicious of the marketing claims built up around them.
    2. Some solutions that identify as SPM are not.
    • Because it's on the upward swing of its place in the hype cycle, many established PPM and service management vendors are applying the 'strategic portfolio management" label to their products without necessarily doing anything different from a functionality perspective to fit within the space. As a result, SPM vendor landscapes can compare work management, project management, demand management tools, and more. Users who want SPM functionality need to stay frosty to ensure they get what they pay for.
    3. SPM tools may have a capacity blind spot.
    • The biggest barrier to getting things done and done well in modern enterprises is approving more work than you have the capacity to deliver. While SPM offerings can help with better demand management, not many of them cover the capacity side with the same level of improvement.

    Does your organization need a strategic portfolio management tool?

    Use Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment to gauge your readiness for SPM.

    • As noted in previous places in this deck, there is often a grey area in the market between project portfolio management tools and strategic portfolio management tools.
    • Some PPM tools offer SPM functionality, while some SPM tools avoid traditional PPM outcomes and stay at a higher, strategic level.
    • Depending on the scope of your PMO or portfolio optimization needs, you may need a tool that has just one, or both, of these capabilities.
    • Use Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment to help you assess whether you require a high-level strategy management tool, a more low-level project portfolio management tool, or a mix of both.

    Download Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment

    1.1 Assess your needs

    10 to 20 minutes

    1. The Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment is a 41-question survey broken up into three parts: (1) PMO Type, (2) Features and Functionality, (3) Roles.
    2. Go through each section using the provided dropdowns to help identify the orientation of your PMO, the feature and functionality needs of your office, as well as the roles whose needs will need to be serviced through the potential tool implementation.

    This screenshot shows a sample output from the assessment. Based upon your inputs, you'll be grouped within three ranges:

    1. Green: Based upon your inputs, you will benefit from an SPM tool.
    2. Yellow: You may benefit from an SPM tool, but you may also require something more traditional. Clarify your requirements before proceeding.
    3. Red: you're unlikely to leverage many of the benefits of an SPM tool at this time. Look for a more tactical solution.

    Sample Output from the assessment tool

    Input Output
    • Understanding of existing project management, project portfolio management, and work management applications.
    • Recommendation on PPM/SPM tool type
    Materials Participants
    • Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment tool
    • Portfolio managers and/or ePMO directors
    • Project managers and product managers
    • Business stakeholders

    Explore the SPM vendor landscape

    Use Info-Tech's application selection resources to help find the right solution for your organization.

    If the analysis in the previous slides suggested you can benefit from an SPM tool, you can quick-start your vendor evaluation process with SoftwareReviews.

    SoftwareReviews has extensive coverage of not just the SPM space, but of the project portfolio management (pictured to the top right) and project management spaces as well. So, from the tactical to the strategic, SoftwareReviews can help you find the right tools.

    Further, as you settle in on a shortlist, you can begin your vendor analysis using our rapid application selection methodology (see framework on bottom right). For more information see our The Rapid Application Selection Framework blueprint.

    Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework

    Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework (RASF)

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy
    Drive IT project throughput by throttling resource capacity.

    Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for your PMO
    Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

    Maintain an Organized Portfolio
    Align portfolio management practices with COBIT (APO05: Manage Portfolio)

    Bibliography

    Angliss, Katy, and Pete Harpum. Strategic Portfolio Management: In the Multi-Project and Program Organization. Book. Routledge. 30 Dec. 2022.

    Anthony, James. "95 Essential Project Management Statistics: 2022 Market Share & Data Analysis." Finance Online. 2022. Web. Accessed 21 March 2022

    Banham, Craig. "Integrating strategic planning with portfolio management." Sopheon. Webinar. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Garfein, Stephen J. "Executive Guide to Strategic Portfolio Management: roadmap for closing the gap between strategy and results." PMI. Conference Paper. Oct. 2007. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Garfein, Stephen J. "Strategic Portfolio Management: A smart, realistic and relatively fast way to gain sustainable competitive advantage." PMI. Conference Paper. 2 March 2005. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Hontar, Yulia. "Strategic Portfolio Management." PPM Express. Blog 16 June 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Milsom, James. "6 Strategic Portfolio Management Trends for 2023." i-nexus. Blog. 25 Jan. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Milsom, James. "Strategic Portfolio Management 101." i-nexus. 8 Dec. 2021. Blog . Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    OnePlan, "Is Strategic Portfolio Management the Future of PPM?" YouTube. 17 Nov. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    OnePlan. "Strategic Portfolio Management for Enterprise Agile." YouTube. 27 May 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Piechota, Frank. "Strategic Portfolio Management: Enabling Successful Business Outcomes." Shibumi. Blog . 31 May 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    ServiceNow. "Strategic Portfolio Management—The Thing You've Been Missing." ServiceNow. Whitepaper. 2021. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Smith, Shepherd, "50+ Eye-Opening Strategic Planning Statistics" ClearPoint Strategy. Blog. 13 Sept. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    SoftwareAG. "What is Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)?" SoftwareAG. Blog. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Stickel, Robert. "What It Means to be Adaptive." OnePlan. Blog. 24 May 2021. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    UMT360. "What is Strategic Portfolio Management?" YouTube. Webinar. 22 Oct. 2020. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Wall, Caroline. "Elevating Strategy Planning through Strategic Portfolio Management." StrategyBlocks. Blog. 26 Feb. 2020. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Westmoreland, Heather. "What is Strategic Portfolio Management." Planview. Blog. 19 Oct 2002. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Wiltshire, Andrew. "Shibumi Included in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management for the 2nd Straight Year." Shibumi. Blog. 20 Apr. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Ziehr, Paula. "Keep your eye on the prize: Align your IT investments with business strategy." SoftwareAG. Blog. 5 Jul. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

    Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}259|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $247 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 3 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Governance, Risk & Compliance
    • Parent Category Link: /governance-risk-compliance
    • Your customers and potential customers are increasingly demanding assurance that you will meet their information security requirements.
    • Responding to these assurance demands requires ever more effort from the security team, which distracts them from their primary mission of protecting the organization.
    • Every customer seems to have their own custom security questionnaire they want you to complete, increasing the effort you have to expend to respond to them.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Your security program can be a differentiator and help win and retain customers.
    • Value rank your customers to right-size the level of effort your security team dedicates to responding to questionnaires.
    • SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification can be an important part of your security marketing, but only if you make the right business case.

    Impact and Result

    • CISOs need to develop a marketing strategy for their information security program.
    • Ensure that your security team dedicates the appropriate amount of effort to sales by value ranking your potential customers and aligning efforts to value.
    • Develop a business case for SOC 2 or ISO 27001 to determine if certification makes sense for your organization, and to gain support from key stakeholders.

    Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should proactively satisfy customer requirements for information security, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Manage customer expectations for information security

    Identify your customers’ expectations for security and privacy, value rank your customers to right-size your efforts, and learn how to impress them with your information security program.

    • Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security – Phase 1: Manage Customer Expectations for Information Security

    2. Select a certification path

    Decide whether to obtain SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and build a business case for certification.

    • Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security – Phase 2: Select a Certification Path
    • Security Certification Selection Tool
    • Security Certification Business Case Tool

    3. Obtain and maintain certification

    Develop your certification scope, prepare for the audit, and learn how to maintain your certification over time.

    • Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security – Phase 3: Obtain and Maintain Certification
    [infographic]

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}537|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.7/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $31,749 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 22 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Customer Relationship Management
    • Parent Category Link: /customer-relationship-management
    • Application optimization is essential to stay competitive and productive in today’s digital environment.
    • Enterprise applications often involve large capital outlay, unquantified benefits, and high risk of failure.
    • Customer relationship management (CRM) application portfolios are often messy with multiple integration points, distributed data, and limited ongoing end-user training.
    • User dissatisfaction is common.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

    Impact and Result

    • Build an ongoing optimization team to conduct application improvements.
    • Assess your CRM application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.
    • Validate CRM capabilities, user satisfaction, issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an optimization strategy.
    • Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize your CRM, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Map current-state capabilities

    Gather information around the application:

    • Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    2. Assess your current state

    Assess CRM and related environment. Perform CRM process assessment. Assess user satisfaction across key processes, applications, and data. Understand vendor satisfaction

    • CRM Application Inventory Tool

    3. Build your optimization roadmap

    Build your optimization roadmap: process improvements, software capability improvements, vendor relationships, and data improvement initiatives.

    Infographic

    Workshop: Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Define Your CRM Application Vision

    The Purpose

    Define your CRM application vision.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Develop an ongoing application optimization team.

    Realign CRM and business goals.

    Understand your current system state capabilities.

    Explore CRM and related costs.

    Activities

    1.1 Determine your CRM optimization team.

    1.2 Align organizational goals.

    1.3 Inventory applications and interactions.

    1.4 Define business capabilities.

    1.5 Explore CRM-related costs (optional).

    Outputs

    CRM optimization team

    CRM business model

    CRM optimization goals

    CRM system inventory and data flow

    CRM process list

    CRM and related costs

    2 Map Current-State Capabilities

    The Purpose

    Map current-state capabilities.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Complete a CRM process gap analysis to understand where the CRM is underperforming.

    Review the CRM application portfolio assessment to understand user satisfaction and data concerns.

    Undertake a software review survey to understand your satisfaction with the vendor and product.

    Activities

    2.1 Conduct gap analysis for CRM processes.

    2.2 Perform an application portfolio assessment.

    2.3 Review vendor satisfaction.

    Outputs

    CRM process gap analysis

    CRM application portfolio assessment

    CRM software reviews survey

    3 Assess CRM

    The Purpose

    Assess CRM.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Learn which processes you need to focus on.

    Uncover underlying user satisfaction issues to address these areas.

    Understand where data issues are occurring so that you can mitigate this.

    Investigate your relationship with the vendor and product, including that relative to others.

    Identify any areas for cost optimization (optional).

    Activities

    3.1 Explore process gaps.

    3.2 Analyze user satisfaction.

    3.3 Assess data quality.

    3.4 Understand product satisfaction and vendor management.

    3.5 Look for CRM cost optimization opportunities (optional).

    Outputs

    CRM process optimization priorities

    CRM vendor optimization opportunities

    CRM cost optimization

    4 Build the Optimization Roadmap

    The Purpose

    Build the optimization roadmap.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding where you need to improve is the first step, now understand where to focus your optimization efforts.

    Activities

    4.1 Identify key optimization areas.

    4.2 Build your CRM optimization roadmap and next steps.

    Outputs

    CRM optimization roadmap

    Further reading

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst Perspective

    Focus optimization on organizational value delivery.

    Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are at the core of a customer-centric strategy to drive business results. They are critical to supporting marketing, sales, and customer service efforts.

    CRM systems are expensive, their benefits are difficult to quantify, and they often suffer from poor user satisfaction. Post implementation, technology evolves, organizational goals change, and the health of the system is not monitored. This is complicated in today’s digital landscape with multiple integration points, siloed data, and competing priorities.

    Too often organizations jump into the selection of replacement systems without understanding the health of their current systems. IT leaders need to stop reacting and take a proactive approach to continually monitor and optimize their enterprise applications. Strategically realign business goals, identify business application capabilities, complete a process assessment, evaluate user adoption, and create an optimization roadmap that will drive a cohesive technology strategy that delivers results.

    This is a picture of Lisa Highfield

    Lisa Highfield
    Research Director,
    Enterprise Applications
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

    Enterprise applications often involve large capital outlay and unquantified benefits.

    CRM application portfolios are often messy. Add to that poor processes, distributed data, and lack of training – business results and user dissatisfaction is common.

    Technology owners are often distributed across the business. Consolidation of optimization efforts is key.

    Common Obstacles

    Enterprise applications involve large numbers of processes and users. Without a clear focus on organizational needs, decisions about what and how to optimize can become complicated.

    Competing and conflicting priorities may undermine optimization value by focusing on the approaches that would only benefit one line of business rather than the entire organization.

    Teams do not have a framework to illustrate, communicate, and justify the optimization effort in the language your stakeholders understand.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Build an ongoing optimization team to conduct application improvements.

    Assess your CRM application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.

    Validate CRM capabilities, user satisfaction, issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an optimization strategy

    Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

    Info-Tech Insight

    CRM implementation should not be a one-and-done exercise. A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

    This is an image of the thought model: Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    Insight Summary

    Continuous assessment and optimization of customer relationship management (CRM) systems is critical to their success.

    • Applications and the environments in which they live are constantly evolving.
    • Get the Most Out of Your CRM provides business and application managers a method to complete a health assessment on their CRM systems to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
    • Put optimization practices into effect by:
      • Aligning and prioritizing key business and technology drivers.
      • Identifying CRM process classification, and performing a gap analysis.
      • Measuring user satisfaction across key departments.
      • Evaluating vendor relations.
      • Understanding how data fits.
      • Pulling it all together into an optimization roadmap.

    CRM platforms are the applications that provide functional capabilities and data management around the customer experience (CX).

    Marketing, sales, and customer service are enabled through CRM technology.

    CRM technologies facilitate an organization’s relationships with customers, service users, employees, and suppliers.

    CRM technology is critical to managing the lifecycle of these relationships, from lead generation, to sales opportunities, to ongoing support and nurturing of these relationships.

    Customer experience management (CXM)

    CRM platforms sit at the core of a well-rounded customer experience management ecosystem.

    Customer Relationship Management

    • Web Experience Management Platform
    • E-Commerce & Point-of-Sale Solutions
    • Social Media Management Platform
    • Customer Intelligence Platform
    • Customer Service Management Tools
    • Marketing Management Suite

    Customer relationship management suites are one piece of the overall customer experience management ecosystem, alongside tools such as customer intelligence platforms and adjacent point solutions for sales, marketing, and customer service. Review Info-Tech’s CXM blueprint to build a complete, end-to-end customer interaction solution portfolio that encompasses CRM alongside other critical components. The CXM blueprint also allows you to develop strategic requirements for CRM based on customer personas and external market analysis.

    CRM by the numbers

    1/3

    Statistical analysis of CRM projects indicate failures vary from 18% to 69%. Taking an average of those analyst reports, about one-third of CRM projects are considered a failure.
    Source: CIO Magazine, 2017

    85%

    Companies that apply the principles of behavioral economics outperform their peers by 85% in sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin.
    Source: Gallup, 2012

    40%

    In 2019, 40% of executives name customer experience the top priority for their digital transformation.
    Source: CRM Magazine, 2019

    CRM dissatisfaction

    Drivers of Dissatisfaction

    Business Data People and Teams Technology
    • Misaligned objectives
    • Product fit
    • Changing priorities
    • Lack of metrics
    • Access to data
    • Data hygiene
    • Data literacy
    • One view of the customer
    • User adoption
    • Lack of IT support
    • Training (use of data and system)
    • Vendor relations
    • Systems integration
    • Multichannel complexity
    • Capability shortfall
    • Lack of product support

    Info-Tech Insight

    While technology is the key enabler of building strong customer experiences, there are many other drivers of dissatisfaction. IT must stand shoulder to shoulder with the business to develop a technology framework for customer relationship management.

    Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service, along with IT, can only optimize CRM with the full support of each other. The cooperation of the departments is crucial when trying to improve CRM technology capabilities and customer interaction.

    Application optimization is risky without a plan

    Avoid the common pitfalls.

    • Not considering application optimization as a business and IT partnership that requires continuous formal engagement of all participants.
    • Not having a good understanding of current state, including integration points and data.
    • Not adequately accommodating feedback and changes after digital applications are deployed and employed.
    • Not treating digital applications as a motivator for potential future IT optimization effort, and not incorporating digital assets in strategic business planning.
    • Not involving department leads, management, and other subject matter experts to facilitate the organizational change digital applications bring.

    “A successful application optimization strategy starts with the business need in mind and not from a technological point of view. No matter from which angle you look at it, modernizing a legacy application is a considerable undertaking that can’t be taken lightly. Your best approach is to begin the journey with baby steps.”
    – Ernese Norelus, Sreeni Pamidala, and Oliver Senti
    Medium, 2020

    Info-Tech’s methodology for Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    1. Map Current-State Capabilities 2. Assess Your Current State 3. Build Your Optimization Roadmap
    Phase Steps
    1. Identify stakeholders and build your CRM optimization team
    2. Build a CRM strategy model
    3. Inventory current system state
    4. Define business capabilities
    1. Conduct a gap analysis for CRM processes
    2. Assess user satisfaction
    3. Review your satisfaction with the vendor and product
    1. Identify key optimization areas
    2. Compile optimization assessment results
    Phase Outcomes
    1. Stakeholder map
    2. CRM optimization team
    3. CRM business model
    4. Strategy alignment
    5. Systems inventory and diagram
    6. Business capabilities map
    7. Key CRM processes list
    1. Gap analysis for CRM-related processes
    2. Understanding of user satisfaction across applications and processes
    3. Insight into CRM data quality
    4. Quantified satisfaction with the vendor and product
    1. Application optimization plan

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

    Key deliverable:

    CRM Optimization Roadmap (Tab 8)

    This image contains a screenshot from Tab 9 of the Get the most out of your CRM WorkshopThis image contains a screenshot from Tab 9 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workshop

    Complete an assessment of processes, user satisfaction, data quality, and vendor management using the Workbook or the APA diagnostic.

    CRM Business Model (Tab 2)

    This image contains a screenshot from Tab 2 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workshop

    Align your business and technology goals and objectives in the current environment.

    Prioritized CRM Optimization Goals (Tab 3)

    This image contains a screenshot from Tab 3 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workshop

    Identify and prioritize your CRM optimization goals.

    Application Portfolio Assessment (APA)

    This image contains a screenshot of the Application Portfolio Assessment

    Assess IT-enabled user satisfaction across your CRM portfolio.

    Prioritized Process Assessment (Tab 5)

    This image contains a screenshot from Tab 5 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workshop

    Understand areas for improvement.

    Case Study

    Align strategy and technology to meet consumer demand.

    INDUSTRY - Entertainment
    SOURCE - Forbes, 2017

    Challenge

    Beginning as a mail-out service, Netflix offered subscribers a catalog of videos to select from and have mailed to them directly. Customers no longer had to go to a retail store to rent a video. However, the lack of immediacy of direct mail as the distribution channel resulted in slow adoption.

    Blockbuster was the industry leader in video retail but was lagging in its response to industry, consumer, and technology trends around customer experience

    Solution

    In response to the increasing presence of tech-savvy consumers on the internet, Netflix invested in developing its online platform as its primary distribution channel. The benefit of doing so was two-fold: passive brand advertising (by being present on the internet) and meeting customer demands for immediacy and convenience. Netflix also recognized the rising demand for personalized service and created an unprecedented, tailored customer experience.

    Results

    Netflix’s disruptive innovation is built on the foundation of great customer experience management. Netflix is now a $28-billion company, which is tenfold what Blockbuster was worth.

    Netflix used disruptive technologies to innovatively build a customer experience that put it ahead of the long-time, video rental industry leader, Blockbuster.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

    Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.

    Call #2:

    Build the CRM team.

    Align organizational goals.

    Call #4:

    Conduct gap analysis for CRM processes.

    Prepare application portfolio assessment.

    Call #5:

    Understand product satisfaction and vendor management.

    Look for CRM cost optimization opportunities (optional).

    Call #7:

    Identify key optimization areas.

    Build out optimization roadmap and next steps.

    Call #3:

    Map current state.

    Inventory CRM processes.

    Explore CRM-related costs.

    Call #6:

    Review APA results.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
    Define Your CRM Application Vision Map Current-State Capabilities Assess CRM Build the Optimization Roadmap Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

    Activities

    1.1 Determine your CRM optimization team

    1.2 Align organizational goals

    1.3 Inventory applications and interactions

    1.4 Define business capabilities

    1.5 Explore CRM-related costs

    2.1 Conduct gap analysis for CRM processes

    2.2 Perform an application portfolio assessment

    2.3 Review vendor satisfaction

    3.1 Explore process gaps

    3.2 Analyze user satisfaction

    3.3 Assess data quality

    3.4 Understand product satisfaction and vendor management

    3.5 Look for CRM cost optimization opportunities (optional)

    4.1 Identify key optimization areas

    4.2 Build your CRM optimization roadmap and next steps

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps

    Deliverables
    1. CRM optimization team
    2. CRM business model
    3. CRM optimization goals
    4. CRM system inventory and data flow
    5. CRM process list
    6. CRM and related costs
    1. CRM process gap analysis
    2. CRM application portfolio assessment
    3. CRM software reviews survey
    1. CRM process optimization priorities
    2. CRM vendor optimization opportunities
    3. CRM cost optimization
    1. CRM optimization roadmap

    Phase 1

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    • 1.1 Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team
    • 1.2 Build a CRM Strategy Model
    • 1.3 Inventory Current System State
    • 1.4 Define Business Capabilities
    • 1.5 Understand CRM Costs

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Align your organizational goals
    • Gain a firm understanding of your current state
    • Inventory CRM and related applications
    • Confirm the organization’s capabilities

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Product Owners
    • CMO
    • Departmental leads – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, or other
    • Applications Director
    • Senior Business Analyst
    • Senior Developer
    • Procurement Analysts

    Inventory of CRM and related systems

    Develop an integration map to specify which applications will interface with each other.

    This is an image of an integration map, integrating the following Terms to CRM: Telephony Systems; Directory Services; Email; Content Management; Point Solutions; ERP

    Integration is paramount: your CRM application often integrates with other applications within the organization. Create an integration map to reflect a system of record and the exchange of data. To increase customer engagement, channel integration is a must (i.e. with robust links to unified communications solutions, email, and VoIP telephony systems).

    CRM plays a key role in the more holistic customer experience framework. However, it is heavily influenced by and often interacts with many other platforms.

    Data is one key consideration that needs to be considered here. If customer information is fragmented, it will be nearly impossible to build a cohesive view of the customer. Points of integration (POIs) are the junctions between the CRM(s) and other applications where data is flowing to and from. They are essential to creating value, particularly in customer insight-focused and omnichannel-focused deployments.

    Customer expectations are on the rise

    CRM strategy is a critical component of customer experience (CX).

    CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

    1. Thoughtfulness is in
      Connect with customers on a personal level
    2. Service over products
      The experience is more important than the product
    3. Culture is now number one
      Culture is the most overlooked piece of customer experience strategy
    4. Engineering and service finally join forces
      Companies are combining their technology and service efforts to create
      strong feedback loops
    5. The B2B world is inefficiently served
      B2B needs to step up with more tools and a greater emphasis placed on
      customer experience

    Source: Forbes, 2019

    Build a cohesive CRM strategy that aligns business goals with CRM capabilities.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Customers expect to interact with organizations through the channels of their choice. Now more than ever, you must enable your organization to provide tailored customer experiences.

    IT is critical to the success of your CRM strategy

    Today’s shared digital landscape of the CIO and CMO

    CIO

    • IT Operations
    • Service Delivery and Management
    • IT Support
    • IT Systems and Application
    • IT Strategy and Governance
    • Cybersecurity

    Collaboration and Partnership

    • Digital Strategy = Transformation
      Business Goals | Innovation | Leadership | Rationalization
    • Customer Experience
      Architecture | Design | Omnichannel Delivery | Management
    • Insight (Market Facing)
      Analytics | Business Intelligence | Machine Learning | AI
    • Marketing Integration + Operating Model
      Apps | Channels | Experiences | Data | Command Center
    • Master Data
      Customer | Audience | Industry | Digital Marketing Assets

    CMO

    • PEO Media
    • Brand Management
    • Campaign Management
    • Marketing Tech
    • Marketing Ops
    • Privacy, Trust, and Regulatory Requirements

    Info-Tech Insight

    Technology is the key enabler of building strong customer experiences: IT must stand shoulder to shoulder with the business to develop a technology framework for customer relationship management.

    Step 1.1

    Identify Stakeholders and Build Your Optimization Team

    Activities

    1.1.1 Identify the stakeholders whose support will be critical to success

    1.1.2 Select your CRM optimization team

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify CRM drivers and objectives.
    • Explore CRM challenges and pain points.
    • Discover CRM benefits and opportunities.
    • Align the CRM foundation with the corporate strategy.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Stakeholders
    • Project sponsors and leaders

    Outcomes of this step

    • Stakeholder map
    • CRM optimization team composition

    CRM optimization stakeholders

    Understand the roles necessary to get the most out of your CRM.

    Understand the role of each player within your optimization initiative. Look for listed participants on the activity slides to determine when each player should be involved.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Do not limit input or participation. Include subject matter experts and internal stakeholders at stages within the optimization initiative. Such inputs can be solicited on a one-off basis as needed. This ensures you take a holistic approach to creating your CRM optimization strategy.

    Title

    Roles Within CRM Optimization Initiative

    Optimization Sponsor

    • Owns the project at the management/C-suite level
    • Responsible for breaking down barriers and ensuring alignment with organizational strategy
    • CMO, VP od Marketing, VP of Sales, VP of Customer Care, or similar

    Optimization Initiative Manager

    • Typically IT individual(s) that oversee day-to-day operations
    • Responsible for preparing and managing the project plan and monitoring the project team’s progress
    • Applications Manager or other IT Manager, Business Analyst, Business Process Owner, or similar

    Business Leads/
    Product Owners

    • Works alongside the Optimization Initiative Manager to ensure that the strategy is aligned with business needs
    • In this case, likely to be a marketing, sales, or customer service lead
    • Product Owners
    • Sales Director, Marketing Director, Customer Care Director, or similar

    CRM Optimization Team

    • Comprised of individuals whose knowledge and skills are crucial to optimization success
    • Responsible for driving day-to-day activities, coordinating communication, and making process and design decisions
    • Project Manager, Business Lead, CRM Manager, Integration Manager, Application SMEs, Developers, Business Process Architects, and/or similar SMEs

    Steering Committee

    • Comprised of C-suite/management level individuals that act as the CRM optimization decision makers.
    • Responsible for validating goals and priorities, defining the optimization scope, enabling adequate resourcing, and managing change
    • Project Sponsor, Project Manager, Business Lead, CMO, Business Unit SMEs, or similar

    1.1.1 Identify stakeholders critical to success

    1 hour

    1. Hold a meeting to identify the stakeholders that should be included in the project’s steering committee.
    2. Finalize selection of steering committee members.
    3. Contact members to ensure their willingness to participate.
    4. Document the steering committee members and the milestone/presentation expectations for reporting project progress and results.

    Input

    • Stakeholder interviews
    • Business process owners list

    Output

    • CRM optimization stakeholders
    • Steering committee members

    Materials

    • N/A

    Participants

    • Product Owners
    • CMO
    • Departmental Leads – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service (and others)
    • Applications Director
    • Senior Business Analyst
    • Senior Developer
    • Procurement Analyst

    The CRM optimization team

    Consider the core team functions when composing the CRM optimization team. Form a cross-functional team (i.e. across IT, Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations) to create a well-aligned CRM optimization strategy.

    Don’t let your core team become too large when trying to include all relevant stakeholders. Carefully limiting the size of the optimization team will enable effective decision making while still including functional business units such as Marketing, Sales, Service, and Customer Service.

    Required Skills/Knowledge

    Suggested Optimization Team Members

    Business

    • Understanding of the customer
    • Departmental processes
    • Sales Manager
    • Marketing Manager
    • Customer Service Manager

    IT

    • Product Owner
    • Application developers
    • Enterprise architects
    • CRM Application Manager
    • Business Process Manager
    • Data Stewards
    Other
    • Operations
    • Administrative
    • Change management
    • Operations Manager
    • CFO
    • Change Management Manager

    1.1.2 Select your CRM optimization team

    30 minutes

    1. Have the CMO and other key stakeholders discuss and determine who will be involved in the CRM optimization project.
      • Depending on the initiative and the size of the organization the size of the team will vary.
      • Key business leaders in key areas – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and IT – should be involved.
    2. Document the members of your optimization team in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “1. Optimization Team.”
      • Depending on your initiative and size of your organization, the size of this team will vary.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Input

    • Stakeholders

    Output

    • List of CRM Optimization Team members

    Materials

    • Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Participants

    • Product Owners
    • CMO
    • Departmental Leads – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service
    • Applications Director
    • Senior Business Analyst
    • Senior Developer
    • Procurement Analyst

    Step 1.2

    Build a CRM Strategy Model

    Activities

    • 1.2.1 Explore environmental factors and technology drivers
    • 1.2.2 Discuss challenges and pain points
    • 1.2.3 Discuss opportunities and benefits
    • 1.2.4 Align CRM strategy with organizational goals

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify CRM drivers and objectives.
    • Explore CRM challenges and pain points.
    • Discover the CRM benefits and opportunities.
    • Align the CRM foundation with the corporate strategy.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • CRM business model
    • Strategy alignment

    Align the CRM strategy with the corporate strategy

    Corporate Strategy

    Your corporate strategy:

    • Conveys the current state of the organization and the path it wants to take.
    • Identifies future goals and business aspirations.
    • Communicates the initiatives that are critical for getting the organization from its current state to the future state.

    Unified Strategy

    • The CRM optimization can be and should be linked, with metrics, to the corporate strategy and ultimate business objectives.

    CRM Strategy

    Your CRM Strategy:

    • Communicates the organization’s budget and spending on CRM.
    • Identifies IT initiatives that will support the business and key CRM objectives.
    • Outlines staffing and resourcing for CRM initiatives.

    CRM projects are more successful when the management team understands the strategic importance and the criticality of alignment. Time needs to be spent upfront aligning business strategies with CRM capabilities. Effective alignment between Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Operations, IT, and the business should happen daily. Alignment doesn’t just need to occur at the executive level but at each level of the organization.

    Sample CRM objectives

    Increase Revenue

    Enable lead scoring

    Deploy sales collateral management tools

    Improve average cost per lead via a marketing automation tool

    Enhance Market Share

    Enhance targeting effectiveness with a CRM

    Increase social media presence via an SMMP

    Architect customer intelligence analysis

    Improve Customer Satisfaction

    Reduce time-to-resolution via better routing

    Increase accessibility to customer service with live chat

    Improve first contact resolution with customer KB

    Increase Customer Retention

    Use a loyalty management application

    Improve channel options for existing customers

    Use customer analytics to drive targeted offers

    Create Customer-Centric Culture

    Ensure strong training and user adoption programs

    Use CRM to provide 360-degree view of all customer interactions

    Incorporate the voice of the customer into product development

    Identifying organizational objectives of high priority will assist in breaking down business needs and CRM objectives. This exercise will better align the CRM systems with the overall corporate strategy and achieve buy-in from key stakeholders.

    CRM business model Template

    This image contains a screenshot of the CRM business model template

    Understand objectives for creating a strong CRM strategy

    Business Needs

    Business Drivers

    Technology Drivers

    Environmental Factors

    Definition A business need is a requirement associated with a particular business process. Business drivers can be thought of as business-level goals. These are tangible benefits the business can measure such as employee retention, operation excellence, and financial performance. Technology drivers are technological changes that have created the need for a new CRM enablement strategy. Many organizations turn to technology systems to help them obtain a competitive edge. External considerations are factors taking place outside of the organization that are impacting the way business is conducted inside the organization. These are often outside the control of the business.

    Examples

    • Audit tracking
    • Authorization levels
    • Business rules
    • Data quality
    • Employee engagement
    • Productivity
    • Operational efficiency
    • Deployment model (i.e. SaaS)
    • Integration
    • Reporting capabilities
    • Fragmented technologies
    • Economic and political factors, the labor market
    • Competitive influencers
    • Compliance regulations

    Info-Tech Insight

    One of the biggest drivers for CRM adoption is the ability to make decisions through consolidated data. This driver is a result of external considerations. Many industries today are highly competitive, uncertain, and rapidly changing. To succeed under these pressures, there needs to be timely information and visibility into all components of the organization.

    1.2.1 Explore environmental factors and technology drivers

    30 minutes

    1. Identify business drivers that are contributing to the organization’s need for CRM.
    2. Understand how the company is running today and what the organization’s future will look like. Try to identify the purpose for becoming an integrated organization. Use a whiteboard and markers to capture key findings.
    3. Consider environmental factors: external considerations, organizational drivers, technology drivers, and key functional requirements.
    4. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “2. Business Model,” to complete this exercise.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    This is a screenshot of the CRM Business Model the following boxes highlighted in purple boxes.  CRM business Needs; Environmental Factors; Technology Drivers

    External Considerations

    Organizational Drivers

    Technology Considerations

    Functional Requirements

    • Funding Constraints
    • Regulations
    • Compliance
    • Scalability
    • Operational Efficiency
    • Data Accuracy
    • Data Quality
    • Better Reporting
    • Information Availability
    • Integration Between Systems
    • Secure Data

    Create a realistic CRM foundation by identifying the challenges and barriers to the project

    There are several different factors that may stifle the success of an CRM portfolio. Organizations creating an CRM foundation must scan their current environment to identify internal barriers and challenges.

    Common Internal Barriers

    Management Support

    Organizational Culture

    Organizational Structure

    IT Readiness

    Definition The degree of understanding and acceptance towards CRM technology and systems. The collective shared values and beliefs. The functional relationships between people and departments in an organization. The degree to which the organization’s people and processes are prepared for new CRM system(s.)

    Questions

    • Is a CRM project recognized as a top priority?
    • Will management commit time to the project?
    • Are employees resistant to change?
    • Is the organization highly individualized?
    • Is the organization centralized?
    • Is the organization highly formalized?
    • Is there strong technical expertise?
    • Is there strong infrastructure?
    Impact
    • Funding
    • Resources
    • Knowledge sharing
    • User acceptance
    • Flow of knowledge
    • Poor implementation
    • Need for reliance on consultants

    1.2.2 Discuss challenges and pain points

    30 minutes

    1. Identify challenges with current systems and processes.
    2. Brainstorm potential barriers to success. Use a whiteboard and markers to capture key findings.
    3. Consider the project barriers: functional gaps, technical gaps, process gaps, and barriers to CRM success.
    4. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “2. Business Model,” to complete this exercise.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    This is a screenshot of the CRM Business Model the following boxes highlighted in purple boxes.  Barriers

    Functional Gaps

    Technical Gaps

    Process Gaps

    Barriers to Success

    • No sales tracking within core CRM
    • Inconsistent reporting – data quality concerns
    • Duplication of data
    • Lack of system integration
    • Cultural mindset
    • Resistance to change
    • Lack of training
    • Funding

    1.2.3 Discuss opportunities and benefits

    30 minutes

    1. Identify opportunities and benefits from an integrated system.
    2. Brainstorm potential enablers for successful CRM enablement and the ideal portfolio.
    3. Consider the project enablers: business benefits, IT benefits, organizational benefits, and enablers of CRM success.
    4. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “2. Business Model,” to complete this exercise.
    This is a screenshot of the CRM Business Model the following boxes highlighted in purple boxes.  Enablers

    Business Benefits

    IT Benefits

    Organizational Benefits

    Enablers of Success

    • Business-IT alignment
    • Compliance
    • Scalability
    • Operational Efficiency
    • Data Accuracy
    • Data Quality
    • Better Reporting
    • Change Management
    • Training
    • Alignment to Strategic Objectives

    1.2.4 Align CRM strategy with organizational goals

    1 hour

    1. Discuss your corporate objectives (organizational goals). Choose three to five corporate objectives that are a priority for the organization in the current year.
    2. Break into groups and assign each group one corporate objective.
    3. For each objective, produce several ways an optimized CRM system will meet the given objective.
    4. Think about the modules and CRM functions that will help you realize these benefits.
    5. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “2. Business Model,” to complete this exercise.
    Increase Revenue

    CRM Benefits

    • Increase sales by 5%
    • Expand to new markets
    • Offer new product
    • Identify geographies underperforming
    • Build out global customer strategy
    • Allow for customer segmentation
    • Create targeted marketing campaigns

    Input

    • Organizational goals
    • CRM strategy model

    Output

    • Optimization benefits map

    Materials

    • Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Participants

    • Product Owners
    • CMO
    • Departmental Leads – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service
    • Applications Director
    • Senior Business Analyst
    • Senior Developer
    • Procurement Analyst

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Step 1.3

    Inventory Current System State

    Activities

    1.3.1 Inventory applications and interactions

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Inventory applications
    • Map interactions between systems

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team
    • Enterprise Architect
    • Data Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • Systems inventory
    • Systems diagram

    1.3.1 Inventory applications and interactions

    1-3 hours

    1. Individually list all electronic systems involved in the organization. This includes anything related to customer information and interactions, such as CRM, ERP, e-commerce, finance, email marketing, and social media, etc.
    2. Document data flows into and out of each system to the ERP. Refer to the example on the next slide (CRM data flow).
    3. Review the processes in place (e.g. reporting, marketing, data moving into and out of systems). Document manual processes. Identify integration points. If flowcharts exist for these processes, it may be useful to provide these to the participants.
    4. If possible, diagram the system. Include information direction flow. Use the sample CRM map, if needed.

    This image contains an example of a CRM Data Flow

    CRM data flow

    This image contains an example of a CRM Data Flow

    Be sure to include enterprise applications that are not included in the CRM application portfolio. Popular systems to consider for POIs include billing, directory services, content management, and collaboration tools.

    When assessing the current application portfolio that supports CRM, the tendency will be to focus on the applications under the CRM umbrella, relating mostly to Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service. Be sure to include systems that act as input to, or benefit due to outputs from, the CRM or similar applications.

    Sample CRM map

    This image contains an example of a CRM map

    Step 1.4

    Define Business Capabilities

    Activities

    1.4.1 Define business capabilities

    1.4.2 List your key CRM processes

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Define your business capabilities
    • List your key CRM processes

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team
    • Business Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • Business capabilities map
    • Key CRM processes list

    Business capability map (Level 0)

    This image contains a screenshot of a business capability map.  an Arrow labeled CRM points to the Revenue Generation section. Revenue Generation: Marketing; Sales; Customer Service.

    In business architecture, the primary view of an organization is known as a business capability map.

    A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation, rather than how.

    Business capabilities:

    • Represent stable business functions.
    • Are unique and independent of each other.
    • Typically will have a defined business outcome.

    A business capability map provides details that help the business architecture practitioner direct attention to a specific area of the business for further assessment.

    Capability vs. process vs. feature

    Understanding the difference

    When examining CRM optimization, it is important we approach this from the appropriate layer.

    Capability:

    • The ability of an entity (e.g. organization or department) to achieve its objectives (APQC, 2017).
    • An ability that an organization, person, or system possesses. Typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization, people, processes, and technology to achieve (TOGAF).

    Process:

    • Can be manual or technology enabled. A process is a series of interrelated activities that convert inputs into results (outputs). Processes consume resources, require standards for repeatable performance, and respond to control systems that direct the quality, rate, and cost of performance. The same process can be highly effective in one circumstance and poorly effective in another with different systems, tools, knowledge, and people (APQC, 2017).

    Feature:

    • Is a distinguishing characteristic of a software item (e.g. performance, portability, or functionality) (IEEE, 2005).

    In today’s complex organizations, it can be difficult to understand where inefficiencies stem from and how performance can be enhanced.
    To fix problems and maximize efficiencies business capabilities and processes need to be examined to determine gaps and areas of lagging performance.

    Info-Tech’s CRM framework and industry tools such as the APQC’s Process Classification Framework can help make sense of this.

    1.4.1 Define business capabilities

    1-3 hours

    1. Look at the major functions or processes within the scope of CRM.
    2. Compile an inventory of current systems that interact with the chosen processes. In its simplest form, document your application inventory in a spreadsheet (see tab 3 of the CRM Application Inventory Tool). For large organizations, interview representatives of business domains to help create your list of applications.
    3. Make sure to include any processes that are manual versus automated.
    4. Use your current state drawing from activity 1.3.1 to link processes to applications for further effect.

    CRM Application Inventory Tool

    Input

    • Current systems
    • Key processes
    • APQC Framework
    • Organizational process map

    Output

    • List of key business processes

    Materials

    • CRM Application Inventory Tool
    • CRM APQC Framework
    • Whiteboard, PowerPoint, or flip charts
    • Pens/markers

    Participants

    • CRM Optimization Team

    CRM process mapping

    This image contains two screenshots.  one is of the business capability map seen earlier in this blueprint, and the other includes the following operating model: Objectives; Value Streams; Capabilities; Processes

    The operating model

    An operating model is a framework that drives operating decisions. It helps to set the parameters for the scope of CRM and the processes that will be supported. The operating model will serve to group core operational processes. These groupings represent a set of interrelated, consecutive processes aimed at generating a common output.

    The Value Stream

    Value Stream Defined

    Value Streams

    Design Product

    Produce Product

    Sell Product

    Customer Service

    • Manufacturers work proactively to design products and services that will meet consumer demand.
    • Products are driven by consumer demand and governmental regulations.
    • Production processes and labor costs are constantly analyzed for efficiencies and accuracies.
    • Quality of product and services are highly regulated through all levels of the supply chain.
    • Sales networks and sales staff deliver the product from the organization to the end consumer.
    • Marketing plays a key role throughout the value stream connecting consumers wants and needs to the product and services offered.
    • Relationships with consumers continue after the sale of a product and services.
    • Continued customer support and mining is important to revenue streams.

    Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities in the marketplace. Those activities are dependent on the specific industry segment in which an organization operates.

    There are two types of value streams: core value streams and support value streams.

    • Core value streams are mostly externally facing. They deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map.
    • Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.

    An effective method for ensuring all value streams have been considered is to understand that there can be different end-value receivers.

    APQC Framework

    Help define your inventory of sales, marketing, and customer services processes.

    Operating Processes

    1. Develop Vision and Strategy
    2. Develop and Manage Products and Services
    3. Market and Sell Products and Services
    4. Deliver Physical Products
    5. Deliver Services

    Management and Support Processes

    1. Manage Customer Service
    2. Develop and Manage Human Capital
    3. Manage Information Technology (IT)
    4. Manage Financial Resources
    5. Acquire, Construct, and Manage Assets
    6. Manage Enterprise Risk, Compliance, Remediation, and Resiliency
    7. Manage External Relationships
    8. Develop and Manage Business Capabilities

    Source: APQC, 2020

    If you do not have a documented process model, you can use the APQC Framework to help define your inventory of sales business processes.

    APQC’s Process Classification Framework is a taxonomy of cross-functional business processes intended to allow the objective comparison of organizational performance within and among organizations.

    Go to this link

    Process mapping hierarchy

    This image includes explanations for the following PCF levels:  Level 1 - Category; Level 2 - Process Group; Level 3 - Process; Level 4 - Activity; Level 5 - Task

    APQC provides a process classification framework. It allows organizations to effectively define their processes and manage them appropriately.

    THE APQC PROCESS CLASSIFICATION FRAMEWORK (PCF)® was developed by non-profit APQC, a global resource for benchmarking and best practices, and its member companies as an open standard to facilitate improvement through process management and benchmarking, regardless of industry, size, or geography. The PCF organizes operating and management processes into 12 enterprise level categories, including process groups and over 1,000 processes and associated activities. To download the full PCF or industry-specific versions of the PCF as well as associated measures and benchmarking, visit www.apqc.org/pcf.

    Cross-industry classification framework

    Level 1 Level Level 3 Level 4

    Market and sell products and services

    Understand markets, customers, and capabilities Perform customer and market intelligence analysis Conduct customer and market research

    Market and sell products and services

    Develop sales strategy Develop sales forecast Gather current and historic order information

    Deliver services

    Manage service delivery resources Manage service delivery resource demand Develop baseline forecasts
    ? ? ? ?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Focus your initial assessment on the level 1 processes that matter to your organization. This allows you to target your scant resources on the areas of optimization that matter most to the organization and minimize the effort required from your business partners.

    You may need to iterate the assessment as challenges are identified. This allows you to be adaptive and deal with emerging issues more readily and become a more responsive partner to the business.

    1.4.2 List your key CRM processes

    1-3 hours

    1. Reflect on your organization’s CRM capabilities and processes.
    2. Refer to tab 4, “Process Importance,” in your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook. You can use your own processes if you prefer. Consult tab 10. “Framework (Reference)” in the Workbook to explore additional capabilities.
    3. Use your CRM goals as a guide.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    This is a screenshot from the APQC Cross-Industry Process Classification Framework, adapted to list key CRM processes

    *Adapted from the APQC Cross-Industry Process Classification Framework, 2019.

    Step 1.5

    Understand CRM Costs

    Activities

    1.5.1 List CRM-related costs (optional)

    Map Current-State Capabilities

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Define your business capabilities
    • List your key CRM processes

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Finance Representatives
    • CRM Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Current CRM and related operating costs

    1.5.1 List CRM-related costs (optional)

    3+ hours

    Before you can make changes and optimization decisions, you need to understand the high-level costs associated with your current application architecture. This activity will help you identify the types of technology and people costs associated with your current systems.

    1. Identify the types of technology costs associated with each current system:
      1. System Maintenance
      2. Annual Renewal
      3. Licensing
    2. Identify the cost of people associated with each current system:
      1. Full-Time Employees
      2. Application Support Staff
      3. Help Desk Tickets
    3. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “9. Costs (Optional),” to complete this exercise.

    This is a screenshot of an example of a table which lays out CRM and Associated Costs.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Phase 2

    Assess Your Current State

    • 2.1 Conduct a Gap Analysis for CRM Processes
    • 2.2 Assess User Satisfaction
    • 2.3 Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor and Product

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    This phase will guide you through the following activities:

    • Determine process relevance
    • Perform a gap analysis
    • Perform a user satisfaction survey
    • Assess software and vendor satisfaction

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CRM optimization team
    • Users across functional areas of your CRM and related technologies

    Step 2.1

    Conduct a Gap Analysis for CRM Processes

    Activities

    • 2.1.1 Determine process relevance
    • 2.1.2 Perform process gap analysis

    Assess Your Current State

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine process relevance
    • Perform a gap analysis

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM optimization team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Gap analysis for CRM-related processes (current vs. desired state)

    2.1.1 Determine process relevance

    1-3 hours

    1. Open tab “4. Process Importance,” in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook.
    2. Rate each process for level of importance to your organization on the following scale:
      • Crucial
      • Important
      • Secondary
      • Unimportant
      • Not applicable

    This image contains a screenshot of tab 4 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    2.1.2 Perform process gap analysis

    1-3 hours

    1. Open tab “5. Process Assessment,” in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook.
    2. For each line item, identify your current state and your desired state on the following scale:
      • Not important
      • Poor
      • Moderate
      • Good
      • Excellent

    This is a screenshot of Tab 5 of the Get the Most Out of your CRM Workshop

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Step 2.2

    Assess User Satisfaction

    Activities

    • 2.2.1 Prepare and complete a user satisfaction survey
    • 2.2.2 Enter user satisfaction

    Assess Your Current State

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Preparation and completion of an application portfolio assessment (APA)
    • Entry of the user satisfaction scores into the workbook

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM optimization team
    • Users across functional areas of CRM and related technologies

    Outcomes of this step

    • Understanding of user satisfaction across applications and processes
    • Insight into CRM data quality

    Benefits of the Application Portfolio Assessment

    This is a screenshot of the application  Overview tab

    Assess the health of the application portfolio

    • Get a full 360-degree view of the effectiveness, criticality, and prevalence of all relevant applications to get a comprehensive view of the health of the applications portfolio.
    • Identify opportunities to drive more value from effective applications, retire nonessential applications, and immediately address at-risk applications that are not meeting expectations.

    This is a screenshot of the Finance Overview tab

    Provide targeted department feedback

    • Share end-user satisfaction and importance ratings for core IT services, IT communications, and business enablement to focus on the right end-user groups or lines of business, and ramp up satisfaction and productivity.

    This is a screenshot of the application  Overview tab

    Insight into the state of data quality

    • Data quality is one of the key issues causing poor CRM user satisfaction and business results. This can include the relevance, accuracy, timeliness, or usability of the organization’s data.
    • Targeted, open-ended feedback around data quality will provide insight into where optimization efforts should be focused.

    2.2.1 Prepare and complete a user satisfaction survey

    1 hour

    Option 1: Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to generate your user satisfaction score. This tool not only measures application satisfaction but also elicits great feedback from users regarding support they receive from the IT team.

    1. Download the CRM Application Inventory Tool.
    2. Complete the “Demographics” tab (tab 2).
    3. Complete the “Inventory” tab (tab 3).
      1. Complete the inventory by treating each process within the organization as a separate row. Use the processes identified in the process gap analysis as a reference.
      2. Treat every department as a separate column in the department section. Feel free to add, remove, or modify department names to match your organization.
      3. Include data quality for all applications applicable.

    Option 2: Use the method of choice to elicit current user satisfaction for each of the processes identified as important to the organization.

    1. List processes identified as important (from the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab 4, “Process Importance”).
    2. Gather user contact information by department.
    3. Ask users to rate satisfaction: Extremely Satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral, Dissatisfied, and Extremely Dissatisfied (on Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab 5. “Process Assessment”).

    This image contains a screenshot of the CRM Application Inventory Tool Tab

    Understand user satisfaction across capabilities and departments within your organization.

    Download the CRM Application Inventory Tool

    2.2.2 Enter user satisfaction

    20 minutes

    Using the results from the Application Portfolio Assessment or your own user survey:

    1. Open your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “5. Process Assessment.”
    2. For each process, record up to three different department responses.
    3. Enter the answers to the survey for each line item using the drop-down options:
      • Extremely Satisfied
      • Satisfied
      • Neutral
      • Dissatisfied
      • Extremely Dissatisfied

    This is a screenshot of Tab 5 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook

    Understand user satisfaction across capabilities and departments within your organization.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Step 2.3

    Review Your Satisfaction With the Vendor and Product

    Activities

    2.3.1 Rate your vendor and product satisfaction

    2.3.2 Enter SoftwareReviews scores from your CRM Product Scorecard (optional)

    Assess Your Current State

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Rate your vendor and product satisfaction
    • Compare with survey data from SoftwareReviews

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Owner(s)
    • Procurement Representative
    • Vendor Contracts Manager

    Outcomes of this step

    • Quantified satisfaction with vendor and product

    Use a SoftwareReviews Product Scorecard to evaluate your satisfaction compared to other organizations.

    This is a screenshot of the SoftwareReviews Product Scorecard

    Source: SoftwareReviews, March 2019

    Where effective IT leaders spend their time

    This image contains two lists.  One list is where CIOs with  data-verified=80% satisfaction score, and the other list is CIOs with <80% satisfaction score.">

    Info-Tech Insight

    The data shows that effective IT leaders invest a significant amount of time (8%) on vendor management initiatives.

    Be proactive in managing you calendar and block time for these important tasks.

    CIOs who prioritize vendor management see improved results

    Analysis of CIOs’ calendars revealed that how CIOs spend their time has a correlation to both stakeholder IT satisfaction and CEO-CIO alignment.

    Those CIOs that prioritized vendor management were more likely to have a business satisfaction score greater than 80%.

    This image demonstrates that CIOs who spend time with the team members of their direct reports delegate management responsibilities to direct reports and spend less time micromanaging, and CIOs who spend time on vendor management align rapidly changing business needs with updated vendor offerings.

    2.3.1 Rate your vendor and product satisfaction

    30 minutes

    Use Info-Tech’s vendor satisfaction survey to identify optimization areas with your CRM product(s) and vendor(s).

    Option 1 (recommended): Conduct a satisfaction survey using SoftwareReviews. This option allows you to see your results in the context of the vendor landscape.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Option 2: Use your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “6. Vendor Optimization,” to review your satisfaction with your software.

    SoftwareReviews’ Customer Relationship Management

    This is a screenshot of tab 6 of the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook.

    2.3.2 Enter SoftwareReviews scores (optional)

    30 minutes

    1. Download the scorecard for your CRM product from the SoftwareReviews website. (Note: Not all products are represented or have sufficient data, so a scorecard may not be available.)
    2. Use your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “6. Vendor Optimization,” to record the scorecard results.
    3. Use your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “6. Vendor Optimization,” to flag areas where your score may be lower than the product scorecard. Brainstorm ideas for optimization.

    Download the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    SoftwareReviews’ Customer Relationship Management

    This is a screenshot of the optional vendor optimization scorecard

    Phase 3

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    • 3.1 Identify Key Optimization Areas
    • 3.2 Compile Optimization Assessment Results

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify key optimization areas
    • Create an optimization roadmap

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team

    Build your optimization roadmap

    Address process gaps

    • CRM and related technologies are invaluable to sales, marketing, and customer service enablement, but they must have supported processes driven by business goals.
    • Identify areas where capabilities need to be improved and work towards.

    Support user satisfaction

    • The best technology in the world won’t deliver business results if it is not working for the users who need it.
    • Understand concerns, communicate improvements, and support users in all roles.

    Improve data quality

    • Data quality is unique to each business unit and requires tolerance, not perfection.
    • Implement a set of data quality initiatives that are aligned with overall business objectives and aimed at addressing data practices and the data itself.

    Proactively manage vendors

    • Vendor management is a critical component of technology enablement and IT satisfaction.
    • Assess your current satisfaction against those of your peers and work towards building a process that is best fit for your organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Enabling a high-performing, customer-centric sales, marketing, and customer service operations program requires excellent management practices and continuous optimization efforts.

    Technology portfolio and architecture is important, but we must go deeper. Taking a holistic view of CRM technologies in the environments in which they operate allows for the inclusion of people and process improvements – this is key to maximizing business results.

    Using a formal CRM optimization initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify IT automation priorities, and dig deep into continuous process improvement.

    Step 3.1

    Identify Key Optimization Areas

    Activities

    • 3.1.1 Explore process gaps
    • 3.1.2 Analyze user satisfaction
    • 3.1.3 Assess data quality
    • 3.1.4 Analyze product satisfaction and vendor management

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Explore existing process gaps
    • Identify the impact of processes on user satisfaction
    • Identify the impact of data quality on user satisfaction
    • Review your overall product satisfaction and vendor management

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Application optimization plan

    3.1.1 Explore process gaps

    1 hour

    1. Review the compiled CRM Process Assessment in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “7. Process Prioritization.”
    2. These are processes you should prioritize.
    • The activities in the rest of Step 3.1 help you create optimization strategies for the different areas of improvement these processes relate to: user satisfaction, data quality, product satisfaction, and vendor management.
  • Consolidate your optimization strategies in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “8. Optimization Roadmap.” (See next slide for screenshot.)
  • This image consists of the CRM Process Importance Rankings

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Plan your product optimization strategy for each area of improvement

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Areas of Improvement column  highlighted in a red box.

    3.1.2 Analyze user satisfaction

    1 hour

    1. Use the APA survey results from activity 2.2.1 (or your own internal survey) to identify areas where the organization is performing low in user satisfaction across the CRM portfolio.
      1. Understand application portfolio and IT service satisfaction.
      2. Identify cost savings opportunities from unused or unimportant apps.
      3. Build a roadmap for improving user IT services.
      4. Manage needs by department and seniority.
    2. Consolidate your optimization strategies in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “8. Optimization Roadmap.” (See next slide for screenshot.)

    this is an image of the Business & IT Communications Overview Tab from the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Plan your user satisfaction optimization strategy

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Optimization Strategies column  highlighted in a red box.

    Next steps in improving your data quality

    Data Quality Management Effective Data Governance Data-Centric Integration Strategy Extensible Data Warehousing
    • Prevention is ten times cheaper than remediation. Stop fixing data quality with band-aid solutions and start fixing it by healing it at the source of the problem.
    • Data governance enables data-driven insight. Think of governance as a structure for making better use of data.
    • Every enterprise application involves data integration. Any change in the application and database ecosystem requires you to solve a data integration problem.
    • A data warehouse is a project; but successful data warehousing is a program. An effective data warehouse requires planning beyond the technology implementation.
    • Data quality is unique to each business unit and requires tolerance, not perfection. If the data allows the business to operate at the desired level, don’t waste time fixing data that may not need to be fixed.
    • Collaboration is critical. The business may own the data, but IT understands the data. Data governance will not work unless the business and IT work together.
    • Data integration is becoming more and more critical for downstream functions of data management and for business operations to be successful. Poor integration holds back these critical functions.
    • Governance, not technology, needs to be the core support system for enabling a data warehouse program.
    • Implement a set of data quality initiatives that are aligned with overall business objectives and aimed at addressing data practices and the data itself.
    • Data governance powers the organization up the data value chain through policies and procedures, master data management, data quality, and data architecture.
    • Build your data integration practice with a firm foundation in governance and reference architecture. Ensure your process is scalable and sustainable.
    • Leverage an approach that focuses on constructing a data warehouse foundation that can address a combination of operational, tactical, and ad hoc business needs.
    • Develop a prioritized data quality improvement project roadmap and long-term improvement strategy.
    • Create a roadmap to prioritize initiatives and delineate responsibilities among data stewards, data owners, and members of the data governance steering committee.
    • Support the flow of data through the organization and meet the organization’s requirements for data latency, availability, and relevancy.
    • Invest time and effort to put together pre-project governance to inform and provide guidance to your data warehouse implementation.
    • Build related practices with more confidence and less risk after achieving an appropriate level of data quality.
    • Ensure buy-in from the business and IT stakeholders. Communicate initiatives to end users and executives to reduce resistance.
    • Data availability must be frequently reviewed and repositioned to continue to grow with the business.
    • Select the most suitable architecture pattern to ensure the data warehouse is “built right” at the very beginning.

    Build Your Data Quality Program

    Establish Data Governance

    Build a Data Integration Strategy

    Build an Extensible Data Warehouse Foundation

    3.1.3 Assess data quality

    1 hour

    1. Use your APA survey results (if available) to identify areas where the organization is performing low in data quality initiatives. Common areas for improvement include:
      • Overall data quality management
      • Effective data governance
      • Poor data integration
      • The need to implement extensible data warehousing
    2. Consolidate your optimization strategies in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “8. Optimization Roadmap.” (See next slide for screenshot.)

    This is an image of the Business & IT Communications Overview tab from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Plan your data quality optimization strategy

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Optimization Strategies column  highlighted in a red box.

    Use Info-Tech’s vendor management initiative (VMI)

    Create a right-size, right-fit strategy for managing the vendors relevant to your organization.

    A crowd chart is depicted, with quadrants for strategic value, and Vendor spend/switching cost.

    Info-Tech Insight

    A VMI is a formalized process within an organization, responsible for evaluating, selecting, managing, and optimizing third-party providers of goods and services.

    The amount of resources you assign to managing vendors depends on the number and value of your organization’s relationships. Before optimizing your vendor management program around the best practices presented in this blueprint, assess your current maturity and build the process around a model that reflects the needs of your organization.

    Info-Tech uses VMI interchangeably with the terms “vendor management office (VMO),” “vendor management function,” “vendor management process,” and “vendor management program.”

    Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative

    3.1.4 Analyze product satisfaction and vendor management

    1 hour

    1. Use the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “6. Vendor Optimization.”
    2. Download the SoftwareReviews Vendor Scorecard.
    3. Using the scorecards, compare your results with those of your peers.
    4. Consolidate areas of improvement and optimization strategies in the Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “8. Optimization Roadmap.” (See next slide for screenshot.)

    See previous slide for help around implementing a vendor management initiative.

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Areas for Optimization column  highlighted in a red box.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook

    Plan your vendor management optimization strategy

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Optimization Strategies column  highlighted in a red box.

    Step 3.2

    Compile Optimization Assessment Results

    Activities

    • 3.2.1 Identify key optimization areas

    Build Your Optimization Roadmap

    This step will guide you through the following activities:

    • Use your work from previous activities and prioritization to build your list of optimization activities and lay them out on a roadmap

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CRM Optimization Team

    Outcomes of this step

    • Application optimization plan

    3.2.1 Identify key optimization areas

    1-3 hours

    Before you can make changes and optimization decisions, you need to understand the high-level costs associated with your current application architecture. This activity will help you identify the types of technology and people costs associated with your current systems.

    1. Consolidate your findings and identify optimization priorities (Step 3.1).
    2. Prioritize those most critical to the organization, easiest to change, and whose impact will be highest.
    3. Use the information gathered from exercise 1.5.1 on Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab “9. Costs (Optional).”
    4. These costs could affect the priority or timeline of the initiatives. Consolidate your thoughts on your Get the Most Out of Your CRM Workbook, tab 8, “Optimization Roadmap.” Note: There is no column specific to costs on tab 8.

    This is meant as a high-level roadmap. For formal, ongoing optimization project management, refer to “Build a Better Backlog” (Phase 2 of the Info-Tech blueprint Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision).

    This is a screenshot from the Get the most out of your CRM Workbook, with the Priority; Owner; and Timeline columns highlighted in a red box.

    Next steps: Manage your technical debt

    Use a holistic assessment of the “interest” paid on technical debt to quantify and prioritize risk and enable the business make better decisions.

    • Technical debt is an IT risk, which in turn is a category of business risk.
    • The business must decide how to manage business risk.
    • At the same time, business decision makers may not be aware of technical debt or be able to translate technical challenges into business risk. IT must help the business make decisions around IT risk by describing the risk of technical debt in business terms and by outlining the options available to address risk.
    • Measure the ongoing business impact (the “interest” paid on technical debt) to establish the business risk of technical debt. Consider a range of possible impacts including direct costs, lost goodwill, lost flexibility and resilience, and health, safety, and compliance impacts.
    • When weighing these impacts, the business may choose to accept the risk of technical debt if the cost of addressing the debt outweighs the benefit. But it’s critically important that the business accepts that risk – not IT.

    Manage Your Technical Debt

    Take it a step further…

    Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision

    Phase 2: Build a Better Product Backlog

    Build a structure for your backlog that supports your product vision.

    Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision

    Build a better backlog

    An ongoing CRM optimization effort is best facilitated through a continuous Agile process. Use info-Tech’s developed tools to build out your backlog.

    The key to a better backlog is a common structure and guiding principles that product owners and product teams can align to.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Exceptional customer value begins with a clearly defined backlog focused on items that will create the greatest human and business benefits.

    Activity Participants

    Backlog Activity

    Quality Filter

    Product Manager

    Product Owner

    Dev Team

    Scrum Master

    Business

    Architects

    Sprint

    Sprint Planning

    “Accepted”

    Ready

    Refine

    “Ready”

    Qualified

    Analysis

    “Qualified”

    Ideas

    Intake

    “Backlogged”

    A product owner and the product backlog are critical to realize the benefits of Agile development

    A product owner is accountable for defining and prioritizing the work that will be of the greatest value to the organization and its customers. The backlog is the key to facilitating this process and accomplishing the most fundamental goals of delivery.

    For more information on the role of a product owner, see Build a Better Product Owner.

    Highly effective Agile teams spend 28% of their time on product backlog management and roadmapping (Quantitative Software Management, 2015).

    1. Manage Stakeholders

    • Stakeholders need to be kept up to speed on what the future holds for a product, or at least they should be heard. This task falls to the product owner.

    2. Inform and Protect the Team

    • The product owner is a servant leader of the team. They need to protect the team from all the noise and give them the time they need to focus on what they do best: develop.

    3. Maximize Value to the Product

    • Sifting through all of these voices and determining what is valuable, or what is most valuable, falls to the product owner.

    A backlog stores and organizes PBIs at various stages of readiness.

    Your backlog must give you a holistic understanding of demand for change in the product

    A well-formed backlog can be thought of as a DEEP backlog:

    Detailed Appropriately: PBIs are broken down and refined as necessary.

    Emergent: The backlog grows and evolves over time as PBIs are added and removed.

    Estimated: The effort a PBI requires is estimated at each tier.

    Prioritized: The PBI’s value and priority are determined at each tier.

    Ideas; Qualified; Ready

    3 - IDEAS

    Composed of raw, vague, and potentially large ideas that have yet to go through any formal valuation.

    2 - QUALIFIED

    Researched and qualified PBIs awaiting refinement.

    1 - READY

    Discrete, refined PBIs that are ready to be placed in your development teams’ sprint plans.

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM

    CRM technology is critical to facilitate an organization’s relationships with customers, service users, employees, and suppliers. CRM implementation should not be a one-and-done exercise. There needs to be an ongoing optimization to enable business processes and optimal organizational results.

    Get the Most Out of Your CRM allows organizations to proactively implement continuous assessment and optimization of a customer relationship management system. This includes:

    • Alignment and prioritization of key business and technology drivers
    • Identification of CRM processes including classification and gap analysis
    • Measurement of user satisfaction across key departments
    • Improved vendor relations
    • Data quality initiatives

    This formal CRM optimization initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify IT automation priorities, and dig deep into continuous process-improvement.

    If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech Workshop.

    Contact your account representative for more information

    workshops@infotech.com
    1-866-670-8889

    Research Contributors

    Ben Dickie

    Ben Dickie
    Research Practice Lead
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Ben Dickie is a Research Practice Lead at Info-Tech Research Group. His areas of expertise include customer experience management, CRM platforms, and digital marketing. He has also led projects pertaining to enterprise collaboration and unified communications.

    Scott Bickley

    Scott Bickley
    Practice Lead & Principal Research Director
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Scott Bickley is a Practice Lead & Principal Research Director at Info-Tech Research Group focused on vendor management and contract review. He also has experience in the areas of IT asset management (ITAM), software asset management (SAM), and technology procurement, along with a deep background in operations, engineering, and quality systems management.

    Andy Neil

    Andy Neil
    Practice Lead, Applications
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Andy is Senior Research Director, Data Management and BI, at Info-Tech Research Group. He has over 15 years of experience in managing technical teams, information architecture, data modeling, and enterprise data strategy. He is an expert in enterprise data architecture, data integration, data standards, data strategy, big data, and the development of industry-standard data models.

    Bibliography

    Armel, Kate. “Data-driven Estimation, Management Lead to High Quality.” Quantitative Software Management Inc. 2015. Web.

    Chappuis, Bertil, and Brian Selby. “Looking beyond Technology to Drive Sales Operations.” McKinsey & Company, 24 June 2016. Web.

    Cross-Industry Process Classification Framework (PCF) Version 7.2.1. APQC, 26 Sept. 2019. Web.

    Fleming, John, and Hater, James. “The Next Discipline: Applying Behavioral Economics to Drive Growth and Profitability.” Gallup, 22 Sept. 2012. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

    Hinchcliffe, Dion. “The evolving role of the CIO and CMO in customer experience.” ZDNet, 22 Jan. 2020. Web.

    Karlsson, Johan. “Backlog Grooming: Must-Know Tips for High-Value Products.” Perforce. 18 May 2018. Web. Feb. 2019.

    Klie, L. “CRM Still Faces Challenges, Most Speakers Agree: CRM systems have been around for decades, but interoperability and data siloes still have to be overcome.” CRM Magazine, vol. 23, no. 5, 2019, pp. 13-14.

    Kumar, Sanjib, et al. “Improvement of CRM Using Data Mining: A Case Study at Corporate Telecom Sector.” International Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 178, no. 53, 2019, pp. 12-20, doi:10.5120/ijca2019919413.

    Morgan, Blake. “50 Stats That Prove The Value Of Customer Experience.” Forbes, 24 Sept. 2019. Web.

    Norelus, Ernese, et al. “An Approach to Application Modernization: Discovery and Assessment Phase.” IBM Garage, Medium, 24 Feb 2020. Accessed 4 Mar. 2020.

    “Process Frameworks.” APQC, 4 Nov. 2020. Web.

    “Process vs. Capability: Understanding the Difference.” APCQ, 2017. Web.

    Rubin, Kenneth S. "Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process." Pearson Education, 2012.

    Savolainen, Juha, et al. “Transitioning from Product Line Requirements to Product Line Architecture.” 29th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC'05), IEEE, vol. 1, 2005, pp. 186-195, doi: 10.1109/COMPSAC.2005.160

    Smith, Anthony. “How To Create A Customer-Obsessed Company Like Netflix.” Forbes, 12 Dec. 2017. Web.

    “SOA Reference Architecture – Capabilities and the SOA RA.” The Open Group, TOGAF. Web.

    Taber, David. “What to Do When Your CRM Project Fails.” CIO Magazine, 18 Sept. 2017. Web.

    “Taudata Case Study.” Maximizer CRM Software, 17 Jan. 2020. Web.

    Optimize Your Software Selection Process: Why 5 and 30 Are the Magic Numbers

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}607|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): N/A
    • member rating average dollars saved: N/A
    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: Selection & Implementation
    • Parent Category Link: /selection-and-implementation
    • Software selection takes forever. The process of choosing even the smallest apps can drag on for years: sometimes in perpetuity. Software selection teams are sprawling, leading to scheduling slowdowns and scope creep. Moreover, cumbersome or ad hoc selection processes lead to business-driven software selection.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Maximize project effectiveness with a five-person team. Project satisfaction and effectiveness is stagnant or decreases once the team grows beyond five people.
    • Tight project timelines are critical. Keep stakeholders engaged with a defined application selection timeline that moves the project forward briskly – 30 days is optimal.
    • Empower both IT and end users with a standardized selection process to consistently achieve high satisfaction coming out of software selection projects.

    Impact and Result

    • Shatter stakeholder expectations with truly rapid application selections.
    • Put the “short” back in shortlist by consolidating the vendor shortlist up-front and reducing downstream effort.
    • Identify high-impact software functionality by evaluating fewer use cases.
    • Lock in hard savings and do not pay list price by using data-driven tactics.

    Optimize Your Software Selection Process: Why 5 and 30 Are the Magic Numbers Research & Tools

    Discover the Magic Numbers

    Increase project satisfaction with a five-person core software selection team that will close out projects within 30 days.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Optimize Your Software Selection Process: Why 5 and 30 Are the Magic Numbers Storyboard

    1. Align and eliminate elapsed time

    Ensure a formal selection process is in place and make a concerted effort to align stakeholder calendars.

    2. Reduce low-impact activities

    Reduce time spent watching vendor dog and pony shows, while reducing the size of your RFPs or skipping them entirely.

    3. Focus on high-impact activities

    Narrow the field to four contenders prior to in-depth comparison and engage in accelerated enterprise architecture oversight.

    4. Use these rapid and essential selection tools

    Focus on key use cases rather than lists of features.

    • The Software Selection Workbook
    • The Vendor Evaluation Workbook
    • The Guide to Software Selection: A Business Stakeholder Manual

    5. Engage Two Viable Vendors in Negotiation

    Save more by bringing two vendors to the final stage of the project and surfacing a consolidated list of demands prior to entering negotiation.

    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Optimize Your Software Selection Process: Why 5 and 30 Are the Magic Numbers

    Select your applications better, faster, and cheaper.

    How to Read This Software Selection Insight Primer

    1. 43,000 Data Points
    2. This report is based on data gathered from a survey of 43,000 real-world IT practitioners.

    3. Aggregating Feedback
    4. The data is compiled from SoftwareReviews (a sister company of Info-Tech Research Group), which collects and aggregates feedback on a wide variety of enterprise technologies.

    5. Insights Backed by Data
    6. The insights, charts, and graphs in this presentation are all derived from data submitted by real end users.

    The First Magic Number Is Five

    The optimal software selection team comprises five people

    • Derived from 43,000 data points. Analysis of thousands of software selection projects makes it clear a tight core selection team accelerates the selection process.
    • Five people make up the core team. A small but cross-functional team keeps the project moving without getting bogged down on calendar alignment and endless back-and-forth.
    • It is a balancing act. Having too few stakeholders on the core selection team will lead to missing valuable information, while having too many will lead to delays and politically driven inefficiencies.

    There Are Major Benefits to Narrowing the Selection Team Size to Five

    Limit the risk of ineffective “decision making by committee”

    Expedite resolution of key issues and accelerate crucial decisions

    Achieve alignment on critical requirements

    Streamline calendar management

    Info-Tech Insight

    Too many cooks spoil the broth: create a highly focused selection team that can devote the majority of its time to the project while it’s in flight to demonstrate faster time to value.

    Arm Yourself With Data to Choose the Right Plays for Selection

    Software selection takes forever. The process of choosing even the smallest apps can drag on for years: sometimes in perpetuity.

    Organizations keep too many players on the field, leading to scheduling slowdowns and scope creep.

    Keeping the size of the core selection team down, while liaising with more stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs), leads to improved results.

    Maximize project effectiveness with a five-person team. Project satisfaction and effectiveness are stagnant or decrease once the team grows beyond five people.

    Cumbersome or ad hoc selection processes lead to business-driven software selection.

    Increase stakeholder satisfaction by using a consistent selection framework that captures their needs while not being a burden.

    Empower both IT and end users with a standardized selection process to consistently achieve high satisfaction coming out of software selection projects.

    The image contains a graph that is titled: A compact selection team can save you weeks. The graph demonstrates time saved with a five person team in comparison to larger teams.

    Project Satisfaction and Effectiveness Are Stagnant Once the Team Grows Beyond Five People

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate project satisfaction and effectiveness being stagnant with a team larger than five.
    • There is only a marginal difference in selection effectiveness when more people are involved, so why include so many? It only bogs down the process!
    • Full-time resourcing: At least one member of the five team members must be allocated to the selection initiative as a full-time resource.

    Info-Tech Insight

    It sounds natural to include as many players as possible in the core selection group; however, expanding the group beyond five people does not lead to an increase in satisfaction. Consider including a general stakeholder feedback working session instead.

    Shorten Project Duration by Capping the Selection Team at Five People

    However, it is important to make all stakeholders feel heard

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate that an increase in time and effort connects with an increase in total number of people involved.

    Exclusion is not the name of the game.

    • Remember, we are talking about the core selection team.
    • Help stakeholders understand their role in the project.
    • Educate stakeholders about your approach to selection.
    • Ensure stakeholders understand why the official selection team is being capped at five people.
    • Soliciting requirements and feedback from a broader array of stakeholders is still critical.

    Large Organizations Benefit From Compact Selection Teams Just as Much as Small Firms

    Think big even if your organization is small

    Small organizations

    Teams smaller than five people are common due to limited resources.

    Medium organizations

    Selection project satisfaction peaks with teams of fewer than two people. Consider growing the team to about five people to make stakeholders feel more included with minimal drops in satisfaction.

    Large organizations

    Satisfaction peaks when teams are kept to three to five people. With many SMEs available, it is critical to choose the right players for your team.

    The image contains a multi bar graph to demonstrate the benefits of compact selection teams depending on the size of the company, small, medium, or large.

    Keep the Core Selection Team to Five People Regardless of the Software Category

    Smaller selection teams yield increased satisfaction across software categories

    Info-Tech Insight

    Core team size remains the same regardless of the application being selected. However, team composition will vary depending on the end users being targeted.

    Think beyond application complexity

    • Our instinct is to vary the size of the core selection team based on perceived application complexity.
    • The data has demonstrated that a small team yields increased satisfaction for applications across a wide array of application complexity profiles.
    • The real differentiator for complex applications will be the number of stakeholders that the core selection team liaise with, particularly for defining strong requirements.

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate satisfaction across software categories increases with smaller selection teams.

    The Second Magic Number Is 30

    Finish the project while stakeholders are still fully engaged in order to maximize satisfaction

    • 30- to 60-day project timelines are critical. Keep stakeholders engaged with a defined application selection timeline that moves the project forward briskly.
    • Strike while the iron is hot. Deliver applications in a timely manner after the initial request. Don’t let IT become the bottleneck for process optimization.
    • Minimize scope creep: As projects drag on in perpetuity, the scope of the project balloons to something that cannot possibly achieve key business objectives in a timely fashion.

    Aggressively Timeboxing the Project Yields Benefits Across Multiple Software Categories

    After four weeks, stakeholder satisfaction is variable

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate that aggressively timeboxing the project yields benefits across multiple software categories.
    Only categories with at least 1,000 responses were included in the analysis.

    Achieve peak satisfaction by allotting 30 days for an application selection project.

    • Spending two weeks or less typically leads to higher levels of satisfaction for each category because it leaves more time for negotiation, implementation, and making sure everything works properly (especially if there is a time constraint).
    • Watch out for the “satisfaction danger zone” once project enters the 6- to 12-week mark. Completing a selection in four weeks yields greater satisfaction.

    Spend Your Time Wisely to Complete the Selection in 30 Days

    Save time in the first three phases of the selection project

    Awareness

    Education & Discovery

    Evaluation

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Save time duplicating existing market research. Save time and maintain alignment with focus groups.

    Save time across tedious demos and understanding the marketplace.

    Save time gathering detailed historical requirements. Instead, focus on key issues.

    Info-Tech Insight – Awareness

    Timebox the process of impact analysis. More time should be spent performing the action than building a business case.

    Info-Tech Insight – Education

    Save time duplicating existing market research. Save time and maintain alignment with focus groups.

    Info-Tech Insight – Evaluation

    Decision committee time is valuable. Get up to speed using third-party data and written collateral. Use committee time to conduct investigative interviews instead. Salesperson charisma and marketing collateral quality should not be primary selection criteria. Sadly, this is the case far too often.

    Limit Project Duration to 30 Days Regardless of the Application Being Selected

    Timeboxing application selection yields increased satisfaction across software categories

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate selection effort in weeks by satisfaction. The graph includes informal and formal methods on the graph across the software categories.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Office collaboration tools are a great case study for increasing satisfaction with decreased time to selection. Given the sharp impetus of COVID-19, many organizations quickly selected tools like Zoom and Teams, enabling remote work with very high end-user satisfaction.

    There are alternative approaches for enterprise-sized applications:

    • New applications that demand rigorous business process improvement efforts may require allotting time for prework before engaging in the 30-day selection project.
    • To ensure that IT is using the right framework, understand the cost and complexity profile of the application you’re looking to select.

    The Data Also Shows That There Are Five Additional Keys to Improving Your Selection Process

    1. ALIGN & ELIMINATE ELAPSED TIME
    • Ensure a formal selection process is in place.
    • Balance the core selection team’s composition.
    • Make a concerted effort to align stakeholder calendars.
    2. REDUCE TIME SPENT ON LOW-IMPACT ACTIVITIES
    • Reduce time spent on internet research. Leverage hard data and experts.
    • Reduce RFP size or skip RFPs entirely.
    • Reduce time spent watching vendor dog and pony shows.
    3. FOCUS ON HIGH- IMPACT ACTIVITIES
    • Narrow the field to four contenders prior to in-depth comparison.
    • Identify portfolio overlap with accelerated enterprise architecture oversight.
    • Focus on investigative interviews and proof of concept projects.
    4. USE RAPID & ESSENTIAL ASSESSMENT TOOLS
    • Focus on key use cases, not lists of features.
    • You only need three essential tools: Info-Tech’s Vendor Evaluation Workbook, Software Selection Workbook, and Business Stakeholder Manual.
    5. ENGAGE TWO VIABLE VENDORS IN NEGOTIATION
    • Save more during negotiation by selecting two viable alternatives.
    • Surface a consolidated list of demands prior to entering negotiation.
    • Communicate your success with the organization.

    1. Align & Eliminate Elapsed Time

    ✓ Ensure a formal selection process is in place.

    ✓ Reduce time by timeboxing the project to 30 days.

    ✓ Align the calendars of the five-person core selection team.

    Improving Your IT Department’s Software Selection Capability Yields Big Results

    Time spent building a better process for software selection is a great investment

    • Enterprise application selection is an activity that every IT department must embark on, often many times per year.
    • The frequency and repeatability of software selection means it is an indispensable process to target for optimization.
    • A formal process is not always synonymous with a well-oiled process.
    • Even if you have a formal selection process already in place, it’s imperative to take a concerted approach to continuous improvement.

    It is critical to improve the selection process before formalizing

    Leverage Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework to gain insights on how you can fine-tune and accelerate existing codified approaches to application selection.

    Before Condensing the Selection Team, First Formalize the Software Selection Process

    Software selection processes are challenging

    Vendor selection is politically charged, requiring Procurement to navigate around stakeholder biases and existing relationships.

    Stakeholders

    The process is time consuming and often started too late. In the absence of clarity around requirements, it is easy to default to looking at price instead of best functional and architectural fit.

    Timing

    Defining formal process and methodology

    Formal selection methodologies are repeatable processes that anybody can consistently follow to quickly select new technology.

    Repeatable

    The goal of formalizing the approach is to enable IT to deliver business value consistently while also empowering stakeholders to find tools that meet their needs. Remember! A formal selection process is synonymous with a bureaucratic, overblown approach.

    Driving Value

    Most Organizations Are Already Using a Formal Software Selection Methodology

    Don’t get left behind!

    • A common misconception for software selection is that only large organizations have formal processes.
    • The reality is that organizations of all sizes are making use of formal processes for software selection.
    • Moreover, using a standardized method to evaluate new technology is most likely common practice among your competitors regardless of their size.
    • It is important to remember that the level of rigor for the processes will vary based not only on project size but also on organization size.
    Only categories with at least 1,000 responses were included in the analysis.

    The image contains a double bar graph that compares the sizes of companies using formal or informal evaluation and selection methodology.

    Use a Formal Evaluation and Selection Methodology to Achieve Higher Satisfaction

    A formal selection process does not equal a bloated selection process

    • No matter what process is being used, you should consider implementing a formal methodology to reduce the amount of time required to select the software. This trend continues across different levels of software (commodity, complex, and enterprise).
    • It is worth noting that using a process can actually add more time to the selection process, so it is important to know how to use it properly.
    • Don’t use just one process: you should use a combination, but don’t use more than three when selecting your software.
    The image contains a double bar graph to demonstrate the difference between formal and informal evaluation to achieve a higher satisfaction.

    Hit a Home Run With Your Business Stakeholders

    Use a data-driven approach to select the right application vendor for their needs – fast

    The image contains a screenshot of the data-drive approach. The approach includes: awareness, education & discovery, evaluation, selection, negotiation & configuration.

    Investing time improving your software selection methodology has big returns.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Not all software selection projects are created equal – some are very small; some span the entire enterprise. To ensure that IT is using the right framework, understand the cost and complexity profile of the application you’re looking to select. The Rapid Application Selection Framework approach is best for commodity and mid-tier enterprise applications; selecting complex applications is better handled by the methodology described in Implement a Proactive and Consistent Vendor Selection Process.

    Lock Down the Key Players Before Setting Up the Relevant Timeline

    You are the quarterback of your selection team

    Don’t get bogged down “waiting for the stars to align” in terms of people’s availability: if you wait for the perfect alignment, the project may never get done.

    If a key stakeholder is unavailable for weeks or months due to PTO or other commitments, don’t jeopardize project timelines to wait for them to be free. Find a relevant designate that can act in their stead!

    You don’t need the entire team on the field at once. Keep certain stakeholders on the bench to swap in and out as needed.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Assemble the key stakeholders for project kick-off to synchronize the application selection process and limit elapsed time. Getting all parties on the same page increases output satisfaction and eliminates rework. Save time and get input from key stakeholders at the project kick-off.

    Assemble a Cross-Functional Team for Best Results

    A blend of both worlds gets the best of both worlds from domain expertise (technical and business)

    The image contains a graph labelled: Likeliness to recommend. It is described in the text below.

    How to manage the cross-functional selection team:

    • There should be a combination of IT and businesspeople involved in the selection process, and ideally the ratio would be balanced.
    • No matter what you are looking for, you should never include more than five people in the selection process.
    • You can keep key stakeholders and other important individuals informed with what is going on, but they don’t necessarily have to be involved in the selection process.

    Leverage a Five-Person Team With Players From Both IT and the Business

    For maximum effectiveness, assign at least one resource to the project on a full-time basis

    IT Leader

    Technical IT

    Business Analyst/ Project Manager

    Business Lead

    Process Expert

    This team member is an IT director or CIO who will provide sponsorship and oversight from the IT perspective.

    This team member will focus on application security, integration, and enterprise architecture.

    This team member elicits business needs and translates them into technology requirements.

    This team member will provide sponsorship from the business needs perspective.

    This team member will contribute their domain-specific knowledge around the processes that the new application supports.

    Info-Tech Insight

    It is critical for the selection team to determine who has decision rights. Organizational culture will play the largest role in dictating which team member holds the final say for selection decisions.

    Ensure That Your Project Has the Right Mix of the Core Team and Ancillary Stakeholders

    Who is involved in selecting the new application?

    • Core selection team:
      • The core team ideally comprises just five members.
      • There will be representatives from IT and the specific business function that is most impacted by the application.
      • The team is typically anchored by a business analyst or project management professional.
      • This is the team that is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the project stays on track and that the right vendor is selected.
    • Ancillary stakeholders:
      • These stakeholders are brought into the selection project on an as-needed basis. They offer commentary on requirements and technical know-how.
      • They will be impacted by the project outcome but they do not bear ultimate accountability for selecting the application.
    The image contains an outer circle that lists Ancillary Stakeholders, and an inner selection team that lists core selection teams.

    Tweak the Team Composition Based on the Application Category in Question

    All applications are different. Some categories may require a slightly different balance of business and IT users.

    When to adjust the selection team’s business to IT ratio:

    • Increase the number of business stakeholders for customer-centric applications like customer relationship management and customer service management.
    • Keep projects staffed with more technical resources when selecting internal-facing tools like network monitoring platforms, next-generation firewalls, and endpoint protection systems.
    The image contains a graph to demonstrate how to tweak the team composition based on the application category.

    When to adjust the selection team’s business to IT ratio:

    • Increase the number of business stakeholders for customer-centric applications like customer relationship management and customer service management.
    • Keep projects staffed with more technical resources when selecting internal-facing tools like network monitoring platforms, next-generation firewalls, and endpoint protection systems.

    Balance the Selection Team With Decision Makers and Front-Line Resources

    Find the right balance!

    • Make sure to include key decision makers to increase the velocity of approvals.
    • However, it is critical to include the right number of front-line resources to ensure that end-user needs are adequately reflected in the requirements and decision criteria used for selection.

    The image contains a graph on the team composition with number of decision makers involved.

    Info-Tech Insight

    When selecting their software, organizations have an average of two to four business and IT decision makers/influencers on the core selection team.

    Optimize Meeting Cadence to Complete Selection in 30 Days

    Project Cadence:

    • Execute approximately one phase per week.
    • Conduct weekly checkpoints to move through your formal selection framework.
    • Allot two to four hours per touchpoint.

    The image contains a calendar with the five phases spread put over five weeks.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Use weekly touchpoints with the core selection team to eliminate broken telephone. Hold focus groups and workshops to take a more collaborative, timely, and consensus-driven approach to zero in on critical requirements.

    2. Reduce Time Spent on Low-Impact Activities

    ✓ Reduce time spent on internet research. Leverage hard data and experts.

    ✓ Reduce RFP size or skip RFPs entirely.

    ✓ Reduce time spent watching vendor dog and pony shows.

    Reduce Time Spent on Internet Research by Leveraging Hard Data and Experts

    REDUCE BIAS

    Taking a data-driven approach to vendor selection ensures that decisions are made in a manner that reduces human bias and exposure to misaligned incentives.

    SCORING MODELS

    Create a vendor scoring model that uses several different scored criteria (alignment to needs, alignment to architecture, cost, relationship, etc.) and weight them.

    AGGREGATE EXPERIENCES

    When you leverage services such as SoftwareReviews, you’re relying on amalgamated data from hundreds of others that have already been down this path: benefit from their experience!

    PEER-DRIVEN INSIGHTS

    Formally incorporate a review of Category Reports from SoftwareReviews into your vendor selection process to take advantage of peer-driven expert insights.

    Contact Us

    Info-Tech is just a phone call away. Our expert analysts can guide you to successful project completion at no additional cost to you.

    Bloated RFPs Are Weighing You Down

    Avoid “RFP overload” – parse back deliverables for smaller projects

    1. Many IT and procurement professionals are accustomed to deliverable-heavy application selection projects.
    2. Massive amounts of effort is spent creating onerous RFIs, RFPs, vendor demo scripts, reference guides, and Pugh matrices – with only incremental (if any) benefits.
    3. For smaller projects, focus on creating a minimum viable RFP that sketches out a brief need statement and highlights three or four critical process areas to avoid RFP fatigue.

    Draft a lightweight RFI (or minimum viable RFP) to give vendors a snapshot of your needs while managing effort

    An RFI or MV-RFP is a truncated RFP document that highlights core use cases to vendors while minimizing the amount of time the team has to spend building it.

    You may miss out on the right vendor if:

    • The RFP is too long or cumbersome for the vendor to respond.
    • Vendors believe their time is better spent relationship selling.
    • The RFP is unclear and leads them to believe they won’t be successful.
    • The vendor was forced to guess what you were looking for.

    How to write a successful RFI/MV-RFP:

    • Expend your energy relative to the complexity of the required solution or product you’re seeking.
    • A good MV-RFP is structured as follows: a brief description of your organization, business context, and key requirements. It should not exceed a half-dozen pages in length.
    • Be transparent.
    • This could potentially be a long-term relationship, so don’t try to trick suppliers.
    • Be clear in your expectations and focus on the key aspects of what you’re trying to achieve.

    Use the appropriate Info-Tech template for your needs (RFI, RFQ, or RFP). The Request for Information Template is best suited to the RASF approach.

    If Necessary, Make Sure That You Are Going About RFPs the Right Way

    RFPs only add satisfaction when done correctly

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate RFP and satisfaction.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Prescriptive yet flexible: Avoid RFP overload when selecting customer experience–centric applications, but a formal approach to selection is still beneficial.

    When will an RFP increase satisfaction?

    • Satisfaction is increased when the RFP is used in concert with a formal selection methodology. An RFP on its own does not drive significant value.
    • RFPs that focus on an application’s differentiating features lead to higher satisfaction with the selection process.
    • Using the RFP to evaluate mandatory or standard and/or mandatory features yields neutral results.

    Reduce Time Spent Watching Vendor Dog and Pony Shows

    Salesperson charisma and marketing collateral quality should not be primary selection criteria. Sadly, this is the case far too often.

    Use data to take control back from the vendor

    • Taking a data-driven approach to vendor selection ensures that decisions are made in a manner that reduces human bias and exposure to misaligned incentives.
    • When you leverage services such as SoftwareReviews, you’re relying on amalgamated data from hundreds of others that have already been down this path: benefit from their collective experience!

    Kill the “golf course effect” and eliminate stakeholder bias

    • A leading cause of selection failure is human bias. While rarely malicious, the reality is that decision makers and procurement staff can become unduly biased over time by vendor incentives. Conference passes, box seats, a strong interpersonal relationship – these are all things that may be valuable to a decision maker but have no bearing on the efficacy of an enterprise application.
    • A strong selection process mitigates human bias by using a weighted scoring model and basing decisions on hard data: cost, user satisfaction scores, and trusted third-party data from services such as SoftwareReviews.

    Conduct a Day of Rapid-Fire Investigative Interviews

    Zoom in on high-value use cases and answers to targeted questions

    Make sure the solution will work for your business

    Give each vendor 60 to 90 minutes to give a rapid-fire presentation. We suggest the following structure:

    • 20 minutes: company introduction and vision
    • 20 minutes: one high-value scenario walkthrough
    • 20-40 minutes: targeted Q&A from the business stakeholders and procurement team

    To ensure a consistent evaluation, vendors should be asked analogous questions, and a tabulation of answers should be conducted.

    How to challenge the vendors in the investigative interview

    • Change the visualization/presentation.
    • Change the underlying data.
    • Add additional data sets to the artifacts.
    • Collaboration capabilities.
    • Perform an investigation in terms of finding BI objects and identifying previous changes and examine the audit trail.

    Rapid-Fire Vendor Investigative Interview

    Invite vendors to come onsite (or join you via videoconference) to demonstrate the product and to answer questions. Use a highly targeted demo script to help identify how a vendor’s solution will fit your organization’s particular business capability needs.

    Spend Your Time Wisely and Accelerate the Process

    Join the B2B software selection r/evolution

    Awareness

    Education & Discovery

    Evaluation

    Selection

    Negotiation & Configuration

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Reduce Time

    Save time
    duplicating existing market research. Save time and maintain alignment with focus groups.

    Save time across tedious demos and understanding the marketplace.

    Save time gathering detailed historical requirements. Instead, focus on key issues.

    Use your time to validate how the solution will handle mission-critical requirements.

    Spend time negotiating with two viable alternatives to reduce price by up to 50%.

    Use a tier-based model to accelerate commodity and complex selection projects.

    Eliminate elapsed process time with focus groups and workshops.

    3. Focus on High-Impact Activities

    ✓ Narrow the field to four contenders prior to in-depth comparison.

    ✓ Identify portfolio overlap with accelerated enterprise architecture oversight.

    ✓ Focus on investigative interviews and proof of concept projects.

    Narrow the Field to a Maximum of Four Contenders

    Focus time spent on the players that we know can deliver strong value

    1. ACCELERATE SELECTION

    Save time by exclusively engaging vendors that support the organization’s differentiating requirements.

    2. DECISION CLARITY

    Prevent stakeholders from getting lost in the weeds with endless lists of vendors.

    3.CONDENSED DEMOS

    Limiting the project to four contenders allows you to stack demos/investigative interviews into the same day.

    4. LICENSING LEVERAGE

    Keep track of key differences between vendor offerings with a tight shortlist.

    Rapid & Effective Selection Decisions

    Consolidating the Vendor Shortlist Up-Front Reduces Downstream Effort

    Put the “short” back in shortlist!

    • Radically reduce effort by narrowing the field of potential vendors earlier in the selection process. Too many organizations don’t funnel their vendor shortlist until nearing the end of the selection process. The result is wasted time and effort evaluating options that are patently not a good fit.
    • Leverage external data (such as SoftwareReviews) and expert opinion to consolidate your shortlist into a smaller number of viable vendors before the investigative interview stage and eliminate time spent evaluating dozens of RFP responses.
    • Having fewer RFP responses to evaluate means you will have more time to do greater due diligence.

    Rapid Enterprise Architecture Evaluations Are High-Impact Activities

    When accelerating selection decisions, finding the right EA is a balancing act

    • Neglecting enterprise architecture as a shortcut to save time often leads to downstream integration problems and decreases application satisfaction.
    • On the other hand, overly drawn out enterprise architecture evaluations can lead to excessively focusing on technology integration versus having a clear and concise understanding of critical business needs.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Targeting an enterprise architecture evaluation as part of your software selection process that does not delay the selection while also providing sufficient insight into platform fit is critical.

    Key activities for rapid enterprise architecture evaluation include:

    1. Security analysis
    2. Portfolio overlap review + integration assessment
    3. Application standards check

    The data confirms that it is worthwhile to spend time on enterprise architecture

    • Considering software architecture fit up-front to determine if new software aligns with the existing application architecture directly links to greater satisfaction.
    • Stakeholders are most satisfied with their software value when there is a good architectural platform fit.
    • Stakeholders that ranked Architectural Platform Fit lower during the selection process were ultimately more unsatisfied with their software choice.

    The image contains a screenshot of data to demonstrate that it is worthwhile to spend time on enterprise architecture.

    Identify Portfolio Overlap With an Accelerated Enterprise Architecture Assessment

    Develop a clear view of any overlap within your target portfolio subset and clear rationalization/consolidation options

    • Application sprawl is a critical pain point in many organizations. It leads to wasted time, money, and effort as IT (and the business) maintain myriad applications that all serve the same functional purpose.
    • Opportunities are missed to consolidate and streamline associated business process management, training, and end-user adoption activities.
    • Identify which applications in your existing architecture serve a duplicate purpose: these applications are the ones you will want to target for consolidation.
    • As you select a new application, identify where it can be used to serve the goal for application rationalization (i.e. can we replace/retire existing applications in our portfolio by standardizing the new one?).

    Keep the scope manageable!

    • Highlight the major functional processes that are closely related to the application you’re selecting and identify which applications support each.
    • The template below represents a top-level view of a set of customer experience management (CXM) applications. Identify linkages between sets of applications and if they’re uni- or bi-directional.
    The image contains a screenshot of images that demonstrate portfolio overlap with an accelerated enterprise architecture assessment.

    Rapidly Evaluate the Security & Risk Profile for a Right-Sized Enterprise Architecture Evaluation

    There are four considerations for determining the security and risk profile for the new application

    1. Financial Risk
    • Consider the financial impact the new application has on the organization.
      • How significant is the investment in technology?
    • If this application fails to meet its business goals and deliver strong return on investment, will there be a significant amount of financial resources to mitigate the problem?
  • Data Sensitivity Risk
    • Understand the type of data that will be handled/stored by the application.
      • For example, a CRM will house customer personally identifiable information (PII) and an ECM will store confidential business documentation.
    • Determine the consequences of a potential breach (i.e. legal and financial).
  • Application Vulnerability Risk
    • Consider whether the application category has a historically strong security track record.
      • For example, enterprise cloud storage solutions may have a different level of vulnerability than an HRIS platform.
  • Infrastructure Risk
    • Determine whether the new application requires changes to infrastructure or additional security investments to safeguard expanded infrastructure.
    • Consider the ways in which the changes to infrastructure increase the vectors for security breaches.

    Spend More Time Validating Key Issues With Deep Technical Assessments

    The image contains a screenshot of an image of an iceberg. The top part of the iceberg is above water and labelled 40%. The rest of the iceberg is below water and is labelled 60%.

    Conversations With the Vendor

    • Initial conversations with the vendor build alignment on overall application capabilities, scope of work, and pricing.

    Pilot Projects and Trial Environments

    • Conduct a proof of concept project to ensure that the application satisfies your non-functional requirements.
    • Technical assessments not only demonstrate whether an application is compatible with your existing systems but also give your technical resources the confidence that the implementation process will be as smooth as possible.
    • Marketing collateral glosses over actual capabilities and differentiation. Use unbiased third-party data and detailed system training material.

    4. Use Rapid & Essential Assessment Tools

    ✓ Focus on key use cases, not lists of features.

    ✓ You only need three essential tools:

    1. Info-Tech’s Vendor Evaluation Workbook
    2. The Software Selection Workbook
    3. A Business Stakeholder Manual

    Focus on Key Use Cases, Not an Endless Laundry List of Table Stakes Features

    Focus on Critical Requirements

    Failure to differentiate must-have and nice-to-have use cases leads to applications full of non-critical features.

    Go Beyond the Table Stakes

    Accelerate the process by skipping common requirements that we know that every vendor will support.

    Streamline the Quantity of Use Cases

    Working with a tighter list of core use cases increases time spent evaluating the most impactful functionality.

    Over-Customization Kills Projects

    Eliminating dubious “sacred cow” requirements reduces costly and painful platform customization.

    Only Make Use of Essential Selection Artifacts

    Vendor selection projects often demand extensive and unnecessary documentation

    The Software Selection Workbook

    Work through the straightforward templates that tie to each phase of the Rapid Application Selection Framework, from assessing the business impact to requirements gathering.

    The image contains a screenshot of The Software Selection Workbook.

    The Vendor Evaluation Workbook

    Consolidate the vendor evaluation process into a single document. Easily compare vendors as you narrow the field to finalists.

    The image contains a screenshot of The Vendor Evaluation Workbook.

    The Guide to Software Selection: A Business Stakeholder Manual

    Quickly explain the Rapid Application Selection Framework to your team while also highlighting its benefits to stakeholders.

    The image contains a screenshot of The Guide to Software Selection: A Business Stakeholder Manual.

    Software Selection Engagement

    Five advisory calls over a five-week period to accelerate your selection process

    • Expert analyst guidance over five weeks on average to select and negotiate software.
    • Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process, and make better decisions.
    • Use a repeatable, formal methodology to improve your application selection process.
    • Better, faster results, guaranteed, included in membership.
    The image contains a screenshot of the calendar over 30 days that outlines the five calls.

    Click here to book your selection engagement

    Software Selection Workshop

    With 40 hours of advisory assistance delivered online, select better software, faster.

    • 40 hours of expert analyst guidance.
    • Project and stakeholder management assistance.
    • Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process, and make better decisions.
    • Better, faster results, guaranteed; $20K standard engagement fee.
    The image contains a screenshot of the calendar over 30 days that outlines the five calls.

    CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR WORKSHOP ENGAGEMENT

    5. Select Two Viable Options & Engage Both in Negotiation

    ✓ Save more during negotiation by selecting two viable alternatives.

    ✓ Surface a consolidated list of demands prior to entering negotiation.

    ✓ Communicate your success with the organization.

    Save More During Negotiation by Selecting Two Viable Alternatives

    VENDOR 1

    Build in a realistic plan B that allows you to apply leverage to the incumbent or primary vendor of choice.

    VENDOR 2

    If the top contender is aware that they do not have competition, they will be less inclined to make concessions.

    Maintain momentum with two options

    • Should you realize that the primary contender is no longer a viable option (i.e. security concerns), keeping a second vendor in play enables you to quickly pivot without slowing down the selection project.

    Secure best pricing by playing vendors off each other

    • Vendors are more likely to give concessions on the base price once they become aware that a direct competitor has entered the evaluation.

    Truly commit to a thorough analysis of alternatives

    • By evaluating competitive alternatives, you’ll get a more comprehensive view on market standards for a solution and be able to employ a range of negotiation tactics.

    Focus on 5-10 Specific Contract Change Requests

    Accelerate negotiation by picking your battles

    ANALYZE

    DOCUMENT

    CONSOLIDATE

    PRESENT

    • Parse the contract, order form, and terms & conditions for concerning language.
    • Leverage expertise from internal subject matter experts in addition to relevant legal council.
    • Document all concerns and challenges with the language in the vendor contract in a single spreadsheet.
    • Make vendors more receptive to your cause by going one step beyond writing what the change should be. Provide the reasoning behind the change and even the relevant context.
    • Identify the change requests that are most important for the success of the selection project.
    • Compile a list of the most critical change requests.
    • Consider including nice-to-have requests that you can leverage as strategic concessions.
    • Present the consolidated list of critical change requests to the vendor rather than sharing the entire range of potential changes to the contract.
    • Make sure to include context and background for each request.
    • Eliminate potential delays by proactively establishing a timeline for the vendor’s response.

    Share Stories of Cost Savings With the Organization

    Secure IT’s seat at the table

    Hard cost savings speak louder than words. Executive leadership will see IT as the go-to team for driving business value quickly, yet responsibly.

    Build hype around the new software

    Generate enthusiasm by highlighting the improved user experience provided by the new software that was has just been selected.

    Drive end-user adoption

    Position the cost savings as an opportunity to invest in onboarding. An application is only as valuable as your employees’ ability to effectively use it.

    Keep the process rolling

    Use the momentum from the project and its successful negotiation to roll out the accelerated selection approach to more departments across the organization.

    Overall: The Magic Number Saves You Time and Money

    Software selection takes forever. The process of choosing even the smallest apps can drag on for years: sometimes in perpetuity.

    Organizations keep too many players on the field, leading to scheduling slowdowns and scope creep.

    Keeping the size of the core selection team down, while liaising with more stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs), leads to improved results.

    Maximize project effectiveness with a five-person team. Project satisfaction and effectiveness are stagnant or decrease once the team grows beyond five people.

    Cumbersome or ad hoc selection processes lead to business-driven software selection.

    Increase stakeholder satisfaction by using a consistent selection framework that captures their needs while not being a burden.

    Empower both IT and end users with a standardized selection process to consistently achieve high satisfaction coming out of software selection projects.

    The image contains a graph that is titled: A compact selection team can save you weeks. The graph demonstrates time saved with a five person team in comparison to larger teams.

    Key Takeaways for Improving Your Selection Process

    1. ALIGN & ELIMINATE ELAPSED TIME

    • Ensure a formal selection process is in place and reduce time by timeboxing the project to 30 days.
    • Align the calendars of the five-person core selection team to maximize efficiency.

    2. REDUCE TIME SPENT ON LOW-IMPACT ACTIVITIES

    • Go beyond the table stakes and accelerate the process by skipping common requirements that we know that every vendor will support.
    • Only make use of essential selection artifacts.

    3. FOCUS ON HIGH- IMPACT ACTIVITIES

    • Skip the vendor dog and pony shows with investigative interviews.
    • Minimize time spent on novel-sized RFPs; instead highlight three or four critical process areas.

    4. USE RAPID & ESSENTIAL ASSESSMENT TOOLS

    • Consolidating the vendor shortlist up-front reduces downstream effort.
    • Application sprawl is a critical pain point in many organizations that leads to wasted time and money.

    5. ENGAGE TWO VIABLE VENDORS IN NEGOTIATION

    • Build in a realistic plan B that allows you to apply leverage to the incumbent or primary vendor of choice.
    • Pick your battles and focus on 5-10 specific contract change requests.

    Appendix

    This study is based on a survey of 43,000 real-world IT practitioners.

    • SoftwareReviews (a sister company of Info-Tech Research Group) collects and aggregates feedback on a wide variety of enterprise technologies.
    • The practitioners are actual end users of hundreds of different enterprise application categories.
    • The following slides highlight the supplementary data points from the comprehensive survey.

    Methodology

    A comprehensive study based on the responses of thousands of real-world practitioners.

    Qualitative & Secondary

    Using comprehensive statistical techniques, we surveyed what our members identified as key drivers of success in selecting enterprise software. Our goal was to determine how organizations can accelerate selection processes and improve outcomes by identifying where people should spend their time for the best results.

    Large-n Survey

    To determine the “Magic Numbers,” we used a large-n survey: 40,000 respondents answered questions about their applications, selection processes, organizational firmographics, and personal characteristics. We used this data to determine what drives satisfaction not only with the application but with the selection process itself.

    Quantitative Drill-Down

    We used the survey to narrow the list of game-changing practices. We then conducted additional quantitative research to understand why our respondents may have selected the responses they did.

    Considerations to Optimize Container Management

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    • Parent Category Name: Data Center & Facilities Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /data-center-and-facilities-strategy

    Do you experience challenges with the following:

    • Equipping IT operations processes to manage containers.
    • Choosing the right container technology.
    • Optimizing your infrastructure strategy for containers.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Plan ahead to ensure your container strategy aligns with your infrastructure roadmap. Before deciding between bare metal and cloud, understand the different components of a container management solution and plan for current and future infrastructure services.
    • When selecting tools from multiple sources, it is important to understand what each tool should and should not meet. This holistic approach is necessary to avoid gaps and duplication of effort.

    Impact and Result

    Use the reference architecture to plan for the solution you need and want to deploy. Infrastructure planning and strategy optimizes the container image supply chain, uses your current infrastructure, and reduces costs for compute and image scan time.

    Considerations to Optimize Container Management Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Considerations to Optimize Container Management Deck – A document to guide you design your container strategy.

    A document that walks you through the components of a container management solution and helps align your business objectives with your current infrastructure services and plan for your future assets.

    • Considerations to Optimize Container Management Storyboard

    2. Container Reference Architecture – A best-of-breed template to help you build a clear, concise, and compelling strategy document for container management.

    Complete the reference architecture tool to strategize your container management.

    • Container Reference Architecture
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Considerations to Optimize Container Management

    Design a custom reference architecture that meets your requirements.

    Analyst Perspective

    Containers have become popular as enterprises use DevOps to develop and deploy applications faster. Containers require managed services because the sheer number of containers can become too complex for IT teams to handle. Orchestration platforms like Kubernetes can be complex, requiring management to automatically deploy container-based applications to operating systems and public clouds. IT operations staff need container management skills and training.

    Installing and setting up container orchestration tools can be laborious and error-prone. IT organizations must first implement the right infrastructure setup for containers by having a solid understanding of the scope and scale of containerization projects and developer requirements. IT administrators also need to know how parts of the existing infrastructure connect and communicate to maintain these relationships in a containerized environment. Containers can run on bare metal servers, virtual machines in the cloud, or hybrid configurations, depending on your IT needs

    Nitin Mukesh, Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations

    Nitin Mukesh
    Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge Common Obstacles Info-Tech’s Approach

    The container software market is constantly evolving. Organizations must consider many factors to choose the right container management software for their specific needs and fit their future plans.

    It's important to consider your organization's current and future infrastructure strategy and how it fits with your container management strategy. The container management platform you choose should be compatible with the existing network infrastructure and storage capabilities available to your organization.

    IT operations staff have not been thinking the same way as developers who have now been using an agile approach for some time. Container image builds are highly automated and have several dependencies including scheduling, testing, and deployment that the IT staff is not trained for or lack the ability to create anything more than a simple image.

    Use the reference architecture to plan for the solution you need and want to deploy. Infrastructure planning and strategy optimizes the container image supply chain and reduces costs for compute and image scan time.

    Plan ahead to ensure your container strategy aligns with your infrastructure roadmap. Before deciding between bare metal and cloud, understand the different components of a container management solution and plan for current and future infrastructure services.

    Your challenge

    Choosing the right container technology: IT is a rapidly changing and evolving market, with startups and seasoned technology vendors maintaining momentum in everything from container platforms to repositories to orchestration tools. The rapid evolution of container platform components such as orchestration, storage, networking, and system services such as load balancing has made the entire stack a moving target.

    However, waiting for the industry to be standardized can be a recipe for paralysis, and waiting too long to decide on solutions and approaches can put a company's IT operations in catch-up mode.

    Keeping containers secure: Security breaches in containers are almost identical to operating system level breaches in virtual machines in terms of potential application and system vulnerabilities. It is important for any DevOps team working on container and orchestration architecture and management to fully understand the potential vulnerabilities of the platforms they are using.

    Optimize your infrastructure strategy for containers: One of the challenges enterprise IT operations management teams face when it comes to containers is the need to rethink the underlying infrastructure to accommodate the technology. While you may not want to embrace the public cloud for your critical applications just yet, IT operations managers will need an on-premises infrastructure so that applications can scale up and down the same way as they are containerized.

    Common ways organizations use containers

    A Separation of responsibilities
    Containerization provides a clear separation of responsibilities as developers can focus on application logic and dependencies, while IT operations teams can focus on deployment and management instead of application details such as specific software versions and configurations.

    B Workload portability
    Containers can run almost anywhere: physical servers or on-premise data centers on virtual machines or developer machines, as well as public clouds on Linux, Windows, or Mac operating systems, greatly easing development and deployment.

    “Lift and shift” existing applications into a modern cloud architecture. Some organizations even use containers to migrate existing applications to more modern environments. While this approach provides some of the basic benefits of operating system virtualization, it does not provide all the benefits of a modular, container-based application architecture.

    C Application isolation
    Containers virtualize CPU, memory, storage, and network resources at the operating system level, providing developers with a logically isolated view of the operating system from other applications.

    Source: TechTarget, 2021

    What are containers and why should I containerize?

    A container is a partially isolated environment in which an application or parts of an application can run. You can use a single container to run anything from small microservices or software processes to larger applications. Inside the container are all the necessary executable, library, and configuration files. Containers do not contain operating system images. This makes them lighter and more portable with much less overhead. Large application deployments can deploy multiple containers into one or more container clusters (CapitalOne, 2020).

    Containers have the following advantages:

    • Reduce overhead costs: Because containers do not contain operating system images, they require fewer system resources than traditional or hardware virtual machine environments.
    • Enhanced portability: Applications running in containers can be easily deployed on a variety of operating systems and hardware platforms.
    • More consistent operations: DevOps teams know that applications in containers run the same no matter where they are deployed.
    • Efficiency improvement: Containers allow you to deploy, patch, or scale applications faster.
    • Develop better applications: Containers support Agile and DevOps efforts to accelerate development and production cycles.

    Source: CapitalOne, 2020

    Container on the cloud or on-premise?

    On-premises containers Public cloud-based containers

    Advantages:

    • Full control over your container environment.
    • Increased flexibility in networking and storage configurations.
    • Use any version of your chosen tool or container platform.
    • No need to worry about potential compliance issues with data stored in containers.
    • Full control over the host operating system and environment.

    Disadvantages:

    • Lack of easy scalability. This can be especially problematic if you're using containers because you want to be more agile from a DevOps perspective.
    • No turnkey container deployment solution. You must set up and maintain every component of the container stack yourself.

    Advantages:

    • Easy setup and management through platforms such as Amazon Elastic Container Service or Azure Container Service. These products require significant Docker expertise to use but require less installation and configuration than on-premise installations.
    • Integrates with other cloud-based tools for tasks such as monitoring.
    • Running containers in the cloud improves scalability by allowing you to add compute and storage resources as needed.

    Disadvantages:

    • You should almost certainly run containers on virtual machines. That can be a good thing for many people; however, you miss out on some of the potential benefits of running containers on bare metal servers, which can be easily done.
    • You lose control. To build a container stack, you must use the orchestrator provided by your cloud host or underlying operating system.

    Info-Tech Insight
    Start-ups and small businesses that don't typically need to be closely connected to hardware can easily move (or start) to the cloud. Large (e.g. enterprise-class) companies and companies that need to manage and control local hardware resources are more likely to prefer an on-premises infrastructure. For enterprises, on-premises container deployments can serve as a bridge to full public cloud deployments or hybrid private/public deployments. The answer to the question of public cloud versus on premises depends on the specific needs of your business.

    Container management

    From container labeling that identifies workloads and ownership to effective reporting that meets the needs of different stakeholders across the organization, it is important that organizations establish an effective framework for container management.

    Four key considerations for your container management strategy:

    01 Container Image Supply Chain
    How containers are built

    02 Container Infrastructure and Orchestration
    Where and how containers run together

    03 Container Runtime Security and Policy Enforcement
    How to make sure your containers only do what you want them to do

    04 Container Observability
    Runtime metrics and debugging

    To effectively understand container management solutions, it is useful to define the various components that make up a container management strategy.

    1: Container image supply chain

    To run a workload as a container, it must first be packaged into a container image. The image supply chain includes all libraries or components that make up a containerized application. This includes CI/CD tools to test and package code into container images, application security testing tools to check for vulnerabilities and logic errors, registries and mirroring tools for hosting container images, and attribution mechanisms such as image signatures for validating images in registries.

    Important functions of the supply chain include the ability to:

    • Scan container images in registries for security issues and policy compliance.
    • Verify in-use image hashes have been scanned and authorized.
    • Mirror images from public registries to isolate yourself from outages in these services.
    • Attributing images to the team that created them.

    Source: Rancher, 2022

    Info-Tech Insight
    It is important to consider disaster recovery for your image registry. As mentioned above, it is wise to isolate yourself from registry disruptions. However, external registry mirroring is only one part of the equation. You also want to make sure you have a high availability plan for your internal registry as well as proper backup and recovery processes. A highly available, fault-tolerant container management platform is not just a runtime environment.

    2: Container infrastructure and orchestration

    Orchestration tools

    Once you have a container image to run, you need a location to run it. That means both the computer the container runs on and the software that schedules it to run. If you're working with a few containers, you can make manual decisions about where to run container images, what to run with container images, and how best to manage storage and network connectivity. However, at scale, these kinds of decisions should be left to orchestration tools like Kubernetes, Swarm, or Mesos. These platforms can receive workload execution requests, determine where to run based on resource requirements and constraints, and then actually launch that workload on its target. And if a workload fails or resources are low, it can be restarted or moved as needed.

    Source: DevOpsCube, 2022

    Storage

    Storage is another important consideration. This includes both the storage used by the operating system and the storage used by the container itself. First, you need to consider the type of storage you actually need. Can I outsource my storage concerns to a cloud provider using something like Amazon Relational Database Service instead? If not, do you really need block storage (e.g. disk) or can an external object store like AWS S3 meet your needs? If your external object storage service can meet your performance and durability requirements as well as your governance and compliance needs, you're in luck. You may not have to worry about managing the container's persistent storage. Many external storage services can be provisioned on demand, support discrete snapshots, and some even allow dynamic scaling on demand.

    Networking

    Network connectivity inside and outside the containerized environment is also very important. For example, Kubernetes supports a variety of container networking interfaces (CNIs), each providing different functionality. Questions to consider here are whether you can set traffic control policies (and the OSI layer), how to handle encryption between workloads and between workloads and external entities, and how to manage traffic import for containerized workloads. The impact of these decisions also plays a role on performance.

    Backups

    Backups are still an important task in containerized environments, but the backup target is changing slightly. An immutable, read-only container file system can be recreated very easily from the original container image and does not need to be backed up. Backups or snapshots on permanent storage should still be considered. If you are using a cloud provider, you should also consider fault domain and geo-recovery scenarios depending on the provider's capabilities. For example, if you're using AWS, you can use S3 replication to ensure that EBS snapshots can be restored in another region in case of a full region outage.

    3: Container runtime security and policy enforcement

    Ensuring that containers run in a place that meets the resource requirements and constraints set for them is necessary, but not sufficient. It is equally important that your container management solution performs continuous validation and ensures that your workloads comply with all security and other policy requirements of your organization. Runtime security and policy enforcement tools include a function for detecting vulnerabilities in running containers, handling detected vulnerabilities, ensuring that workloads are not running with unnecessary or unintended privileges, and ensuring that only other workloads that need to be allowed can connect.

    One of the great benefits of (well implemented) containerized software is reducing the attackable surface of the application. But it doesn't completely remove it. This means you need to think about how to observe running applications to minimize security risks. Scanning as part of the build pipeline is not enough. This is because an image without vulnerabilities at build time can become a vulnerable container because new flaws are discovered in its code or support libraries. Instead, some modern tools focus on detecting unusual behavior at the system call level. As these types of tools mature, they can make a real difference to your workload’s security because they rely on actual observed behavior rather than up-to-date signature files.

    4: Container observability

    What’s going on in there?

    Finally, if your container images are being run somewhere by orchestration tools and well managed by security and policy enforcement tools, you need to know what your containers are doing and how well they are doing it. Orchestration tools will likely have their own logs and metrics, as will networking layers, and security and compliance checking tools; there is a lot to understand in a containerized environment. Container observability covers logging and metrics collection for both your workloads and the tools that run them.

    One very important element of observability is the importance of externalizing logs and metrics in a containerized environment. Containers come and go, and in many cases the nodes running on them also come and go, so relying on local storage is not recommended.

    The importance of a container management strategy

    A container management platform typically consists of a variety of tools from multiple sources. Some container management software vendors or container management services attempt to address all four key components of effective container management. However, many organizations already have tools that provide at least some of the features they need and don't want to waste existing licenses or make significant changes to their entire infrastructure just to run containers.

    When choosing tools from multiple sources, it's important to understand what needs each tool meets and what it doesn't. This holistic approach is necessary to avoid gaps and duplication of effort.

    For example, scanning an image as part of the build pipeline and then rescanning the image while the container is running is a waste of CPU cycles in the runtime environment. Similarly, using orchestration tools and separate host-based agents to aggregate logs or metrics can waste CPU cycles as well as storage and network resources.

    Planning a container management strategy

    1 DIY, Managed Services, or Packaged Products
    Developer satisfaction is important, but it's also wise to consider the team running the container management software. Migrating from bare metal or virtual machine-based deployment methodologies to containers can involve a significant learning curve, so it's a good idea to choose a tool that will help smooth this curve.
    2 Kubernetes
    In the world of container management, Kubernetes is fast becoming the de facto standard for container orchestration and scheduling. Most of the products that address the other aspects of container management discussed in this post (image supply chain, runtime security and policy enforcement, observability) integrate easily with Kubernetes. Kubernetes is open-source software and using it is possible if your team has the technical skills and the desire to implement it themselves. However, that doesn't mean you should automatically opt to build yourself.
    3 Managed Kubernetes
    Kubernetes is difficult to implement well. As a result, many solution providers offer packaged products or managed services to facilitate Kubernetes adoption. All major cloud providers now offer Kubernetes services that reduce the operational burden on your teams. Organizations that have invested heavily in the ecosystem of a particular cloud provider may find this route suitable. Other organizations may be able to find a fully managed service that provides container images and lets the service provider worry about running the images which, depending on the cost and capacity of the organization, may be the best option.
    4 Third-Party Orchestration Products
    A third approach is packaged products from providers that can be installed on the infrastructure (cloud or otherwise). These products can offer several potential advantages over DIY or cloud provider offerings, such as access to additional configuration options or cluster components, enhanced functionality, implementation assistance and training, post-installation product support, and reduced risk of cloud provider lock-in.

    Source: Kubernetes, 2022; Rancher, 2022

    Infrastructure considerations

    It's important to describe your organization’s current and future infrastructure strategy and how it fits into your container management strategy. It’s all basic for now, but if you plan to move to a virtual machine or cloud provider next year, your container management solution should be able to adapt to your environment now and in the future. Similarly, if you’ve already chosen a public cloud, you may want to make sure that the tool you choose supports some of the cloud options, but full compatibility may not be an important feature.

    Infrastructure considerations extend beyond computing. Choosing a container management platform should be compatible with the existing network infrastructure and storage capacity available to your organization. If you have existing policy enforcement, monitoring, and alerting tools, the ideal solution should be able to take advantage of them. Moving to containers can be a game changer for developers and operations teams, so continuing to use existing tools to reduce complexity where possible can save time and money.

    Leverage the reference architecture to guide your container management strategy

    Questions for support transition

    Using the examples as a guide, complete the tool to strategize your container management

    Download the Reference Architecture

    Bibliography

    Mell, Emily. “What is container management and why is it important?” TechTarget, April 2021.
    https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/definition/container-management-software#:~:text=A%20container%20management%20ecosystem%20automates,operator%20to%20keep%20up%20with

    Conrad, John. “What is Container Orchestration?” CapitalOne, 24 August 2020.
    https://www.capitalone.com/tech/cloud/what-is-container-orchestration/?v=1673357442624

    Kubernetes. “Cluster Networking.” Kubernetes, 2022.
    https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/networking/

    Rancher. “Comparing Kubernetes CNI Providers: Flannel, Calico, Canal, and Weave.” Rancher, 2022.
    https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/comparing-kubernetes-cni-providers-flannel-calico-canal-and-weave/

    Wilson, Bob. “16 Best Container Orchestration Tools and Services.” DevopsCube, 5 January 2022.
    https://devopscube.com/docker-container-clustering-tools/

    Implement and Optimize Application Integration Governance

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    • Parent Category Name: Enterprise Integration
    • Parent Category Link: /enterprise-integration
    • Enterprises begin integrating their applications without recognizing the need for a managed and documented governance model.
    • Application Integration (AI) is an inherently complex concept, involving the communication among multiple applications, groups, and even organizations; thus developing a governance model can be overwhelming.
    • The options for AI Governance are numerous and will vary depending on the size, type, and maturity of the organization, adding yet another layer of complexity.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Governance is essential with integrated applications. If you are planning to integrate your applications, you should already be considering a governance model.
    • Proper governance requires oversight into chains of responsibility, policy, control mechanisms, measurement, and communication.
    • People and process are key. Technology options to aid in governance of integrated apps exist, but will not greatly contribute to the success of AI.

    Impact and Result

    • Assess your capabilities and determine which area of governance requires the most attention to achieve success in AI.
    • Form an Integration Center of Competency to oversee AI governance to ensure compliance and increase success.
    • Conduct ongoing training with your personnel to ensure up-to-date skills and end user understanding.
    • Frequently revisit your AI governance strategy to ensure alignment with business goals.

    Implement and Optimize Application Integration Governance Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Implement and optimize Application Integration Governance

    Know where to start and where to focus your attention in the implementation of an AI governance strategy.

    • Storyboard: Implement and Optimize Application Integration Governance

    2. Assess the organization's capabilities in AI Governance

    Assess your current and target states in AI Governance.

    • Application Integration Governance Gap Analysis Tool

    3. Create an Integration Center of Competency

    Have a governing body to oversee AI Governance.

    • Integration Center of Competency Charter Template

    4. Establish AI Governance principles and guidelines

    Create a basis for the organization’s AI governance model.

    • Application Integration Policy and Principles Template

    5. Create an AI service catalog

    Keep record of services and interfaces to reduce waste.

    • Integration Service Catalog Template
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    Excel Through COVID-19 With a Focused Business Architecture

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    • Parent Category Name: Strategy & Operating Model
    • Parent Category Link: /strategy-and-operating-model
    • Business architecture, including value stream and business capability models, is the tool you need to reposition your organization for post-COVID-19 success.
    • Your business architecture model represents your strategic business components. It guides the development of all other architectures to enable new and improved business function.
    • Evaluating your current business architecture, or indeed rebuilding it, creates a foundation for facilitated discussions and target state alignment between IT and the senior C-suite.
    • New projects and initiatives during COVID-19 must evolve business architecture so that your front-line workers and your customers are supported through the resolution of the pandemic. Specifically, your projects and initiatives must be directly traced to evolving your architecture.
    • Business architecture anchors downstream architectural iterations and initiatives. Measure business capability enablement results directly from projects and initiatives using a business architecture model.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Focus on your most disruptive, game-changing innovations that have been on the backburner for some time. Here you will find the ingredients for post-pandemic success.

    Impact and Result

    • Craft your business architecture model, aligned to the current climate, to refocus on your highest priority goals and increase your chances of post-COVID-19 excellence.

    Excel Through COVID-19 With a Focused Business Architecture Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Create minimum viable business architecture

    Create your minimum viable business architecture.

    • Excel Through COVID-19 With a Focused Business Architecture Storyboard
    • Excel Through COVID-19 With a Focused Business Architecture – Healthcare
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    • Excel Through COVID-19 With a Focused Business Architecture – Manufacturing
    • Business Capability Modeling

    2. Identify COVID-19 critical capabilities for your industry

    If there are a handful of capabilities that your business needs to focus on right now, what are they?

    3. Brainstorm COVID-19 business opportunities

    Identify business opportunities.

    4. Enrich capability model with COVID-19 opportunities

    Enrich your capability model.

    [infographic]

    Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics

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    • Parent Category Name: Data Management
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    • Continuous and disruptive database design updates while trying to have one design pattern to fit all use cases.
    • Sub-par performance while loading, retrieving, and querying data.
    • You want to shorten time-to-market of the projects aimed at data delivery and consumption.
    • Unnecessarily complicated database design limits usability of the data and requires knowledge of specific data structures for their effective use.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Evolve your data architecture. Data pipeline is an evolutionary break away from the enterprise data warehouse methodology.
    • Avoid endless data projects. Building centralized all-in-one enterprise data warehouses takes forever to deliver a positive ROI.
    • Facilitate data self-service. Use-case optimized data delivery repositories facilitate data self-service.

    Impact and Result

    • Understand your high-level business capabilities and interactions across them – your data repositories and flows should be just a digital reflection thereof.
    • Divide your data world in logical verticals overlaid with various speed data progression lanes, i.e. build your data pipeline – and conquer it one segment at a time.
    • Use the most appropriate database design pattern for a given phase/component in your data pipeline progression.

    Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Build your data pipeline using the most appropriate data design patterns.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand data progression

    Identify major business capabilities, business processes running inside and across them, and datasets produced or used by these business processes and activities performed thereupon.

    • Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics – Phase 1: Understand Data Progression

    2. Identify data pipeline components

    Identify data pipeline vertical zones: data creation, accumulation, augmentation, and consumption, as well as horizontal lanes: fast, medium, and slow speed.

    • Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics – Phase 2: Identify Data Pipeline Components

    3. Select data design patterns

    Select the right data design patterns for the data pipeline components, as well as an applicable data model industry standard (if available).

    • Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics – Phase 3: Select Data Design Patterns
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Understand Data Progression

    The Purpose

    Identify major business capabilities, business processes running inside and across them, and datasets produced or used by these business processes and activities performed thereupon.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Indicates the ownership of datasets and the high-level data flows across the organization.

    Activities

    1.1 Review & discuss typical pitfalls (and their causes) of major data management initiatives.

    1.2 Discuss the main business capabilities of the organization and how they interact.

    1.3 Discuss the business processes running inside and across business capabilities and the datasets involved.

    1.4 Create the Enterprise Business Process Model (EBPM).

    Outputs

    Understanding typical pitfalls (and their causes) of major data management initiatives.

    Business capabilities map

    Business processes map

    Enterprise Business Process Model (EBPM)

    2 Identify Data Pipeline Components

    The Purpose

    Identify data pipeline vertical zones: data creation, accumulation, augmentation, and consumption, as well as horizontal lanes: fast, medium, and slow speed.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Design the high-level data progression pipeline.

    Activities

    2.1 Review and discuss the concept of a data pipeline in general, as well as the vertical zones: data creation, accumulation, augmentation, and consumption.

    2.2 Identify these zones in the enterprise business model.

    2.3 Review and discuss multi-lane data progression.

    2.4 Identify different speed lanes in the enterprise business model.

    Outputs

    Understanding of a data pipeline design, including its zones.

    EBPM mapping to Data Pipeline Zones

    Understanding of multi-lane data progression

    EBPM mapping to Multi-Speed Data Progression Lanes

    3 Develop the Roadmap

    The Purpose

    Select the right data design patterns for the data pipeline components, as well as an applicable data model industry standard (if available).

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Use of appropriate data design pattern for each zone with calibration on the data progression speed.

    Activities

    3.1 Review and discuss various data design patterns.

    3.2 Discuss and select the data design pattern selection for data pipeline components.

    3.3 Discuss applicability of data model industry standards (if available).

    Outputs

    Understanding of various data design patterns.

    Data Design Patterns mapping to the data pipeline.

    Selection of an applicable data model from available industry standards.

    Incident Management for Small Enterprise

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    • Parent Category Name: Incident & Problem Management
    • Parent Category Link: /incident-and-problem-management
    • Technical debt and disparate systems are big constraints for most small enterprise (SE) organizations. What may have worked years ago is no longer fit for purpose or the business is growing faster than the current tools in place can handle.
    • Super specialization of knowledge is also a common factor in smaller teams caused by complex architectures. While helpful, if that knowledge isn’t documented it can walk out the door with the resource and the rest of the team is left scrambling.
    • Lessons learned may be gathered for critical incidents but often are not propagated, which impacts the ability to solve recurring incidents.
    • Over time, repeated incidents can have a negative impact on the customer’s perception that the service desk is a credible and essential service to the business.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Go beyond the blind adoption of best-practice frameworks. No simple formula exists for improving incident management maturity. Identify the challenges in your incident lifecycle and draw on best-practice frameworks pragmatically to build a structured response to those challenges.
    • Track, analyze, and review results of incident response regularly. Without a comprehensive understanding of incident trends and patterns you can be susceptible to recurring incidents that increase in damage over time. Make the case for problem management, and successfully reduce the volume of unplanned work by scheduling it into regular IT activity.
    • Recurring incidents will happen; use runbooks for a consistent response each time. Save your organization response time and confusion by developing your own specific incident use cases. Incident response should follow a standard process, but each incident will have its own escalation process or call tree that identifies key participants.

    Impact and Result

    • Effective and efficient management of incidents involves a formal process of identifying, classifying, categorizing, responding, resolving, and closing of each incident. The key for smaller organizations, where technology or resources is a constraint, is to make the best practices usable for your unique environment.
    • Develop a plan that aligns with your organizational needs, and adapt best practices into light, sustainable processes, with the goal to improve time to resolve, cost to serve, and ultimately, end-user satisfaction.
    • Successful implementation of incident management will elevate the maturity of the service desk to a controlled state, preparing you for becoming proactive with problem management.

    Incident Management for Small Enterprise Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should implement incident management, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify and log incidents

    This phase will provide an overview of the incident lifecycle and an activity on how to classify the various types of incidents in your environment.

    • Service Desk Standard Operating Procedure
    • Incident Management Workflow Library (Visio)
    • Incident Management Workflow Library (PDF)

    2. Prioritize and define SLAs

    This phase will help you develop a categorization scheme for incident handling that ensures success and keeps it simple. It will also help you identify the most important runbooks necessary to create first.

    • Service Desk Ticket Categorization Schemes
    • IT Incident Runbook Prioritization Tool
    • IT Incident Management Runbook Blank Template

    3. Respond, recover, and close incidents

    This phase will help you identify how to use a knowledgebase to resolve incidents quicker. Identify what needs to be answered during a post-incident review and identify the criteria needed to invoke problem management.

    • Knowledgebase Article Template
    • Root-Cause Analysis Template
    • Post-Incident Review Questions Tracking Tool
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Incident Management for Small Enterprise

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Assess the Current State

    The Purpose

    Assess the current state of the incident management lifecycle within the organization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understand the incident lifecycle and how to classify them in your environment.

    Identify the roles and responsibilities of the incident response team.

    Document the incident workflows to identify areas of opportunities.

    Activities

    1.1 Outline your incident lifecycle challenges.

    1.2 Identify and classify incidents.

    1.3 Identify roles and responsibilities for incident handling.

    1.4 Design normal and critical incident workflows for target state.

    Outputs

    List of incident challenges for each phase of the incident lifecycle

    Incident classification scheme mapped to resolution team

    RACI chart

    Incident Workflow Library

    2 Define the Target State

    The Purpose

    Design or improve upon current incident and ticket categorization schemes, priority, and impact.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    List of the most important runbooks necessary to create first and a usable template to go forward with

    Activities

    2.1 Improve incident categorization scheme.

    2.2 Prioritize and define SLAs.

    2.3 Understand the purpose of runbooks and prioritize development.

    2.4 Develop a runbook template.

    Outputs

    Revised ticket categorization scheme

    Prioritization matrix based on impact and urgency

    IT Incident Runbook Prioritization Tool

    Top priority incident runbook

    3 Bridge the Gap

    The Purpose

    Respond, recover, and close incidents with root-cause analysis, knowledgebase, and incident runbooks.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    This module will help you to identify how to use a knowledgebase to resolve quicker.

    Identify what needs to be answered during a post-incident review.

    Identify criteria to invoke problem management.

    Activities

    3.1 Build a targeted knowledgebase.

    3.2 Build a post-incident review process.

    3.3 Identify metrics to track success.

    3.4 Build an incident matching process.

    Outputs

    Working knowledgebase template

    Root-cause analysis template and post-incident review checklist

    List of metrics

    Develop criteria for problem management

    Design Your Cloud Operations

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    • Parent Category Name: Operations Management
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    • Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.
    • Different stakeholders across previously separate teams rely on one another more than ever, but rules of engagement do not yet exist.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds.

    Impact and Result

    • Assess your key workflows’ maturity for life in the cloud and evaluate your readiness and need for new ways of working
    • Identify the work that must be done to deliver value in cloud services
    • Design your cloud operations framework and communicate it clearly and succinctly to secure buy-in

    Design Your Cloud Operations Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Design Your Cloud Operations Deck – A step-by-step storyboard to help guide you through the activities and tools in this project.

    This storyboard will help you assess your cloud maturity, understand relevant ways of working, and create a meaningful design of your cloud operations that helps align team members and stakeholders.

    • Design Your Cloud Operations – Storyboard
    • Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook
    • Roadmap Tool

    2. Planning and design tools.

    Use these templates and tools to assess your current state, design the cloud operations organizing framework, and create a roadmap.

    • Cloud Maturity Assessment

    3. Communication tools.

    Use these templates and tools to plan how you will communicate changes to key stakeholders and communicate the new cloud operations organizing framework in an executive presentation.

    • Cloud Operations Communication Plan
    • Cloud Operations Organizing Framework: Executive Brief

    Infographic

    Workshop: Design Your Cloud Operations

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Day 1

    The Purpose

    Establish Context

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Alignment on target state

    Activities

    1.1 Assess current cloud maturity and areas in need of improvement

    1.2 Identify the drivers for organizational redesign

    1.3 Review cloud objectives and obstacles

    1.4 Develop organization design principles

    Outputs

    Cloud maturity assessment

    Project drivers

    Cloud challenges and objectives

    Organization design principles

    2 Day 2

    The Purpose

    Establish Context

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of cloud workstreams

    Activities

    2.1 Evaluate new ways of working

    2.2 Develop a workstream target statement

    2.3 Identify cloud work

    Outputs

    Workstream target statement

    Cloud operations workflow diagrams

    3 Day 3

    The Purpose

    Design the Organization

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Visualization of the cloud operations future state

    Activities

    3.1 Design a future-state cloud operations diagram

    3.2 Create a current-state cloud operations diagram

    3.3 Define success indicators

    Outputs

    Future-state cloud operations diagram

    Current-state cloud operations diagram

    Success indicators

    4 Day 4

    The Purpose

    Communicate the Changes

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Alignment and buy-in from stakeholders

    Activities

    4.1 Create a roadmap

    4.2 Create a communication plan

    Outputs

    Roadmap

    Communication plan

    Further reading

    It’s “day two” in the cloud. Now what?

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analysts’ Perspective

    The image contains a picture of Andrew Sharp.

    Andrew Sharp

    Research Director

    Infrastructure & Operations Practice

    It’s “day two” in the cloud. Now what?

    Just because you’re in the cloud doesn’t mean everyone is on the same page about how cloud operations work – or should work.

    You have an opportunity to implement new ways of working. But if people can’t see the bigger picture – the organizing framework of your cloud operations – it will be harder to get buy-in to realize value from your cloud services.

    Use Info-Tech’s methodology to build out and visualize a cloud operations organizing framework that defines cloud work and aligns it to the right areas.

    The image contains a picture of Nabeel Sherif.

    Nabeel Sherif

    Principal Research Director

    Infrastructure & Operations Practice

    The image contains a picture of Emily Sugerman.

    Emily Sugerman

    Research Analyst

    Infrastructure & Operations Practice

    Scott Young

    Principal Research Director

    Infrastructure & Operations Practice

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Common Obstacles

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Widespread cloud adoption has created new opportunities and challenges:

    • Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.
    • Different stakeholders across previously separate teams rely on one another more than ever, but rules of engagement do not yet exist, leading to a lack of direction, employee frustration, missed work, inefficiency, and unacceptable risk.
    • Many organizations have bought their way into a SaaS portfolio. Now, as key applications leave their network, I&O leaders still have accountability for these apps, but little visibility and control over them.
    • Few organizations are, or will ever be, cloud only. Your operations will be both on-prem and in-cloud for the foreseeable future and you must be able to accommodate both.
    • Traditional infrastructure siloes no longer work for cloud operations, but key stakeholders are wary of significant change.

    Clearly communicate the need for operations changes:

    • Identify current challenges with cloud operations. Assess your readiness and fit for new ways of working involved in cloud operations: DevOps, SRE, Platform Engineering, and more.
    • Use Info-Tech’s templates to design a cloud operations organizing framework. Define cloud work, and align work to the right work areas.
    • Communicate the design. Gain buy-in from your key stakeholders for the considerable organizational change management required to achieve durable change.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds.

    Your Challenge

    Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.

    • As key applications leave for the cloud, I&O teams are still expected to manage access, spend, and security but may have little or no visibility or control over the applications themselves.
    • The automation and self-service capabilities of cloud aren’t delivering the speed the business expected because teams don’t work together effectively.
    • Business leaders purchase their own cloud solutions because, from their point of view, IT’s processes are cumbersome and ineffective.
    • Accounting practices and governance mechanisms haven’t adjusted to enable new development practices and technologies.
    • Security and cost management requirements may not be accounted for by teams acquiring or developing solutions.
    • All of this contributes to frustration, missed work, wasteful spending, and unacceptable risk.

    Obstacles, by the numbers:

    85% of respondents reported security in the cloud was a serious concern.

    73% reported balancing responsibilities between a central cloud team and business units was a top concern.

    The average organization spent 13% more than they’d budgeted on cloud – even when budgets were expected to increase by 29% in the next year.

    32% of all cloud spend was estimated to be wasted spend.

    56% of operations professionals said their primary focus is cloud services.

    81% of security professionals thought it was difficult to get developers to prioritize bug fixes.

    42% of security professionals felt bugs were being caught too late in the development process.

    1. Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report. 2. GitLab DevSecOps 2021 Survey

    Cloud operations are different, but IT departments struggle to change

    • There’s no sense of urgency in the organization that change is needed, particularly from teams that aren’t directly involved in operations. It can be challenging to make the case that change is needed.
    • Beware “analysis paralysis”! With so many options, philosophies, approaches, and methodologies, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by choice and fail to make needed changes.
    • The solution to the problem requires organizational changes beyond the operations team, but you don’t have the authority to make those changes directly. Operations can influence the solution, but they likely can’t direct it.
    • Behavior, culture, and organizations take time and work to change. Progress is usually evolutionary – but this can also mean it feels like it’s happening too slowly.
    • It’s not just cloud, and it probably never will be. You’ll need to account for operating both on-premises and cloud technologies for the foreseeable future.

    Follow Info-Tech’s Methodology

    1. Ensure alignment with the risks and drivers of the business and understand your organization’s strengths and gaps for a cloud operations world.

    2. Understand the balance of different types of deliveries you’re responsible for in the cloud.

    3. Reduce risk by reinforcing the key operational pillars of cloud operations to your workstreams.

    4. Identify “work areas,” decide which area is responsible for what tasks and how work areas should interact in order to best facilitate desired business outcomes.

    The image contains a screenshot of a diagram demonstrating Info-Tech's Methodology, as described in the text above.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Start by designing operations around the main workflow you have for cloud services; i.e. If you mostly build or host in cloud, build the diagram to maximize value for that workflow.

    Operating Framework Elements

    Proper design of roles and responsibilities for each cloud workflow category will help reduce risk by reinforcing the key operational pillars of cloud operations.

    We base this on a composite of the well-architected frameworks established by the top global cloud providers today.

    Workflow Categories

    • Build
    • Host
    • Consume

    Key Pillars

    • Performance
    • Reliability
    • Cost Effectiveness
    • Security
    • Operational Excellence

    Risks to Mitigate

    • Changes to Support Model
    • Changes to Security & Governance
    • Changes to Skills & Roles
    • Replicating Old Habits
    • Misaligned Stakeholders

    Cloud Operations Design

    Info-Tech’s Methodology

    Assess Maturity and Ways of Working

    Define Cloud Work

    Design Cloud Operations

    Communicate and Secure Buy-in

    Assess your key workflows’ maturity for “life in the cloud,” related to Key Operational Pillars. Evaluate your readiness and need for new ways of working.

    Identify the work that must be done to deliver value in cloud services.

    Define key cloud work areas, the work they do, and how they should share information and interact.

    Outline the change you recommend to a range of stakeholders. Gain buy-in for the plan.

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

    Cloud Maturity Assessment

    Assess the intensity and cloud maturity of your IT operations for each of the key cloud workstreams: Consume, Host, and Build

    The image contains screenshots of the Cloud Maturity Assessment.

    Communication Plan

    Identify stakeholders, what’s in it for them, what the impact will be, and how you will communicate over the course of the change.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Communcation Plan.

    Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook

    Capture the diagram as you build it.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook.

    Roadmap Tool

    Build a roadmap to put the design into action.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Roadmap Tool.

    Key deliverable:

    Cloud Operations Organizing Framework

    The Cloud Operations Organizing Framework is a communication tool that introduces the cloud operations diagram and establishes its context and justification.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Cloud Operations Organizing Framework.

    Project Outline

    Phase 1: Establish Context

    1.1: Identify challenges, opportunities, and cloud maturity

    1.2: Evaluate new ways of working

    1.3: Define cloud work

    Phase 2: Design the organization and communicate changes

    2.1: Design a draft cloud operations diagram

    2.2: Communicate changes

    Outputs

    Cloud Services Objectives and Obstacles

    Cloud Operations Workflow Diagrams

    Cloud Maturity Assessment

    Draft Cloud Operations Diagram

    Communication Plan

    Roadmap Tool

    Cloud Operations Organizing Framework

    Project benefits

    Benefits for IT

    Benefits for the business

    • Define the work required to effectively deliver cloud services to deliver business value.
    • Define key roles for operating cloud services.
    • Outline an operations diagram that visually communicates what key work areas do and how they interact.
    • Communicate needed changes to key stakeholders.
    • Receive more value from cloud services when the organization is structured to deliver value including:
      • Avoiding cost overruns
      • Securing services
      • Providing faster, more effective delivery
      • Increasing predictability
      • Reducing error rates

    Calculate the value of Info-Tech’s Methodology

    The value of the project is the delivery of organizational change that improves the way you manage cloud services

    Example Goal

    How this blueprint can help

    How you might measure success/value

    Streamline Responsibilities

    The operations team is spending too much time fighting applications fires, which is distracting it from needed platform improvements.

    • Identify shared and separate responsibilities for development and platform operations teams.
    • Focus the operations team on securing and automating cloud platform(s).
    • Reduce time wasted on back and forth between development and operations teams (20 hrs. per employee per year x 50 staff = 1000 hrs.).
    • Deliver automation features that reduces development lead time by one hour per sprint (40 devs x 20 sprints per yr. x 1 hr. = 800 hrs.).

    Improve Cost Visibility

    The teams responsible for cost management today don’t have the authority, visibility, or time to effectively find wasted spend.

    The teams responsible for cost management today don’t have the authority, visibility, or time to effectively find wasted spend.

    • Ensure operations contributes to visibility and execution of cost governance.
    • $1,000,000 annual spend on cloud services.
    • Of this, assume 32% is wasted spend ($320k).1
    • New cost management function has a target to cut waste by half next year saving ~$160k.
    • Cost visibility and capture metrics (e.g. accurate tagging metrics, right-sizing execution).
    1. Average wasted cloud spend across all organizations, from the 2022 Flexera State of the Cloud Report

    Understand your cloud vision and strategy before you redesign operations

    Guide your operations redesign with an overarching cloud vision and strategy that aligns to and enables the business’s goals.

    Cloud Vision

    The image contains a screenshot of the Define Your Cloud Vision.

    Cloud Strategy

    It is difficult to get or maintain buy-in for changes to operations without everyone on the same page about the basic value proposition cloud offers your organization.

    Do the workload and risk analysis to create a defensible cloud vision statement that boils down into a single statement: “This is how we want to use the cloud.”

    Once you have your basic cloud vision, take the next step by documenting a cloud strategy.

    Establish your steering committee with stakeholders from IT, business, and leadership to work through the essential decisions around vision and alignment, people, governance, and technology.

    Your cloud operations design should align to a cloud strategy document that provides guidelines on establishing a cloud council, preparing staff for changing skills, mitigating risks through proper governance, and setting a direction for migration, provisioning, and monitoring decisions.

    Key Insights

    Focus on the future, not the present

    Define your target cloud operations state first, then plan how to get there. If you begin by trying to reconstruct on-prem operations in the cloud, you will build an operations model that is the worst of both worlds.

    Responsibilities change in the cloud

    Understand what you mean by cloud work

    Focus where it matters

    Cloud is a different way of consuming IT resources and applications and it requires a different operational approach than traditional IT.

    In most cases, cloud operations involves less direct execution and more service validation and monitoring

    Work that is invisible to the customer can still be essential to delivering customer value. A lot of operations work is invisible to your organization’s customers but is required to deliver stability, security, efficiency, and more.

    Cloud work is not just applications that have been approved by IT. Consider how unsanctioned software purchased by the business will be integrated and managed.

    Start by designing operations around the main workflow you have for cloud services. If you mostly build or host in the cloud, build the diagram to maximize value for that workflow.

    Design principles will often change over time as the organization’s strategy evolves.

    Identify skills requirements and gaps as early as possible to avoid skills gaps later. Whether you plan to acquire skills via training or cross-training, hiring, contracting, or outsourcing, effectively building skills takes time.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges

    Calls #2&3: Assess cloud maturity and drivers for org. redesign

    Call #4: Review cloud objectives and obstacles

    Call #5: Evaluate new ways of working and identify cloud work

    Calls #6&7: Create your Cloud Operations diagram

    Call #8: Create your communication plan and build roadmap

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1

    Day 2

    Day 3

    Day 4

    Day 5

    Establish Context

    Design the Organization and Communicate Changes

    Next Steps and
    Wrap-Up (offsite)

    Activities

    1.1 Assess current cloud maturity and areas in need of improvement

    1.2 Identify the drivers for organizational redesign

    1.3 Review cloud objectives and obstacles

    1.4 Develop organization design principles

    2.1 Evaluate new ways of working

    2.2 Develop a workstream target statement

    2.3 Identify cloud work

    3.1 Design a future-state cloud operations diagram

    3.2 Create a current state cloud operations diagram

    3.3 Define success indicators

    4.1 Create a roadmap

    4.2 Create a communication plan

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

    Deliverables

    1. Cloud Maturity Assessment
    2. Cloud Challenges and Objectives
    1. Workstream target statement
    2. Cloud Operations Workflow Diagrams
    1. Future and current state cloud operations diagrams
    1. Roadmap
    2. Communication Plan

    Cloud Operations Organizing Framework.

    Phase 1:

    Establish context

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    1.1 Establish operating model design principals by identifying goals & challenges, workstreams, and cloud maturity

    1.2 Evaluate new ways of working

    1.3 Identify cloud work

    2.1 Draft an operating model

    2.2 Communicate proposed changes

    Phase Outcomes:

    Define current maturity and which workstreams are important to your organization.

    Understand new operating approaches and which apply to your workstream balance.

    Identify a new target state for IT operations.

    Before you get started

    Set yourself up for success with these three steps:

    • This methodology and the related slides are intended to be executed via intensive, collaborative working sessions using the rest of this slide deck.
    • Ensure the working sessions are successful by working through these steps before you start work on defining your cloud operations.

    1. Identify an operations design working group

    2. Review cloud vision and strategy

    3. Create a working folder

    This should be a group with insight into current cloud challenges, and with the authority to drive change. This group is the main audience for the activities in this blueprint.

    Review your established planning work and documentation.

    Create a repository to house your notes and any work in progress.

    Create a working folder

    15 minutes

    Create a central repository to support transparency and collaboration. It’s an obvious step, but one that’s often forgotten.

    1. Download all the documents associated with this blueprint to a shared repository accessible to all participants. Keep separate folders for templates and work-in-progress.
    2. Share the link to the repository with all attendees. Include links to the repository in any meeting invites you set up as working sessions for the project.
    3. Use the repository for all the work you do in the activities listed in this blueprint.

    Step 1.1: Identify goals and challenges, workstreams, and cloud maturity

    Participants

    • Operations Design Working Group, which may include:
      • Cloud owners
      • Platform/Applications Team leads
      • Infra & Ops managers

    Outcomes

    • Identify your current cloud maturity and areas in need of improvement.
    • Define the advantages you expect to realize from cloud services and any obstacles you have to overcome to meet those objectives.
    • Identify the reasons why redesigning cloud operations is necessary.
    • Develop organization design principles.

    “Start small: Begin with a couple services. Then, based on the feedback you receive from Operations and the business, modify your approach and keep increasing your footprint.” – Nenad Begovic

    Cloud changes operational activities, tactics, and goals

    As you adopt cloud services, the operations core mission remains . . .

    • IT operations are expected to deliver stable, efficient, and secure IT services.

    . . . but operational activities are evolving.

    • Core IT operational processes remain relevant, such as incident or capacity management, but opportunities to automate or outsource operations tasks will change how that work is done.
    • As you rely more on automation and outsourcing, the team may see less direct execution in its day-to-day work and more solution design and validation.
    • Outsourcing frees the team from operational toil but reduces the direct control over your end-to-end solution and increases your reliance on your vendor.
    • Pay-as-you-go pricing models present opportunities for streamlined delivery and cost rationalization but require you to rethink how you do cost and asset management.
    • It’s very easy for the business to buy a SaaS solution without consulting IT, which can lead to duplicated functionality, integration challenges, security threats, and more.

    Design a model for cloud operations that helps you achieve value from your cloud environment.

    “As operating models shift to the cloud, you still need the same people and processes. However, the shift is focused on a higher level of operations. If your people no longer focus on server uptime, then their success metrics will change. When security is no longer protected by the four walls of a datacenter, your threat profile changes.

    (Microsoft, “Understand Cloud Operating Models,” 2022)

    Operational responsibilities are shared with a range of stakeholders

    When using a vendor-operated public cloud, IT exists in a shared responsibility model with the cloud service provider, one that is further differentiated by the type of cloud service model in use: broadly, software-as a service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

    Your IT operations organization may still reflect a structure where IT retains control over the entire infrastructure stack from facilities to application and defines their operational roles and processes accordingly.

    If the organization chooses a co-location facility, they outsource facility responsibility to a third-party provider, but much of the rest of the traditional IT operating model remains the same. The operations model that worked for an entirely premises-based environment is very different from one that is made up of, for instance, a portfolio of SaaS applications, where your control is limited to the top of the infrastructure stack at the application layer.

    Once an organization migrates workloads to the cloud, IT gives up an increasing amount of control to the vendor, and its traditional operational roles & responsibilities necessarily change.

    The image contains a screenshot that demonstrates what the cloud service models are.

    Align operations with customer value

    • Decisions about operational design should be made with customer value in mind. Remember that cloud adoption should be an enabler of adaptability in the face of changing business needs!
    • Think about how the operations team is indispensable to the value received by your customer. Think about the types of changes that can add to the value your customers receive.
    • A focus on value will help you establish and explain the rationale and urgency required to deliver on needed changes. If you can’t explain how the changes you propose will help deliver value, your proposal will come across as change for the sake of change.
    The image contains a screenshot of a diagram to demonstrate how operational design decisions need to be made with customer value in mind.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Work that is invisible to the customer can still be essential to delivering customer value. A lot of operations work is invisible to your organization’s customers but required to deliver stability, security, efficiency, and more.

    A new consumption model means a different mix of activities

    Evolving to cloud-optimal operations also means re-assessing and adapting your team’s approach to achieving cloud maturity, especially with respect to how automation and standardization can be leveraged to best achieve optimization in cloud.

    Traditional ITDesignExecuteValidateSupportMonitor
    CloudDesignExecuteValidateSupportMonitor

    Info-Tech Insight

    Cloud is a different way of consuming IT resources and applications and requires a different operational approach than traditional IT.

    In most cases, cloud operations involves less direct execution and more service validation and monitoring.

    The Service Models in cloud correspond to the way your organization delivers IT

    Service Model

    Example

    Function

    Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

    Salesforce.com

    Office 365

    Workday

    Consume

    Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

    Azure Stack

    AWS SageMaker

    WordPress

    Build

    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

    Microsoft Azure

    Amazon EC2

    Google Cloud Platform

    Host

    Define how you plan to use cloud services

    Your cloud operations will include different tasks, teams, and workflows, depending on whether you consume cloud services, build them, or host on them.

    Function

    Business Need

    Service Model

    Example Tasks

    Consume

    “I need a commodity, off-the-shelf service that we can configure to our organization’s needs.

    Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

    Onboard and add users to a new SaaS offering. Vendor management of SaaS providers. Configure/integrate the SaaS offering to meet business needs.

    Build

    “I need to create significantly customized or net-new products and services.”

    Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) & Infrastructure as-a-Service (IaaS)

    Create custom applications. Build and maintain a container platform. Manage CI/CD pipelines and tools. Share infrastructure and applications patterns.

    Host

    “I need compute, storage, and networking components that reflect key cloud characteristics (on-demand self-service, metered usage, etc.).”

    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

    Stand up compute, networking, and storage resources to host a COTS application. Plan to increase storage capacity to support future demand.

    Align to the well-architected framework

    • Each cloud provider has defined a well-architected framework (WAF) that defines effective deployment and operations for their services.
    • WAFs embody a set of best practices and design principles to leverage the cloud in a more efficient, secure, and cost-effective manner.
    • While each vendor’s WAF has its own definitions and nuances, they collectively share a set of key principles, or “pillars,” that define the desired outcome of any cloud deployment.
    • These pillars address the key areas of risk when migrating to a public cloud platform.

    “In order to accelerate public cloud adoption, you need to focus on infrastructure-as-code and script everything you can. Unlike traditional operations, CloudOps focuses on creating scripts: a script for task A, a script for task B, etc.”

    – Nenad Begovic

    Pillars

    • Reliability
    • Security
    • Cost Optimization
    • Operational Excellence
    • Performance Efficiency

    General Best Practice Capability Areas

    • Host
    • Network
    • Data
    • Identity Management
    • Cost/Subscription Management

    Assess cloud maturity

    2 hours

    1. Download a copy of the Cloud Maturity Assessment Tool.
    2. As a group, work through:
      • The balance of your operations activities from a Host/Build/Consume perspective. What are you responsible for delivering now? How do you expect things will change in the future?
      • Which workstreams to focus on. Are there activity categories that are critical or non-critical or that don’t represent a significant portion of overall work? Conversely, are there workstreams that you feel are subject to particular risk when moving to cloud?
    3. Fill out the Maturity Quiz tab in the Cloud Maturity Assessment Tool for the workstreams you have chosen to focus on.
    InputOutput
    • Insight into and experience with your current cloud environment.
    • Maturity scoring for key workload streams as they align to the pillars of a general well-architected cloud framework
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip chart
    • Operating model template
    • Cloud platform SMEs

    Download theCloud Maturity Assessment Tool

    Identify the drivers for organizational redesign

    Whiteboard Activity

    An absolute must-have in any successful redesign is a shared understanding and commitment to changing the status quo.

    Without a clear and urgent call to action, the design changes will be seen as change for the sake of change and therefore entirely safe to ignore.

    Take up the following questions as a group:

    1. What kind of organizational change is needed?
    2. Why do we think the need for this change is urgent?
    3. What do we think will happen if no change occurs? What’s the worst-case scenario?

    Record your answers so you can reference and use them in the communication materials you’ll create in Phase 2.

    InputOutput
    • Cloud maturity assessment
    • Objectives and obstacles
    • Insight into existing challenges stemming from organizational design challenges
    • A list of reasons that form a compelling argument for organizational change
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip chart
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    “We know, for example, that 70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. We also know that when people are truly invested in change it is 30 percent more likely to stick.”

    – Ewenstein, Smith, Sologar

    McKinsey (2015)

    Consider the value of change from advantage and obstacle perspectives

    Consider what you intend to achieve and the obstacles to overcome to help identify the changes required to achieve your desired future state.

    Advantage Perspective

    Ideas for Change

    Obstacle Perspective

    What advantages do cloud services offer us as an organization?

    For example:

    • Enhance service features.
    • Enhance user experience.
    • Provide ubiquitous access.
    • Scalability to align with demand.
    • Automate or outsource routine tasks.

    What obstacles prevent us from realizing value in cloud services?

    For example:

    • Inadequate stability and reliability
    • Difficult to observe or monitor workloads
    • Challenges ensuring cloud security
    • Insufficient access to relevant skills

    Review risks and challenges

    Changes to Support Model

    • Have we identified who is on the cloud ops team?
    • Do we know where we are procuring skills (internal IT vs. third party) and for how long?
    • Do we know where we are in the migration process?

    Changes to security & governance

    • Have we identified how our attack surface changes in the cloud?
    • Do we have guardrails in place to govern self-provisioning users?
    • Are we managing cost overage risks?

    Replicating old habits

    • Have we made concrete plans to leverage cloud capabilities to standardize and automate outputs?
    • Are we simply reproducing existing systems in the cloud?

    Changes to Skills & Roles

    • Is our staff excited to learn new skills and technologies? Are our specialists prepared to acquire generalist skills to support cloud services?
    • Do we have training plans created and aligned to our technology roadmap?
    • Do we know what head count we need?

    Misaligned stakeholders

    • Have we identified our key stakeholders and teams? Have we considered what changes will impact them and how?
    • Are we meeting regularly and collaborating effectively with our peers, or are we siloed?

    Review cloud objectives and obstacles

    Whiteboard Activity

    1 hour

    1. With your working group, review why you’re using cloud in the first place. What advantages do you expect to realize by adopting cloud services? If we achieve what we’ve set out to do, what should that look and feel like to us, our organization, and our organization’s customers?
      • You should have identified cloud drivers and objectives in your cloud vision and strategy – leverage and validate what you already have!
    2. Next, identify obstacles that are preventing you from fully realizing the value of cloud services.
    3. Finally, brainstorm initial ideas for change. What could we start doing that could help us better use cloud in the future? Are there changes to how we need to organize ourselves to collaborate more effectively?
    InputOutput
    • Insight into and experience with your current cloud environment
    • Identified key business outcomes you expect to realize by adopting cloud services
    • Identified challenges and obstacles that are preventing you from realizing key outcomes
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip chart
    • Cloud operations design working group.

    Commonly cited advantages and obstacles

    Cloud Advantages/Objectives

    • Deliver faster on commitments to the business by removing infrastructure provisioning as a bottleneck.
    • Simplify capacity management on flexible cloud-based infrastructure.
    • Reduce capital spending on IT infrastructure.
    • Create sandboxes/innovation practices to experiment with and develop new functionality on cloud platforms.
    • Easily enable ubiquitous access to key corporate services.
    • Minimize the expense and effort required to maintain a data center – power & cooling, cabling, or physical hardware.
    • Leverage existing automation tools from cloud vendors to speed up integration and deployment.
    • Direct costs for specific services can improve transparency and cost allocation, allowing IT to directly “show-back” or charge-back cloud costs to specific cost centers.

    Obstacles

    Need to speed up provisioning of PaaS/IaaS/data resources to development and project teams.

    No time to develop and improve platform services and standards due to other responsibilities.

    We constantly run up unexpected cloud costs.

    Not enough time for continuous learning and development.

    The business will buy SaaS apps and only let us know after they’ve been purchased, leading to overlapping functionality; gaps in compliance, security, or data protection requirements; integration challenges; cost inefficiencies; and more.

    Role descriptions haven’t kept up with tech changes.

    Obvious opportunities to rationalize costs aren’t surfaced (e.g. failing to make use of existing volume licensing agreements).

    Skills needed to properly operate cloud solutions aren’t identified until breakdowns happen.

    Establish organization design principles

    You’ve established a need for organizational change. What will that change look like?

    Design principles are concise, direct statements that describe how you will design your organization to achieve key objectives and address key challenges.

    This is a critically important step for several reasons:

    • A set of clear, concise statements that describe what the design should achieve provides parameters that will help you create and evaluate different design options.
    • A focused, facilitated discussion to create those statements will help uncover conflicting assumptions between key stakeholders.
    • A comprehensive description of the various ways the organization should change makes it easier to identify misaligned or incompatible objectives.
    • A description of what your organization should look like in the future will help you identify where changes will be required .

    Examples of design principles:

    1. We will create a path to review and publish effective application/platform patterns.
    2. A single governing body should have oversight into all cloud costs.
    3. Development must happen only on approved cloud platforms.
    4. Application teams must address operational issues that derive from the applications they’ve created.
    5. Security practices should be embedded into approved cloud platforms and be automatically applied wherever possible.
    6. Focus is on improving developer experience on cloud platforms.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Design principles will often change as the organization’s strategy evolves.

    Align design principles to your objectives

    Developing design principles starts with your key objectives. What do we absolutely have to get right to deliver value through cloud services?

    Once you have your direction set, work through the points in the star model to establish how you will meet your objectives and deliver value. Each point in the star is an important element in your design – taken together, it paints a holistic picture of your future-state organization.

    The changes you choose to implement that affect capabilities, structure, processes, rewards, and people should be self-reinforcing. Each point in the star is connected to, and should support, the other points.

    “There is no one-size-fits-all organization design that all companies – regardless of their particular strategy needs – should subscribe to.”

    – Jay Galbraith, “The Star Model”

    The image contains a screenshot of a modified versio of Jay Galbraith's Star Model of Organizational Design.

    Establish design principles

    Track your findings in the table on the next slide.

    1. Review the cloud objectives and challenges from the previous activity. As a group, decide from that list: what are the key objectives you are trying to achieve? What are the things you absolutely must get right to get value from cloud services?
    2. Work through the following questions as a group:
      • What capabilities or technologies do we need to adopt or leverage differently?
      • How must our structure change? How will power shift in the new structure?
      • Will our new structure require changes to processes or information sharing?
      • How must we change how we motivate or reward employees?
      • What new skills or knowledge is required? How will we acquire those skills or knowledge?
    InputOutput
    • Cloud objectives and challenges
    • Different viewpoints into how your organization must change to realize objectives and overcome challenges
    • Organizational design principles for cloud operations
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip charts
    • Cloud operations design working group

    Design principles (example)

    What is our key objective?

    • Rapidly develop innovative cloud services aligned to business value.

    What capabilities or technologies do we need to adopt or leverage differently?

    • We will adopt more agile development techniques to make smaller changes, faster.
    • We will standardize and automate tasks that are routine and repeatable.

    How must our structure change? How will power shift in the new structure?

    • Embed development teams within business units to better align to business unit needs.
    • Create a focused cloud platform team to develop infrastructure services.

    Will our new structure require changes to processes or information sharing?

    • Development teams will take on responsibility for application support.
    • Platform teams will be deeply embedded with development teams on new projects to build new infrastructure functionality.

    How must we change how we motivate or reward employees?

    • We will highlight innovative work across the company.
    • We will encourage experimentation and risk-taking.

    What new skills or knowledge is required, and how will we acquire it?

    • We will focus on acquiring skills most closely aligned to our technology roadmap.
    • We will ensure budget is available for training employees who ask for it.
    • We will contract to find skills we cannot develop in-house and use engagements as an opportunity to learn internally.

    Step 1.2: Evaluate new ways of working

    Participants

    Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Outcomes

    Shared understanding of the horizon of work possibilities:

    • Ways to work
    • Ways to govern and learn

    Consider the different approaches on the following slides, how they change operational work, and decide which approaches are the right fit for you.

    Evaluate new ways of working

    Cut through the hype

    • There are new approaches/ways of working that deal head on with the persistent breakdowns and headaches that come with operations management – work thrown over the wall from development, manual and repetitive work, siloed teams, and more.
    • Many of these approaches emphasize an operations-aware approach to solutions development and apply techniques traditionally associated with AppDev to Operations.
    • Cloud services present opportunities to outsource/automate away routine tasks.

    “DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and a cultural philosophy that automates and integrates the processes between software development and IT teams. It emphasizes team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation.”

    – Atlassian, “DevOps”

    “ITIL 4 brings ITIL up to date by…embracing new ways of working, such as Lean, Agile, and DevOps.”

    – ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition

    “Over time, left to their own devices, the SRE team should end up with very little operational load and almost entirely engage in development tasks, because the service basically runs and repairs itself.”

    – Ben Treynor Sloss, “Site Reliability Engineering”

    The more things change, the more they stay the same:

    • Core processes remain, but they may be done differently, and new technologies and services create new challenges.
    • Not all approaches are right for all organizations, and what’s right for you depends on how you use cloud services.
    • The best solution draws from these management ideas to build an approach to operations that is right for you.

    Leverage patterns to think about new ways of approaching operations work

    Patterns are strategies, approaches, and philosophies that can help you imagine new ways of working in your own organization.

    • The following slides provide an overview of organizing patterns that are applicable to cloud operations.
    • These are strategies that have been applied successfully elsewhere. Review what they can and cannot do and decide whether they are something you can use in your own organizational design.
    • Not every pattern will apply to every organization. For example, an organization which typically consumes SaaS applications will likely have very little need for SRE approaches and techniques.

    Ways to work

    • What work do we do? What skills do we need?
    • How do we create and support systems?

    Ways to govern and learn

    • How do we set and enforce rules?
    • How do we create and share knowledge?

    Explore Applicable Patterns

    Ways to work

    Ways to govern and learn

    1. DevOps

    2. Site Reliability Engineering

    3. Platform Engineering

    4. Cloud Centre of Excellence

    5. Cloud Community of Practice

    What is DevOps?

    “Look for obstacles constantly and treat them as opportunities to experiment and learn.” – Jez Humble, et al. Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale

    What it is NOT

    What it IS

    Why Use It

    • Another word for automation or CI/CD tools.
    • A specific role.
    • A fix-all to address friction between existing siloed application and development teams.
    • An approach that will be successful without getting the basics right first.
    • The right fit for every IT organization or every team.

    An operational philosophy that seeks to:

    • Converge accountability for development and operations to align all teams to the goal of delivering customer value.
    • Improve the relationship between Development and Operations teams.
    • Increase the rate of deployment of valuable functionality into production.
    • “A cultural shift giving development teams more control over shipping code to production.” 1
    • You’re doing a lot of custom development.
    • There are opportunities for operations and development teams to work more closely.
    • You want to improve coding quality and throughput.
    • You want to shift the culture of the team to focus on customer value rather than exclusively uptime or new features.
    1 DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering

    What is Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)?

    “Hope is not a strategy” – Benjamin Treynor Sloss, Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems

    What it is NOT

    What it IS

    Why Use It

    • Deeply focussed on a specific technical domain; SRE work “does not discriminate between infrastructure, software, networking, or platforms.” 2
    • A different name for a team of sysadmins.
    • A programming framework or a specific set of technologies.
    • A way to manage COTS software. SRE is less useful when you’re using applications out-of-the-box with minimal customization, integration, or development.
    • An application of skills and approaches from software engineering to improve system reliability.
    • A team responsible for “availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and capacity planning.”3
    • A team responsible for building systems that become “a platform and workflow that encompasses monitoring, incident management, eliminating single points of failure, [and] failure mitigation.”1
    • You are building services and providing them at scale.
    • You want to improve reliability and reduce “the frequency and impact of failures that can impact the overall reliability of a cloud application.”1
    • You need to define related service metrics and SLOs.
    • To increase the use of automation in operations to avoid mistakes and minimize toil. 3
    1 SRE vs Platform Engineering
    2. Lakhani, Usman. “ISite Reliability Engineering: What Is It? Why Is It Important for Online Businesses?,” 2020.
    3. Sloss, “Introduction,” 2017

    What4 is Platform Engineering?

    “Platform engineers can act as a shield between developers and the infrastructure”

    – Carlos Schults, “What is Platform Engineering? The Concept Behind the Term”

    What it is NOT

    What it IS

    Why Use It

    • A team that manages every aspect of each application on a particular platform.
    • Focussed solely on platform reliability and availability.
    • A different name for a team of sysadmins.
    • Needed for all cloud service deployments. Platform engineers are most useful when you’re building extensively on a particular platform (e.g. AWS, Azure, or your internal cloud).
    • Platform engineers design, build, and manage the infrastructure that supports and hosts work done by developers.
    • The work done by platform engineering allows developers to avoid the repetitive work of setting everything up anew each time.
    • Requires engineers with a deep understanding of cloud services and other platform technologies (e.g. Kubernetes).
    • The big public cloud platforms are built for everyone. You need platform engineering when you need to extensively adapt or manage standard cloud services to support your own requirements.
    • Platform engineers are responsible for creating a secure, stable, maintainable environment that enables developers to do their work faster and without having to manage the underlying technology infrastructure.
    1 DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering

    What is a Cloud Center of Excellence?

    You need a strong core to grow a cloud culture.

    What it is NOT

    What it IS

    Why Use It

    • A project management office (PMO) for cloud services.
    • An easy, quick, or temporary fix to cloud governance problems. The CCoE requires champions who provide ongoing support to realize value over time.
    • An approach that’s only for enterprise-sized IT organizations.
    • A standing meeting – members of the CCoE may meet regularly to review progress on their mandate, but work and collaboration need to happen outside of meetings.
    • A cross-functional team responsible for oversight of all cloud initiatives, including architectural, technical, security, financial, contractual, and operational aspects of planned and deployed solutions.
    • The CCoE’s responsibilities typically include governance and continuous improvement; alignment between technical and accounting practices; documentation, training, best practices and standards development; and vendor management.
    • CCoE duties are often part of an existing role rather than a full-time responsibility.
    • You want to enable a core group of cloud experts to promote collaboration and accelerate adoption of cloud services, including members from infrastructure, applications, and security.
    • You need to manage cloud risks, set guidelines and policies, and govern costs across cloud environments.
    • There is an unmet need for training, knowledge sharing, and best practice development across the organization.

    What is a Cloud Community of Practice?

    “We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users”

    – Jeff Atwood

    What it is NOT

    What it IS

    Why Use It

    • A replacement for effective oversight and governance practices, though they may help users navigate and understand governance requirements.
    • A way to advertise cloud to potential new practitioners – engaged members of a CoP are typically already using a particular service.
    • Always exclusively composed of internal staff; in certain cases, a CoP could have external members as well.
    • A network of engaged users and experts who share knowledge and best practices for related technologies, crowdsource solutions to problems, and suggest improvements.
    • Often supported by communication and collaboration tools (e.g. chat channels, knowledge base, forums). May use a range of techniques (e.g. drop-ins, vendor-led training, lunch and learns).
    • Communities of practice may be deliberately created by the organization or develop organically.
    • Communities of practice are an effective way for practitioners to support one another and share ideas and solutions.
    • A CoP can help “shift left” work and help practitioners help themselves.
    • An engaged CoP can help IT to identify improvement opportunities and can also be a channel to communicate updates or changes to practitioners.

    Reinforce what we mean by patterns

    Patterns are . . .

    Ways of Working

    • Sets of habits, processes, and methodologies you want to adopt as part of your operational guidelines and commonly agreed upon definitions.

    Patterns are also . . .

    Ways to Govern and Learn

    • The formal and informal practices and groups that focus on enabling governance, risk management, and adoption.

    Review the implications of each pattern for organizational design

    Ways of Working

    DevOps

    Development teams take on operational work to support the services they create after they are launched to production.

    Some DevOps teams may be aligned around a particular function or product rather than a technology – there are individuals with skills on a number of technologies that are part of the same team.

    Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

    In the beginning, you can start to adopt SRE practices within existing teams. As demand grows for SRE skills and services, you may decide to create focused SRE roles or teams.

    SRE teams may work across applications or be aligned to just infrastructure services or a particular application, or they may focus on tools that help developers manage reliability. SREs may also be embedded long-term with other teams or take on an internal consulting roles with multiple teams.1

    Platform Engineering

    Platform engineering will often, though not always, be the responsibility of a dedicated team. This team must work very closely with, and tuned into the needs of, its internal customers. There is a constant need to find ways to add value that aren’t already part and parcel of the platform – or its external roadmap.

    This team will take on responsibility for the platform, in terms of feature development, automation, availability and reliability, security, and more. They may also be internal consultants or advisors on the platform to developers.

    1. Gustavo Franco and Matt Brown, “How SRE teams are organized and how to get started.”

    Review the implications of each pattern for organizational design

    Ways to Govern and Learn

    Cloud Center of Excellence

    • A CCoE is a cross-functional group with technical experts from security, infrastructure, applications, and more.
    • There should, ideally, be someone focused on leading the CCoE full-time – often someone with an architecture background. Team members may work on the CCoE part-time alongside their main role, and dedicate more of their time to the CCoE as needed.
    • As the CCoE is a governance function, it will typically bridge and sit above teams working on cloud services, reporting to the CIO, CTO, or to an architecture function.

    Cloud Community of Practice

    • Participation in a community of practice is often above and beyond a core role – it’s a leadership activity taken on by technologically adept experts with a drive to help others.
    • Some organizations will create a role to foster community collaboration, run events, raise opportunities and issues identified by the community with product or technology teams, manage collaboration tools, and more.

    Evolve your organization to meet the needs of increased adoption

    Your operating model should evolve as you increase adoption of cloud services.

    Least Adoption Greatest Adoption

    Initial Adoption

    Early Centralization

    Scaling Up

    Full Steam Ahead

    • One or more small agile teams design, build, manage, and operate individual solutions on cloud resources. Solutions provide early value, and identify new opportunities using small, safe-to-fail experiments.
    • Governance is likely done locally to each team. Knowledge sharing, guidelines, and standards are likely informal.
    • Early experience with cloud services help the organization identify where to invest in cloud services to best meet business demands.
    • Accountability and governance over the platform are more clearly defined, possibly still separate from core IT governance processes. Best practices may be shared across teams through a Community of Practice.
    • Operations may be centralized, where valuable, to support monitoring and incident response.
    • Additional product/service-aligned development teams are created to keep up with demand.
    • There is a focused effort to consolidate best practices and platform knowledge, which can be supported through a culture of learning, effective automation, and appropriate tools.
    • The CCoE takes on additional roles in cloud governance, security, operations, and administration.
    • The organization has reached a relatively steady-state for cloud adoption. Innovation and new service development takes place on a stable platform.
    • A Cloud Center of Excellence is accountable for cloud governance across the organization.
    Adapted from Microsoft, “Get Started: Align your organization,” 2021

    Choose new ways of working that make sense for your team

    1 hour

    Consider if, and how, the approaches to management and governance you’ve just reviewed can offer value to your organization.

    1. List the organizing/managing ideas listed in the previous slides in the table below.
    2. Define why it’s for you. What benefits do you expect to realize? What challenges do you expect this will help you overcome? How does this align with your key benefits and drivers for moving to cloud?
    3. List risks or challenges to adoption. Why will it be hard to do? What could get in the way of adoption? Why might it not be a good fit?
    4. Identify next steps to adopt proposed practices.

    Why it’s for us (drivers)

    Risks or challenges to adoption

    Next steps to build/adopt it

    CCoE

    DevOps

    InputOutput
    • Related Info-Tech slides on new ways of working.
    • Opportunities and challenges in your own cloud deployment that may be addressed through new ways of working.
    • Identify new ways of working aligned to your goals.
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip chart
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Step 1.3: Identify cloud work

    Participants

    • Operations Design Working Group

    Outcomes

    • Identify core work required to deliver value in key cloud workstreams.

    “At first, for many people, the cloud seems vast. But what you actually do is carve out space.”

    –DevOps Manager

    Identify work

    Before you can identify roles and responsibilities, you have to confirm what work you do as an organization and how that work enables you to meet your goals.

    • A comprehensive approach that connects the work you do to your organizational goals will help you identify work that’s falling through the cracks.
    • Identifying work is an opportunity to look at the tasks you regularly execute and ensure they actually drive value.
    • Working through the exercise as a group will help you develop a common language around the work you do.
    • To make the evident obvious: you can’t decide who should be responsible for something if you don’t know about it in the first place.

    Defining work can be a lot of … work! We recommend you start by identifying work for the workstream you do most – Build, Consume, or Host – to focus your efforts. You can repeat the exercise as needed.

    Map work in workstream diagrams

    The image contains a screenshot of the map work in workstream diagrams.

    The five Well-Architected Framework pillars. These are principles/directions/guideposts that should inform all cloud work.

    The work being done to achieve the workstream target. These are roughly aligned with the three streams on the right.

    Workstream Target: A concise statement of the value you aim to achieve through this workstream. All work should help deliver value (directly or indirectly).

    Define the scope of the exercise

    Whiteboard Activity

    20 minutes

    Over the next few exercises, you’ll do a deep dive into the work you do in one specific workstream. In this exercise, we’ll decide on a workstream to focus on first.

    1. Are you primarily building, hosting on, or consuming cloud services? Start with the workstream where you’re doing the most work.
    2. If this isn’t sufficient to narrow your focus, look at the workstream that is most closely tied to mission critical applications, or that is most in need of review in terms of what work is done and who does it.
    3. You can narrow the scope further if there’s a very specific sub-area that differs from the rest (e.g. managing your O365 environment vs. managing all SaaS applications).
    InputOutput
    • Insight into and experience with your current cloud environment.
    • Your completed cloud maturity assessment.
    • Identify one workstream where you’ll define work first.
    MaterialsParticipants
    • None
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Create a workstream target statement

    Whiteboard Activity

    30 minutes

    In this activity, come up with a short sentence to describe what all this work you do is building toward. The target statement helps align participants on why work is being done and helps focus the activity on work that is most important to achieving the target statement.

    Start with this common workstream target statement:

    “Deliver valuable, secure, available, reliable, and efficient cloud services.”

    Now, review and adjust the target statement by working through the questions below:

    1. Return to the earlier exercises in Phase 1.1 where you reviewed your key objectives for cloud services. Does the target statement align with what you’d identified previously?
    2. Who is the customer for the work you do? Would they see the target differently than you’ve described it?
    3. Can you be more specific? Are there value drivers that are more specific to your industry, organization, business functions, or products that are key to the value your customers receive from this workstream?
    InputOutput
    • Previous exercises.
    • Workstream target statement.
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip chart
    • Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Identify cloud work

    1-2 hours

    1. Use the workstream diagram template in the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook, or draw the template out on a whiteboard and use sticky notes to identify work.
    2. Identify the workstream at the top of the slide. Update the template value statement on the right with the value statement you created in the previous exercise.
    3. Review one or more of the examples in the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook to get a sense of the level of detail required for this exercise.

    Activity instructions continue on the next slide.

    Some notes to the facilitator:

    • Working directly from the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook will save you time with transcription. Sharing the document with participants (e.g. via OneDrive) will allow you to collaborate and edit the document together in real-time.
    • Don’t worry about being too tidy for the moment, just get the information written down and you can clean up the diagram later.
    InputOutput
    • Previously identified design principles.
    • An understanding of the work done, and that needs to be done, in your cloud environment.
    • Identify the work that needs to be done to support your key cloud services workstream in the future.
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook
    • Whiteboard and sticky notes (optional)
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Identify cloud work (cont’d)

    4. Work together to identify work, documenting one work item per box. This should focus on future state, so record work whether it’s actually done today or not. Your space is limited on the sheet, so focus on work that is indispensable to delivering the value statement. Use the lists on the right as a reminder of key IT practice areas.

    5. As much as possible, align the work items to the appropriate row (Govern & Align, Design & Execute, or Validate, Support & Monitor). You can overlap boxes between rows if needed.

    Have you captured work related to:

    ITIL practices, such as:

    • Request management
    • Incident & problem management
    • Service catalog
    • Service level management
    • Configuration management

    Security-aligned practices, such as:

    • Identity & access management
    • Vulnerability management
    • Security incident management

    Financial practices, such as:

    • IT asset management
    • Cost management & budgeting
    • Vendor management
    • Portfolio management

    Data-aligned practices, such as:

    • Data integrations
    • Data governance

    Technology-specific tasks, such as:

    • Network, Server & Storage
    • Structured/unstructured DBs
    • Composite services
    • IDEs and compilers

    Other key practices:

    • Monitoring & observability
    • Continuous improvement
    • Testing & quality assurance
    • Training and knowledge management
    • Manage shadow IT

    Info-Tech Insight

    Cloud work is not just applications that have been approved by IT. Consider how unsanctioned software purchased by the business will be integrated and managed.

    Identify cloud work (cont’d)

    6. If you have decided to adopt any of the new ways of working outlined in Step 1.2 (e.g. DevOps, SRE, etc.) review the next slide for examples of the type of work that frequently needs to be done in each of those work models. Add any additional work items as needed.

    7. Consolidate boxes and clean up the diagram (e.g. remove duplicate work items, align boxes, clarify language).

    8. Do a final review. Is all the work in the diagram truly aligned with the value statement? Is the work identified aligned with the design principles from Step 1.1?

    If you used a whiteboard for this exercise, transcribe the output to a copy of the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook, and repeat the exercise for other key workstreams. You will use this diagram in Phase 2.

    Examples of work

    Examples of work in the "Host" workstream:

    • Bulk patch servers
    • Add a server
    • Add capacity
    • Develop a new server template
    • Incident management

    Examples of work in the "Build" workstream:

    • Provision a production server
    • Provision a test environment
    • Test recovery procedures
    • Add capacity for a service
    • Publish a new pattern
    • Manage capacity/performance for a service
    • Identify wasted spend across services
    • Identify performance bottlenecks
    • Review and shut down idle/unneeded services

    Examples of work in the "Consume" workstream:

    • Conduct vendor risk assessments
    • Develop a standard evaluation matrix to compare solutions to existing or potential in-house offerings
    • Onboard a solution
    • Offboard a solution
    • Conduct a renewal
    • Review and negotiate a contract
    • Rationalize software titles

    Phase 2:

    Design the organization and communicate changes

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    1.1 Establish operating model design principals by identifying goals & challenges, workstreams, and cloud maturity

    1.2 Evaluate new ways of working

    1.3 Identify cloud work

    2.1 Draft an operating model

    2.2 Communicate proposed changes

    Phase Outcomes:

    Draft your cloud operations diagram, identify key messages and impacts to communicate to your stakeholders, and build out the Cloud Operations Organizing Framework communication deck.

    Step 2.1: Identify groups and responsibilities

    Participants

    • Operations Design Working Group

    Outcomes

    • Cloud Operations Diagram
    • Success Indicators
    • Roadmap

    “No-one ever solved a problem by restructuring.”

    – Anonymous

    Visualize your cloud operations

    Create a visual to help you abstract, analyze, and clarify your vision for the future state of your organization in order to align and instruct stakeholders.

    Create a visual, high-level view of your organization to help you answer questions such as:

    • “What work do we do? What are the roles and responsibilities of different teams?”
    • “How do we interact between work areas?”
    • “How has our organization changed already, and what additional changes may be needed?”
    • “How do we make technology decisions?”
    • “How do we provide services?”
    • “How might this change be received by people on the ground?”
    The image contains a screenshot of the Cloud Operations Diagram Example.

    Decide whether to centralize or decentralize

    Specialization & Focus: A group or work unit developing a focused concentration of skills, expertise, and activities aligned with an area of focus (such as the ones at right).

    Decentralization: Operational teams that report to a decentralized IT or business function, either directly or via a “dotted line” relationship.

    Decentralization and Specialization can:

    • Duplicate work.
    • Localize decision-making authority, which can increase agility and responsiveness.
    • Transfer authority and accountability to local and typically smaller teams, clarifying responsibilities and encouraging staff to take ownership for service delivery.
    • Enable the team to focus on complex and rapidly changing technologies or processes.
    • Create islands of expertise, which can get in the way of collaboration, innovation, and decision making across groups and work units and make oversight difficult.
    • Complicate the transfer of resources and knowledge between groups.

    Examples: Areas of Focus

    Business unit

    • Manufacturing
    • R&D
    • Sales & Marketing

    Region

    • Americas
    • EMEA
    • APAC

    Service

    • ERP
    • Commercial website

    Technology

    • On-premises servers/storage
    • Network
    • Cloud services

    Operational process focus

    • Capacity management & planning
    • Incident management
    • Problem management

    “The concept of organization design is simple in theory but highly complex in practice. Like any strategic decision, it involves making multiple trade-offs before choosing what is best suited to a business context.”

    – Nitin Razdan & Arvind Pandit

    Identify key work areas

    Balance specialization with effective collaboration

    • Much is said about breaking down organizational silos. But at some level, silos are inevitable – any company with more than one employee will have to divide work up somehow.
    • Dividing up work is a delicate balancing act – ensuring individuals and groups are able to do work that is related, meaningful, and that allows autonomy while allowing for effective collaboration between groups that need to work together to achieve business goals.

    Why “work areas”?

    Why don’t we just use teams, groups, squads, or departments, or some other more common term for groups of people working together?

    • We are not yet at the point of deciding who in the organization should be aligned to which areas in the design.
    • Describing work areas as teams can shift the conversation to the organizational chart – to who does the work, rather than what needs to be done.

    That’s not the goal of this exercise. If the conversation gets stuck on what you do today, it can get in the way of thinking about what you need to do in the future.

    Create a future-state cloud operations diagram

    1-3 hours

    1. Review the example cloud operations diagram example in your copy of the Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook.
    2. Identify key work areas (e.g. applications, infrastructure, platform engineering, DevOps, security). Add the name of each work area in one of the larger boxes.
      • Go back to your design principles. Did you define any work areas in your design principles that should be represented here?
      • If you have several groups or teams with similar responsibilities, consider lumping them together in one box (e.g. applications teams, 3x DevOps teams).
    3. Copy the tasks from any workstream diagrams you’ve created to the same slide as the organization design diagram. Keep the workstream diagram intact, as you’ll want to be able to refer back to it later.

    Activity instructions continue on the next slide.

    InputOutput
    • Insight into and experience with your current cloud environment.
    • Cloud Operations Diagram
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip charts
    • Cloud Operations
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Cloud operations diagram (cont’d)

    1-3 hours

    4. As a group, move the work boxes from the workstream diagram into the appropriate work area.

    • Don’t worry about being too tidy for the moment – clean up the diagram when the exercise is done.
    • Make adjustments to the wording of the work boxes if needed.

    5. Use the space between work areas to describe how work areas must interact to achieve organizational goals. For example:

    • What information should be shared between groups?
    • What information sharing channels may be used?
    • What processes will be handed-off between groups and how?
    • How often will teams interact?
    • Will interactions be formal or informal?

    Create a current-state operations diagram

    1 -2 hours

    This exercise can be done by one person, then reviewed with the working group at a later time.

    This current state diagram helps clarify the changes that may need to happen to get to your future state.

    1. Color code the work boxes for each work area. For example, if you have a “DevOps” work area, make all the work boxes assigned to “DevOps” the same color.
    2. On a separate slide, sketch your existing organization indicating your current teams.
    3. Copy the tasks from the future-state diagram to this current-state chart. Align the tasks to the appropriate groups.
    4. Review the chart with the working group. Discuss: are there teams that are doing work today that will also be done by different teams? Are there groups that may merge into one team? What types of changes may be required?
    InputOutput
    • Future-state cloud operations diagram
    • Current-state cloud operations diagram
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Cloud Operations Design Sketchbook
    • Projector/screen/virtual meeting
    • Project lead
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Check for biases to make better choices

    Use the strategies below to spot and address flaws in your team’s thinking about your future-state design.

    Biases

    What’s the risk?

    Mitigation strategies

    Is the team making mistakes due to self-interest, love of a single idea, or groupthink?

    Important information may be ignored or left unspoken.

    Rigorously check for the other biases, below. Tactfully seek dissenting opinions.

    Do recommendations use unreasonable analogies to other successes or failures?

    Opportunities or challenges in the current situation may not be sufficiently understood.

    Ask for other examples, and check whether the analogies are still valid.

    Is the team blinkered by the weight of past decisions?

    Doubling-down on bad decisions (sunk costs) or ignoring new opportunities.

    Ask yourself what you'd do if you were new to the position or organization.

    Does the data support the recommendations?

    Data used to make the case isn't a good fit for the challenge, is based on faulty assumptions, or is incomplete.

    If you had a year to make the decision, what data would you want? How much can you get?

    Are there realistic alternative recommendations?

    Alternatives don't exist or are "strawman" options.

    Ask for additional options.

    Is the recommendation too risk averse or cautious?

    Recommendations that may be too risky are ignored, leading to missed opportunities.

    Review options to accept, transfer, distribute, or mitigate the risk of the decision.

    Framework above adapted from Kahneman, Lovallo, and Sibony (2011)

    Be specific with metrics

    Thinking of ways you could measure success can help uncover what success actually means to you.

    Work collectively to generate success indicators for each key cloud initiative. Success indicators are metrics, with targets, aligned to goals, and if you are able to measure them accurately, they should help you report your progress toward your objectives.

    For example, if your driver is “faster access to resources” you might consider indicators like developer satisfaction, project completion time, average time to provision, etc.

    There are several reasons you may not publicize these metrics. They may be difficult to calculate or misconstrued as targets, warping behavior in unexpected ways. But managed properly, they have value in measuring operational success!

    Examples: Operations redesign project metrics

    Key stakeholder satisfaction scores

    IT staff engagement scores

    Support Delivery of New Functionality

    Double number of accepted releases per cycle

    80% of key cloud initiatives completed on time, on budget, and in scope

    Improve Operational Effectiveness

    <1% of servers have more than two major versions out of date

    No more than one capacity-related incident per Q

    Define success indicators

    Whiteboard Activity

    45 minutes

    1. On a whiteboard, draw a table with key objectives for the design across the top.
      • What cloud objectives should the redesign help you achieve? Refer back to the design principles from Phase 1.
      • Think about the redesign itself. How will you measure whether the project itself is proceeding according to plan? Consider metrics such as employee engagement scores and satisfaction scores from key stakeholders.
    2. Consider whether the metrics are feasible to track. Record your decisions in your copy of the Cloud Operations Organizing Framework deck.
    InputOutput
    • Key design goals
    • Success indicators for your design
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard
    • Markers
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Populate a roadmap

    Tool Activity

    45 minutes

    1. In the Roadmap Tool, populate the data entry tab with the initiatives you will take to support changes toward the new cloud operations organizing framework.
    2. Input each of the tasks in the data entry tab and provide a description and rationale behind the task (as needed).
    3. Assign an effort, priority, and cost level to each task (high, medium, low).
    4. Assign an owner to each task – someone who can take points and shepherd the task to completion.
    5. Identify the timeline for each task based on the priority, effort, and cost (short, medium, and long term).
    6. Highlight risk for each task if it will be deferred.
    7. Track the progress of each task with the status column.
    InputOutput
    • Cloud Operations Organizing Framework
    • Roadmap/ implementation plan
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Roadmap Tool
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Download the Roadmap Tool

    Step 2.2: Communicate changes

    Participants

    • Operations Design Working Group

    Outcomes

    • Build a communication plan for key stakeholders
    • Complete the communication deck Cloud Operations Organizing Framework
    • Build a roadmap

    “Words, words, words.”

    – Shakespeare

    Communicate changes

    Which stakeholders will be affected by the changes?

    Decision makers: Who do you ultimately need to convince to proceed with any changes you’ve outlined?

    Peers: How will managers of other areas be affected by the changes you’re proposing? If you are you suggesting changes to the way that they, or their teams, do their work, you will have to present a compelling case that there’s value in it for them.

    Staff: Are you dictating changes or looking for feedback on the path forward?

    The image contains a screenshot of the Five Elements of Change that is displayed in a cycle. The five elements are: What is the change? Why are we doing it? How are we going to go about it? How long will it take us? What is the role of each team and individual.

    Source: The Qualities of Leadership: Leading Change

    Follow these guidelines for good communication

    Be relevant

    • Talk about what matters to each stakeholder group.
    • Talk about what matters to the initiative.
    • IT thinks in processes but stakeholders only care about results: talk in terms of results.
    • IT wants to be “understood” but this does not matter to stakeholders; think “what’s in it for them?”
    • Communicate truthfully; do not make false promises or hide bad news.
    • If you expect objections, create a plan to handle them.

    Be clear

    • Lead with the point you’re trying to make.
    • Don’t use jargon.
    • Avoid idiomatic language and clichés.
    • Have a third party review draft communications and ask them to tell you the key messages in their own words. If they’re missing the main points, there’s a good chance the draft isn’t clear.

    Be consistent

    • Ensure the core message is consistent regardless of audience, channel, or medium.
    • Changing the core message from one group to another can be interpreted as incompetence or an attempt at deception. This will damage your credibility and can lead to a loss of trust.

    Be concise

    • Get to the point.
    • Minimize word count wherever possible.

    “We tend to use a lot of jargon in our discussions, and that is a sure fire way to turn people away. We realized the message wasn’t getting out because the audience wasn’t speaking the same language. You have to take it down to the next level and help them understand where the needs are.”

    – Jeremy Clement, Director of Finance, College of Charleston

    Create a communication plan

    1 hour

    Fill out the table below.

    Stakeholder group: Identify key stakeholders who may be impacted by changes to the operations team. This might include IT leadership, management, and staff.

    Benefits: What’s in it for them?

    Impact: What are we asking in return?

    How: What mechanisms or channels will you use to communicate?

    When: When (and how often) will you get the message out?

    Benefits

    Impact

    How

    When

    IT Mgrs.

    • Improve agility, stability
    • Deliver faster against business goals
    • Respond to identified needs
    • Improve confidence in IT
    • Must support the process
    • Change and engagement issues during restructuring may affect staff engagement and productivity
    • Training budget required
    • Present at leadership meeting
    • Kick-off email
    • Sept. leadership meeting
    • Weekly touchpoints
    • Informally throughout project

    Ops Staff

    • Clearer direction and clear priorities (Operations mission statement and RACI)
    • Higher-value work – address problems, contribute to plans
    • New skills and training
    • More personal accountability
    • Push toward process consistency
    • Must make time and plan for training during work hours
    • Present at operations team’s offsite meeting
    • AMA channel on Slack
    • 1:1 meetings
    • Add RACI, org. sketch to shared folder
    • Operations offsite
    • Sept. all-hands meeting
    • Ongoing coaching and informal conversations
    InputOutput
    • Discussion
    • Communication Plan
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard/Flip Chart
    • Cloud Operations Design Working Group

    Download the Communication Plan Template

    Support the transition with a plan to acquire skills

    Identify the preferred way to acquire needed skill sets: contracting, outsourcing, training, or hiring.

    • Some cloud projects will change the demand for some skills in the organization, and not all skills should be cultivated internally. Uncertainty about future skills and jobs will cause anxiety for your team and can lead to employee exit.
    • Use Info-Tech’s research to conduct a demand analysis to identify which new and critical skills should be acquired via training or hiring (rather than outsourcing or contracting).
    • Create a roadmap to clarify when training needs to be completed, a budget plan that accounts for training costs, and role descriptions that paint a picture of future work.
    • Within the confines of a collective agreement, managers may be required to retrain staff into new roles before those staff are required to do work in their new jobs. Failing to plan can be more consequential.
    • Remember that in cloud, a wealth of automation opportunities present a great option for offloading tasks as well!

    Info-Tech Insight

    Identify skills requirements and gaps as early as possible to avoid skills gaps later. Whether you plan to acquire skills via training or cross-training, hiring, contracting, or outsourcing, effectively building skills takes time. Use Info-Tech’s methodology to address skills gaps in a prioritized and rational way.

    Involve HR for implementation

    Your HR team should help you work through:

    • Which staff and managers will move to which roles, and any headcount changes.
    • Job descriptions, performance metrics, career paths, compensation, and succession planning.
    • Organizational change management and implementation plans.

    When do you need to involve HR?

    Role changes will result in job description changes.

    • New or changed job descriptions need to be evaluated for impact on pay, title, exempt status, career pathing, and more.
    • This is especially true in more traditional or unionized organizations that require specific and granular job descriptions of responsibilities.
    • Changed jobs will likely require union review and approval.

    You anticipate changes to the reporting structure.

    • Work with HR to develop a transition plan including communications, training to new managers, and support to new teams.

    You anticipate redundancies.

    • Your HR department can prepare you for difficult discussions, help you navigate labor laws, and support the offboarding process.

    You anticipate new positions.

    • Recruitment and hiring takes time. Give HR advance notice to support recruitment, hiring, and onboarding to ensure you hire the right people, with the right skills, at the right time.

    Training and development budget is required.

    • If training is a critical part of the onboarding process, don’t just assume funding is available. Work with HR to build your case.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Define Your Cloud Vision

    Define your cloud vision before it defines you.

    Document Your Cloud Strategy

    Drive consensus by outlining how your organization will use the cloud.

    Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization

    Be practical and proactive – identify needed technical skills for your future-state environment and the most efficient way to acquire them.

    Bibliography

    “2021 GitLab DevSecOps Survey.” Gitlab, 2021.
    “2022 State of the Cloud Report.” Flexera, 2022.
    “DevOps.” Atlassian, ND. Web. 21 July 2022.
    Atwood, Jeff. “The 2030 Self-Driving Car Bet.” Coding Horror, 4 Mar 2022. Web. 5 Aug 2022.
    Campbell, Andrew. “What is an operating model?” Operational Excellence Society, 12 May 2016. Web. 13 July 2022.
    “DevOps.” Atlassian, ND. Web. 21 July 2022.
    Ewenstein, Boris, Wesley Smith, Ashvin Sologar. “Changing change management” McKinsey, 1 July 2015. Web. 8 April 2022.
    Franco, Gustavo and Matt Brown. “How SRE teams are organized, and how to get started.” Google Cloud Blog, 26 June 2019. Web. July 13 2022.
    “Get started: Build a cloud operations team.” Microsoft, 10 May 2021.
    ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition. Axelos, 2019.
    Humble, Jez, Joanne Molesky, and Barry O’Reilly. Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale. O’Reilly Media, 2015.
    Franco, Gustavo and Matt Brown. “How SRE teams are organized and how to get started.” 26 June 2019. Web. 21 July 2022.
    Galbraith, Jay. “The Star Model”. ND. Web. 21 July 2022.
    Kahnemanm Daniel, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony. “Before you make that big decision.” Harv Bus Rev. 2011 Jun; 89(6): 50-60, 137. PMID: 21714386.
    Kesler, Greg. “Star Model of Organizational Design.” YouTube, 1 Oct 2018. Web Video. 21 Jul 2022.
    Lakhani, Usman. “Site Reliability Engineering: What Is It? Why Is It Important for Online Businesses?” Info-Tech. Web. 25 May 2020.
    Mansour, Sherif. “Product Management: The role and best practices for beginners.” Atlassian Agile Coach, n.d.
    Murphy, Annie, Jamie Kirwin, Khalid Abdul Razak. “Operating Models: Delivering on strategy and optimizing processes.” EY, 2016.
    Shults, Carlos. “What is Platform Engineering? The Concept Behind the Term.” liatrio, 3 Aug 2021. Web. 5 Aug 2022.
    Sloss, Benjamin Treynor. Site Reliability Engineering Part I: Introduction. O’Reilly Media, 2017.
    “SRE vs. Platform Engineering.” Ambassador Labs, 8 Feb 2021.
    “The Qualities of Leadership: Leading Change.” Cornelius & Associates, n.d. Web.
    “Understand cloud operating models.” Microsoft, 02 Sept. 2022.
    Velichko, Ivan. “DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering.” 15 Mar 2022.

    Research Contributors and Experts

    Nenad Begovic

    Executive Director, Head of IT Operations

    MUFG Investor Services

    Desmond Durham

    Manager, ICT Planning & Infrastructure

    Trinidad & Tobago Unit Trust Corporation

    Virginia Roberts

    Director, Enterprise IT

    Denver Water

    Denis Sharp

    IT/LEAN Consultant

    Three anonymous contributors

    Build a Data Warehouse

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    • Parent Category Name: Big Data
    • Parent Category Link: /big-data
    • Relational data warehouses, although reliable, centralized repositories for corporate data, were not built to handle the speed and volume of data and analytics today.
    • IT is under immense pressure from business units to provide technology that will yield greater agility and insight.
    • While some organizations are benefitting from modernization technologies, the majority of IT departments are unfamiliar with the technologies and have not yet defined clear use cases.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • The vast majority of your corporate data is not being properly leveraged. Modernize the data warehouse to get value from the 80% of unstructured data that goes unused.
    • Avoid rip and replace. Develop a future state that complements your existing data warehouse with emerging technologies.
    • Be flexible in your roadmap. Create an implementation roadmap that’s incremental and adapts to changing business priorities.

    Impact and Result

    • Establish both the business and IT perspectives of today’s data warehouse environment.
    • Explore the art-of-the-possible. Don’t get stuck trying to gather technical requirements from business users who don’t know what they don’t know. Use Info-Tech’s interview guide to discuss the pains of the current environment, and more importantly, where stakeholders want to be in the future.
    • Build an internal knowledgebase with respect to emerging technologies. The technology landscape is constantly shifting and often difficult for IT staff to keep track of. Use Info-Tech’s Data Warehouse Modernization Technology Education Deck to ensure that IT is able to appropriately match the right tools to the business’ use cases.
    • Create a compelling business case to secure investment and support.

    Build a Data Warehouse Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should be looking to modernize the relational data warehouse, review Info-Tech’s framework for identifying modernization opportunities, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Assess the current data warehouse environment

    Review the business’ perception and architecture of the current data warehouse environment.

    • Drive Business Innovation With a Modernized Data Warehouse Environment – Phase 1: Assess the Current Data Warehouse Environment
    • Data Warehouse Maturity Assessment Tool

    2. Define modernization drivers

    Collaborate with business users to identify the strongest motivations for data warehouse modernization.

    • Drive Business Innovation With a Modernized Data Warehouse Environment – Phase 2: Define Modernization Drivers
    • Data Warehouse Modernization Stakeholder Interview Guide
    • Data Warehouse Modernization Technology Education Deck
    • Data Warehouse Modernization Initiative Building Tool

    3. Create the modernization future state

    Combine business ideas with modernization initiatives and create a roadmap.

    • Drive Business Innovation With a Modernized Data Warehouse Environment – Phase 3: Create the Modernization Future State
    • Data Warehouse Modernization Technology Architectural Template
    • Data Warehouse Modernization Deployment Plan
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build a Data Warehouse

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Assess the Current Data Warehouse Environment

    The Purpose

    Discuss the general project overview for data warehouse modernization.

    Establish the business and IT perspectives of the current state.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Holistic understanding of the current data warehouse.

    Business user engagement from the start of the project.

    Activities

    1.1 Review data warehouse project history.

    1.2 Evaluate data warehouse maturity.

    1.3 Draw architecture diagrams.

    1.4 Review supporting data management practices.

    Outputs

    Data warehouse maturity assessment

    Data architecture diagrams

    2 Explore Business Opportunities

    The Purpose

    Conduct a user workshop session to elicit the most pressing needs of business stakeholders.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Modernization technology selection is directly informed by business drivers.

    In-depth IT understanding of the business pains and opportunities.

    Activities

    2.1 Review general trends and drivers in your industry.

    2.2 Identify primary business frustrations, opportunities, and risks.

    2.3 Identify business processes to target for modernization.

    2.4 Capture business ideas for the future state.

    Outputs

    Business ideas for modernization

    Defined strategic direction for data warehouse modernization

    3 Review the Technology Landscape

    The Purpose

    Educate IT staff on the most common technologies for data warehouse modernization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Improved ability for IT to match technology with business ideas.

    Activities

    3.1 Appoint Modernization Advisors.

    3.2 Hold an open education and discussion forum for modernization technologies.

    Outputs

    Modernization Advisors identified

    Modernization technology education deck

    4 Define Modernization Solutions

    The Purpose

    Consolidate business ideas into modernization initiatives.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Refinement of the strategic direction for data warehouse modernization.

    Activities

    4.1 Match business ideas to technology solutions.

    4.2 Group similar ideas to create modernization initiatives.

    4.3 Create future-state architecture diagrams.

    Outputs

    Identified strategic direction for data warehouse modernization

    Defined modernization initiatives

    Future-state architecture for data warehouse

    5 Establish a Modernization Roadmap

    The Purpose

    Validate and build out initiatives with business users.

    Define benefits and costs to establish ROI.

    Identify enablers and barriers to modernization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Completion of materials for a compelling business case and roadmap.

    Activities

    5.1 Validate use cases with business users.

    5.2 Define initiative benefits.

    5.3 Identify enablers and barriers to modernization.

    5.4 Define preliminary activities for initiatives.

    5.5 Evaluate initiative costs.

    5.6 Determine overall ROI.

    Outputs

    Validated modernization initiatives

    Data warehouse modernization roadmap

    Identify Opportunities to Mature the Security Architecture

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    • Parent Category Name: Secure Cloud & Network Architecture
    • Parent Category Link: /secure-cloud-network-architecture
    • Organizations do not have a solid grasp on the complexity of their infrastructure and are unaware of the overall risk to their infrastructure posed by inadequate security.
    • Organizations do not understand how to properly create and deliver value propositions of technical security solutions.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • The security architecture is a living, breathing thing based on the risk profile of your organization.
    • Compliance and risk mitigation create an intertwined relationship between the business and your security architecture. The security architecture roadmap must be regularly assessed and continuously maintained to ensure security controls align with organizational objectives.

    Impact and Result

    • A right-sized security architecture can be created by assessing the complexity of the IT department, the operations currently underway for security, and the perceived value of a security architecture within the organization. This will bring about a deeper understanding of the organizational infrastructure.
    • Developing a security architecture should also result in a list of opportunities (i.e. initiatives) that an organization can integrate into a roadmap. These initiatives will seek to improve security operations and strengthen the IT department’s understanding of security’s role within the organization.
    • A better understanding of the infrastructure will help to save time on determining the correct technologies required from vendors and therefore cut down on the amount of vendor noise.
    • Creating a defensible roadmap will assist with justifying future security spend.

    Identify Opportunities to Mature the Security Architecture Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop a right-sized security architecture, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify the organization’s ideal security architecture

    Complete three unique assessments to define the ideal security architecture maturity for your organization.

    • Identify Opportunities to Mature the Security Architecture – Phase 1: Identify the Organization's Ideal Security Architecture
    • Security Architecture Recommendation Tool
    • None

    2. Create a security program roadmap

    Use the results of the assessments from Phase 1 of this research to create a roadmap for improving the security program.

    • Identify Opportunities to Mature the Security Architecture – Phase 2: Create a Security Program Roadmap
    [infographic]

    Build a Software Quality Assurance Program

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    • Parent Category Name: Testing, Deployment & QA
    • Parent Category Link: /testing-deployment-and-qa
    • Today’s rapidly scaling and increasingly complex products create mounting pressure on delivery teams to release new systems and changes quickly and with sufficient quality.
    • Many organizations lack the critical capabilities and resources needed to satisfy their growing testing backlog, risking product success.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Testing is often viewed as a support capability rather than an enabler of business growth. It receives focus and investment only when it becomes a visible problem.
    • The rise in security risks, aggressive performance standards, constantly evolving priorities, and misunderstood quality policies further complicate QA as it drives higher expectations for effective practices.
    • QA starts with good requirements. Tests are only as valuable as the requirements they are validating and verifying. Early QA improves the accuracy of downstream tests and reduces costs of fixing defects late in delivery.
    • Quality is an organization-wide accountability. Upstream work can have extensive ramifications if all roles are not accountable for the decisions they make.
    • Quality must account for both business and technical requirements. Valuable change delivery is cemented in a clear understanding of quality from both business and IT perspectives.

    Impact and Result

    • Standardize your definition of a product. Come to an organizational agreement of what attributes define a high-quality product. Accommodate both business and IT perspectives in your definition.
    • Clarify the role of QA throughout your delivery pipeline. Indicate where and how QA is involved throughout product delivery. Instill quality-first thinking in each stage of your pipeline to catch defects and issues early.
    • Structure your test design, planning, execution, and communication practices to better support your quality definition and business and IT environments and priorities. Adopt QA good practices to ensure your tests satisfy your criteria for a high-quality and successful product.

    Build a Software Quality Assurance Program Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build a strong foundation for quality, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Define your QA process

    Standardize your product quality definition and your QA roles, processes, and guidelines according to your business and IT priorities.

    • Build a Strong Foundation for Quality – Phase 1: Define Your QA Process
    • Test Strategy Template

    2. Adopt QA good practices

    Build a solid set of good practices to define your defect tolerances, recognize the appropriate test coverage, and communicate your test results.

    • Build a Strong Foundation for Quality – Phase 2: Adopt QA Good Practices
    • Test Plan Template
    • Test Case Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build a Software Quality Assurance Program

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Define Your QA Process

    The Purpose

    Discuss your quality definition and how quality is interpreted from both business and IT perspectives.

    Review your case for strengthening your QA practice.

    Review the standardization of QA roles, processes, and guidelines in your organization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Grounded understanding of quality that is accepted across IT and between the business and IT.

    Clear QA roles and responsibilities.

    A repeatable QA process that is applicable across the delivery pipeline.

    Activities

    1.1 List your QA objectives and metrics.

    1.2 Adopt your foundational QA process.

    Outputs

    Quality definition and QA objectives and metrics.

    QA guiding principles, process, and roles and responsibilities.

    2 Adopt QA Good Practices

    The Purpose

    Discuss the practices to reveal the sufficient degree of test coverage to meet your acceptance criteria, defect tolerance, and quality definition.

    Review the technologies and tools to support the execution and reporting of your tests.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    QA practices aligned to industry good practices supporting your quality definition.

    Defect tolerance and acceptance criteria defined against stakeholder priorities.

    Identification of test scenarios to meet test coverage expectations.

    Activities

    2.1 Define your defect tolerance.

    2.2 Model and prioritize your tests.

    2.3 Develop and execute your QA activities.

    2.4 Communicate your QA activities.

    Outputs

    Defect tolerance levels and courses of action.

    List of test cases and scenarios that meet test coverage expectations.

    Defined test types, environment and data requirements, and testing toolchain.

    Test dashboard and communication flow.

    Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization

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    • Parent Category Name: Vendor Management
    • Parent Category Link: /vendor-management

    More than any other time, our world is changing. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level.

    A new threat will impact your organization's operations at some point. Make sure your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences and that you understand where those threats may originate.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Identifying and managing a vendor’s potential operational impact on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes may affect operations.
    • Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility to adjust to significant market upheavals.

    Impact and Result

    Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them.

    • Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.
    • Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors.
    • Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Operational Risk Impact Tool.

    Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts to Your Organization Storyboard – Use this research to better understand the negative impacts of vendor actions to your brand reputation.

    Use this research to identify and quantify the potential operational impacts caused by vendors. Utilize Info-Tech's approach to look at the operational impact from various perspectives to better prepare for issues that may arise.

    • Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts to Your Organization Storyboard

    2. Operational Risk Impact Tool – Use this tool to help identify and quantify the operational impacts of negative vendor actions.

    By playing the “what if” game and asking probing questions to draw out – or eliminate - possible negative outcomes, everyone involved adds their insight into parts of the organization to gather a comprehensive picture of potential impacts.

    • Operational Risk Impact Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization

    Understand internal and external vendor risks to avoid potential disaster.

    Analyst perspective

    Organizations need to be aware of the operational damage vendors may cause to plan around those impacts effectively.

    Frank Sewell

    Organizations must be mindful that operational risks come from internal and external vendor sources. Missing either component in the overall risk assessment can significantly impact day-to-day business processes that cost revenue, delay projects, and lead to customer dissatisfaction.

    Frank Sewell,

    Research Director, Vendor Management
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    More than any other time, our world is changing rapidly. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level.

    A new threat will impact your organization's operations at some point. Make sure your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences and that you understand where those threats may originate.

    Common Obstacles

    Identifying and managing a vendor’s potential operational impact on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes may affect operations.

    Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility to adjust to significant market upheavals.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them.

    Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.

    Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors.

    Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Operational Risk Impact Tool.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Organizations must evolve their risk assessments to be more adaptive to respond to threats in the market. Ongoing monitoring of the vendors tied to company operations, and understanding where those vendors impact your operations, is imperative to avoiding disasters.

    Info-Tech’s multi-blueprint series on vendor risk assessment

    There are many individual components of vendor risk beyond cybersecurity.

    There are many components to vendor risk, including: Financial, Reputational, Operational, Strategic, Security, Regulatory & Compliance.

    This series will focus on the individual components of vendor risk and how vendor management practices can facilitate organizations’ understanding of those risks.

    Out of Scope:
    This series will not tackle risk governance, determining overall risk tolerance and appetite, or quantifying inherent risk.

    Operational risk impacts

    Potential losses to the organization due to incidents that affect operations.

    • In this blueprint we’ll explore operational risks, particularly from third-party vendors, and their impacts.
    • Identify potentially disruptive events to assess the overall impact on organizations and implement adaptive measures to identify, manage, and monitor vendor performance.
    Operational

    The world is constantly changing

    The IT market is constantly reacting to global influences. By anticipating changes, leaders can set expectations and work with their vendors to accommodate them.

    When the unexpected happens, being able to adapt quickly to new priorities ensures continued long-term business success.

    Below are some things no one expected to happen in the last few years:

    27%

    Businesses are changing their internal processes around TPRM in response to the Pandemic.

    70%

    Of organizations attribute a third-party breach to too much privileged access.

    85%

    Of breaches involved human factors (phishing, poor passwords, etc.).

    Assess internal and external operational risk impacts

    Due diligence and consistent monitoring are the keys to safeguarding your organization.

    Two sides of the Same Coin

    Internal

    • Poorly vetted supplemental staff
    • Bad system configurations
    • Lack of relevant skills
    • Poor vendor performance
    • Failure to follow established processes
    • Weak contractual accountability
    • Unsupportable or end-of-life system components

    External

    • Cyberattacks
    • Supply Chain Issues
    • Geopolitical Disruptions
    • Vendor Acquisitions
    • N-Party Non-Compliance
    • Vendor Fraud

    Operational risk is the risk of losses caused by flawed or failed processes, policies, systems, or events that disrupt business operations.

    - Wikipedia

    Internal operational risk

    Vendors operating within your secure perimeter can open your organization to substantial risk.

    Frequently monitor your internal process around vendor management to ensure safe operations.

    • Poorly vetted supplemental staff
    • Bad system configurations
    • Lack of relevant skills
    • Poor vendor performance
    • Failure to follow established processes
    • Weak contractual accountability
    • Unsupportable or end-of-life system components

    Info-Tech Insight

    You may have solid policies, but if your employees and vendors are not following them, they will not protect the organization.

    External operational risks

    • Cyberattacks
    • Supplier issues and geopolitical instability
    • Vendor acquisitions
    • N-party vendor non-compliance

    Identify and manage operational risks

    Poorly configured systems

    Failing to ensure that your vendor-supported systems are properly configured and that your vendors are meeting your IT change control and configuration standards is more commonplace than expected. Proper oversight and management of your support vendors are crucial to ensure they are meeting expectations in this regard.

    Failure to follow processes

    Most companies have policies and procedures around IT change and configuration control, security standards, risk management, vendor performance standards, etc. While having these processes is a good start, failure to perform continuous monitoring and management of these leads to increased risks of incidents.

    Supply chain disruptions

    Awareness of the supply chain's complications, and each organization's dependencies, are increasing for everyone. However, most organizations still do not understand the chain of n-party vendors that support their specific vendors or how interruptions in their supply chains could affect them. The 2022 Toyota shutdown due to Kojima is a perfect example of how one essential parts vendor could shut down your operations.

    What to look for

    Identify operational risk impacts

    • Does the vendor have a business continuity plan they will share for your review?
    • Is the vendor operating on old hardware that may be out of warranty or at end of life?
    • Is the vendor operating on older software or shareware that may lack the necessary patches?
    • Does the vendor self-audit, or do they use a vetted third-party audit firm to issue a SOC report annually?
    • Does the vendor have sufficient personnel in acceptable regions to support your operations?
    • Is the vendor willing to make concessions on contractual protections, or are they only offering “one-sided” agreements with “as-is” warranties?

    Operational risks

    Not knowing where your risks come from creates additional risks to operations.

    • Supply chain disruptions and global shortages.
      • Geopolitical disruptions and natural disasters have caused unprecedented interruptions to business. Do you know where your critical vendors are getting their supplies? Are you aware of their business continuity plans to accommodate for those interruptions?
    • Poor vendor performance.
      • Organizations need to understand where vendors are acting in their operations and manage the impact of replacing that vendor and cutting their losses rather than continuing to throw good money away after a bad performance.
    • Vendor acquisitions.
      • A lot of acquisition is going on in the market today. Large companies are buying competitors, imposing new terms on customers, or removing competing products from the market. Understand your options if a vendor is acquired by a company with which you do not wish to be in a relationship.

    It is important to identify where potential risks to your operations may come from to manage and potentially eliminate them from impacting your organization.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Most organizations realize that their vendors could operationally affect them if an incident occurs. Still, they fail to follow the chain of events that might arise from those incidents to understand the impact fully.

    Prepare your vendor risk management for success

    Due diligence will enable successful outcomes.

    1. Obtain top-level buy-in; it is critical to success.
    2. Build enterprise risk management (ERM) through incremental improvement.
    3. Focus initial efforts on the “big wins” to prove the process works.
    4. Use existing resources.
    5. Build on any risk management activities that already exist in the organization.
    6. Socialize ERM throughout the organization to gain additional buy‑in.
    7. Normalize the process long term with ongoing updates and continuing education for the organization.

    How to assess third-party operational risk

    1. Review Organizational Operations

      Understand the organization’s operational risks to prepare for the “what if” game exercise.
    2. Identify and Understand Potential Operational Risks

      Play the “what if” game with the right people at the table.
    3. Create a Risk Profile Packet for Leadership

      Pull all the information together in a presentation document.
    4. Validate the Risks

      Work with leadership to ensure that the proposed risks are in line with their thoughts.
    5. Plan to Manage the Risks

      Lower the overall risk potential by putting mitigations in place.
    6. Communicate the Plan

      It is important not only to have a plan but also to socialize it in the organization for awareness.
    7. Enact the Plan

      Once the plan is finalized and socialized, put it in place with continued monitoring for success.

    Insight summary

    Operational risk impacts often come from unexpected places and have unforeseen impacts. Knowing where your vendors place in critical business processes and those vendors' business continuity plans concerning your organization should be a priority for those who manage the vendors.

    Insight 1

    Organizations fail to plan for vendor acquisitions appropriately.

    Vendors routinely get acquired in the IT space. Does your organization have appropriate safeguards from inadvertently entering a negative relationship? Do you have plans around replacing critical vendors purchased in such a manner?

    Insight 2

    Organizations often fail to understand how they factor into a vendor’s business continuity plan.

    If one of your critical vendors goes down, do you know how they intend to re-establish business? Do you know how you factor into their priorities?

    Insight 3

    Organizations need to have a comprehensive understanding of how their vendor-managed systems integrate with Operations.

    Do you understand where in the business processes vendor-supported systems lie? Do you have contingencies around disruptions that account for those pieces missing from the process?

    Identifying operational vendor risk

    Who should be included in the discussion

    • While it is true that executive-level leadership defines the strategy for an organization, it is vital for those making decisions to make informed decisions.
    • Getting input from operational experts at your organization will enhance your organization's long-term potential for success.
    • Involving those who not only directly manage vendors but also understand your business processes will aid in determining the forward path for relationships with your current vendors and identifying new emerging potential partners.

    See the blueprint Build an IT Risk Management Program

    Review your operational plans for new risks on a regular basis.

    Keep in mind Risk = Likelihood x Impact (R=L*I).

    Impact (I) tends to remain the same, while Likelihood (L) is becoming closer to 100% as threat actors become more prevalent

    Managing vendor operational risk impacts

    What can we realistically do about the risks?

    • Review vendors’ business continuity plans and disaster recovery testing.
      • Understand your priority in their plans.
    • Institute proper contract lifecycle management.
      • Make sure to follow corporate due diligence and risk assessment policies and procedures.
      • Failure to do so consistently can be a recipe for disaster.
    • Develop IT governance and change control.
    • Introduce continual risk assessment to monitor the relevant vendor markets.
      • Regularly review your operational plans for new risks and evolving likelihoods.
      • Risk = Likelihood x Impact (R=L*I).
        • Impact (I) tends to remain the same and be well understood, while Likelihood (L) may often be considered 100%.
    • Be adaptable and allow for innovations that arise from the current needs.
      • Capture lessons learned from prior incidents to improve over time and adjust your plans accordingly.

    Organizations need to review their organizational risk plans, considering the placement of vendors in their operations.

    Pandemics, extreme weather, and wars that affect global supply chains are current realities, not unlikely scenarios.

    Ongoing improvement

    Incorporating lessons learned

    • Over time, despite everyone’s best observations and plans, incidents will catch us off guard.
    • When it happens, follow your incident response plans and act accordingly.
    • An essential step is to document what worked and what did not – collectively known as the “lessons learned.”
    • Use the lessons learned document to devise, incorporate, and enact a better risk management process.

    Sometimes disasters occur despite our best plans to manage them.

    When this happens, it is important to document the lessons learned and improve our plans going forward.

    The "what if" game

    1-3 hours

    Vendor management professionals are in an excellent position to help senior leadership identify and pull together resources across the organization to determine potential risks. By playing the "what if" game and asking probing questions to draw out – or eliminate – possible adverse outcomes, everyone involved adds their insight into parts of the organization to gather a comprehensive picture of potential impacts.

    • Break into smaller groups (or if too small, continue as a single group).
    • Use the Operational Risk Impact Tool to prompt discussion on potential risks. Keep this discussion flowing organically to explore all potentials but manage the overall process to keep the discussion pertinent and on track.
    • Collect the outputs and ask the subject matter experts (SMEs) for management options for each one in order to present a comprehensive risk strategy. You will use this to educate senior leadership so that they can make an informed decision to accept or reject the solution.

    Download the Operational Risk Impact Tool

    Input

    • List of identified potential risk scenarios scored by likelihood and operational impact
    • List of potential management of the scenarios to reduce the risk

    Output

    • Comprehensive operational risk profile on the specific vendor solution

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Operational Risk Impact Tool to help drive discussion

    Participants

    • Vendor Management – Coordinator
    • Organizational Leadership
    • Operations Experts (SMEs)
    • Legal/Compliance/Risk Manager

    High risk example from tool

    Sample Questions to Ask to Identify Impacts. Lists questions impact score, weight, question and comments or notes.

    Being overly reliant on a single talented individual can impose risk to your operations. Make sure you include resiliency in your skill sets for critical business practices.

    Impact score and level. Each score for impacts are unique to the organization.

    Low risk example from tool

    Sample Questions to Ask to Identify Impacts. Lists questions impact score, weight, question and comments or notes. Impact score and level. Each score for impacts are unique to the organization.

    Summary

    Seek to understand all aspects of your operations.

    • Organizations need to understand and map out where vendors are critical to their operations.
    • Those organizations that consistently follow their established risk assessment and due diligence processes will be better positioned to avoid disasters.
    • Bring the right people to the table to outline potential risks in the market and your organization.
    • Understand how your vendors prioritize your organization in their business continuity processes.
    • Incorporate “lessons learned” from prior incidents into your risk management process to build better plans for future issues.

    Organizations must evolve their operational risk assessments considering their vendor portfolio.

    Ongoing monitoring of the market and the vendors tied to company operations is imperative to avoiding disaster.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Identify and Manage Financial Risk Impacts on Your Organization

    • Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential financial impacts that vendors may incur and suggest systems to help manage them.
    • Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage financial impacts with our Financial Risk Impact Tool.

    Identify and Manage Reputational Risk Impacts on Your Organization

    • Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks to vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them.
    • Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts on your reputation and brand with our Reputational Risk Impact Tool.

    Identify and Manage Strategic Risk Impacts on Your Organization

    • Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks to vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them.
    • Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts on your strategic plan with our Strategic Risk Impact Tool.

    Bibliography

    “Weak Cybersecurity is taking a toll on Small Businesses.” Tripwire. August 7, 2022.

    SecureLink 2022 White Paper SL_Page_EA+PAM (rocketcdn.me)

    Member Poll March 2021 "Guide: Evolving Work Environments Impact of Covid-19 on Profile and Management of Third Parties.“ Shared Assessments. March 2021.

    “Operational Risk.” Wikipedia.

    Tonello, Matteo. “Strategic Risk Management: A Primer for Directors.” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, August 23, 2012.

    Frigo, Mark L., and Richard J. Anderson. “Embracing Enterprise Risk Management: Practical Approaches for Getting Started.” COSO, 2011.

    Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO

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    • Parent Category Name: Project Management Office
    • Parent Category Link: /project-management-office
    • As an enterprise PMO leader, you need to evolve your PMO framework beyond an IT-centric model of project portfolio management (PPM) to optimize communication and coordination on enterprise-wide initiatives.
    • While senior leaders are demanding greater uniformity in strategic project execution, individual departments currently operate—to the detriment of the organization—as sovereign silos.
    • You know that the answer is a more strategically aligned enterprise PMO framework, but you’re unsure of how to start building the case for one, especially when the majority of upper management view PMOs as support entities rather than strategic partners.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • An EPMO can’t simply be imposed on an organization. If it is not backed by an executive sponsor, then there needs to be an identifiable business value in implementing one, and you need to communicate this value to stakeholders throughout the enterprise.
    • EPMOs add value not by enforcing project or program governance, but by helping organizations achieve strategic goals and manage change.
    • EPMOs enable organizations to succeed on enterprise-wide initiatives by connecting the individual parts to the whole. They should serve as the coordinating mechanism that ensures the flow of information and resources across departments and programs.

    Impact and Result

    • Find the right balance between a command and control approach that dictates governance standards versus an approach that gives business units flexibility to manage projects, programs, and portfolios the way they see fit, as long as they meet certain reporting, process, and record keeping requirements.
    • Effectively define the EPMO’s role, reach, and authority in terms of Portfolio Governance, Project Leadership, and PPM Administration. An organizationally appropriate mix of these three practices will not only ensure stakeholder buy-in, but it will help foster the right conditions for EPMO success.
    • Build strong cross-departmental relationships upon soft or informal grounds by positioning your EPMO as your organization’s portfolio network, i.e. an enterprise hub that facilitates the flow of reliable information and enables timely responsiveness to change.

    Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how implementing an EPMO could help your organization achieve business goals, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and discover the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Gather requirements

    Evaluate executive stakeholder needs and assess your current capabilities to ensure your implementation strategy sets realistic expectations.

    • Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO – Phase 1: Gather Requirements
    • EPMO Capabilities Survey

    2. Define the plan

    Define an organizationally appropriate scope and mandate for your EPMO to ensure that your processes serve the needs of the whole.

    • Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO – Phase 2: Define the Plan
    • EPMO Charter Template
    • EPMO Communication Planning Template

    3. Implement the plan

    Establish clearly defined and easy-to-follow EPMO processes that minimize project complexity and improve enterprise project results.

    • Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO – Phase 3: Implement the Plan
    • EPMO Process Guide and SOP Template
    • EPMO Communications Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Define and Deploy an Enterprise PMO

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Gather Requirements

    The Purpose

    Identify breakdowns in the flow of portfolio data across the enterprise to pinpoint where and how an EPMO can best intervene.

    Assess areas of strength and opportunity in your PPM capabilities to help structure and drive the EPMO.

    Define stakeholder needs and expectations for the EPMO in order to cultivate capabilities and services that help drive informed and engaged project decisions at the executive level.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A current state picture of the triggers that are driving the need for an EPMO at your organization.

    A current state understanding of the strengths you bring to the table in constructing an EPMO as well as the areas you need to focus on in building up your capabilities.

    A target state set by stakeholder requirements and expectations, which will enable you to build out an implementation strategy that is aligned with the needs of the executive layer.

    Activities

    1.1 Map current enterprise PPM workflows.

    1.2 Conduct a SWOT analysis.

    1.3 Identify resourcing considerations and other implementation factors.

    1.4 Survey stakeholders to establish the right mix of EPMO capabilities.

    Outputs

    An overview of the flow of portfolio data and information across the organization

    An overview of current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

    A preliminary assessment of internal and external factors that could impact the success of this implementation

    The ability to construct a project plan that is aligned with stakeholder needs and expectations

    2 Define the Plan

    The Purpose

    Define an appropriate scope for the EPMO and the deployment it services.

    Devise a plan for engaging and including the appropriate stakeholders during the implementation phase.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A clear purview for the EPMO in relation to the wider enterprise in order to establish appropriate expectations for the EPMO’s services throughout the organization.

    Engaged stakeholders who understand that they have a stake in the successful implementation of the EPMO.

    Activities

    2.1 Prepare your EPMO value proposition.

    2.2 Define the role and organizational reach of your EPPM capabilities.

    2.3 Establish a communication plan to create stakeholder awareness.

    Outputs

    A clear statement of purpose and benefit that can be used to help build the case for an EPMO with stakeholders

    A functional charter defining the scope of the EPMO and providing a statement of the services the EPMO will provide once established

    An engaged executive layer that understands the value of the EPMO and helps drive its success

    3 Implement the Plan

    The Purpose

    Establish clearly defined and easy-to-follow EPMO processes that minimize project complexity.

    Develop portfolio and project governance structures that feed the EPMO with the data decision makers require without overloading enterprise project teams with processes they can’t support.

    Devise a communications strategy that helps achieve organizational buy-in.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    The reduction of project chaos and confusion throughout the organization.

    Processes and governance requirements that work for both decision makers and project teams.

    Organizational understanding of the universal benefit of the EPMO’s processes to stakeholders throughout the enterprise. 

    Activities

    3.1 Establish EPMO roles and responsibilities.

    3.2 Document standard procedures around enterprise portfolio reporting, PPM administration, and project leadership.

    3.3 Review enterprise PPM solutions.

    3.4 Develop a stakeholder engagement and resistance plan.

    Outputs

    Clear lines of portfolio accountability

    A fully actionable EPMO Standard Operating Procedure document that will enable process clarity

    An informed understanding of the right PPM solution for your enterprise processes

    A communications strategy document to help communicate the organizational benefits of the EPMO

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    Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}542|cart{/j2store}
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    • Parent Category Name: Attract & Select
    • Parent Category Link: /attract-and-select
    • Workplace flexibility continues to be top priority for IT employees. Organizations who fail to offer flexibility will have a difficult time attracting, recruiting, and retaining talent.
    • When the benefits of remote work are not available to everyone, this raises fairness and equity concerns.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    IT excels at hybrid location work and is more effective as a business function when location flexibility is an option for its employees. But hybrid work is just a start. A comprehensive flex work program extends beyond flexible location, so organizations must understand the needs of unique employee groups to uncover the options that will attract and retain talent.

    Impact and Result

    • Uncover the needs of unique employee segments to shortlist flexible work options that employees want and will use.
    • Assess the feasibility of various flexible work options and select ones that meet employee needs and are feasible for the organization.
    • Equip leaders with the information and tools needed to implement and sustain a flexible work program.

    Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Assess employee and organizational flexibility needs

    Identify prioritized employee segments, flexibility challenges, and the desired state to inform program goals.

    • Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT – Phases 1-3
    • Talent Metrics Library
    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    2. Identify potential flex options and assess feasibility

    Review, shortlist, and assess the feasibility of common types of flexible work. Identify implementation issues and cultural barriers.

    • Flexible Work Focus Group Guide
    • Flexible Work Options Catalog

    3. Implement selected option(s)

    Equip managers and employees to adopt flexible work options while addressing implementation issues and cultural barriers and aligning HR programs.

    • Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees
    • Flexible Work Time Policy
    • Flexible Work Time Off Policy
    • Flexible Work Location Policy

    Infographic

    Workshop: Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Prepare to Assess Flex Work Feasibility

    The Purpose

    Gather information on organizational and employee flexibility needs.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understand the flexibility needs of the organization and its employees to inform a targeted flex work program.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify employee and organizational needs.

    1.2 Identify employee segments.

    1.3 Establish program goals and metrics.

    1.4 Shortlist flexible work options.

    Outputs

    Organizational context summary

    List of shortlisted flex work options

    2 Assess Flex Work Feasibility

    The Purpose

    Perform a data-driven feasibility analysis on shortlisted work options.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A data-driven feasibility analysis ensures your flex work program meets its goals.

    Activities

    2.1 Conduct employee/manager focus groups to assess feasibility of flex work options.

    Outputs

    Summary of flex work options feasibility per employee segment

    3 Finalize Flex Work Options

    The Purpose

    Select the most impactful flex work options and create a plan for addressing implementation challenge

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A data-driven selection process ensures decisions and exceptions can be communicated with full transparency.

    Activities

    3.1 Finalize list of approved flex work options.

    3.2 Brainstorm solutions to implementation issues.

    3.3 Identify how to overcome cultural barriers.

    Outputs

    Final list of flex work options

    Implementation barriers and solutions summary

    4 Prepare for Implementation

    The Purpose

    Create supporting materials to ensure program implementation proceeds smoothly.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Employee- and manager-facing guides and policies ensure the program is clearly documented and communicated.

    Activities

    4.1 Design employee and manager guide prototype.

    4.2 Align HR programs and policies to support flexible work.

    4.3 Create a communication plan.

    Outputs

    Employee and manager guide to flexible work

    Flex work roadmap and communication plan

    5 Next Steps and Wrap-Up

    The Purpose

    Put everything together and prepare to implement.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Our analysts will support you in synthesizing the workshop’s efforts into a cohesive implementation strategy.

    Activities

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

    Outputs

    Completed flexible work feasibility workbook

    Flexible work communication plan

    Further reading

    Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT

    Select flexible work options that balance organizational and employee needs to drive engagement and improve attraction and retention.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    • IT leaders continue to struggle with workplace flexibility, and it is a top priority for IT employees; as a result, organizations who fail to offer flexibility will have a difficult time attracting, recruiting, and retaining talent.
    • The benefits of remote work are not available to everyone, raising fairness and equity concerns for employees.

    Common Obstacles

    • A one-size-fits-all approach to selecting and implementing flexible work options fails to consider unique employee needs and will not reap the benefits of offering a flexible work program (e.g. higher engagement or enhanced employer brand).
    • Improper structure and implementation of flexible work programs exacerbates existing challenges (e.g. high turnover) or creates new ones.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    • Uncover the needs of unique employee segments to shortlist flexible work options that employees want and will use.
    • Assess the feasibility of various flexible work options and select ones that meet employee needs and are feasible for the organization.
    • Equip leaders with the information and tools needed to implement and sustain a flexible work program.

    Info-Tech Insight

    IT excels at hybrid location work and is more effective as a business function when location flexibility is an option for its employees. But hybrid work is just a start. A comprehensive flex work program extends beyond flexible location, so organizations must understand the needs of unique employee groups to uncover the options that will attract and retain talent.

    Flexible work arrangements are a requirement in today's world of work

    Flexible work continues to gain momentum…

    A 2022 LinkedIn report found that the following occurred between 2019 and 2021:

    +362%

    Increase in LinkedIn members sharing content with the term "flexible work."

    +83%

    Increase in job postings that mention "flexibility."
    (LinkedIn, 2022)

    In 2022, Into-Tech found that hybrid was the most commonly used location work model for IT across all industries.

    ("State of Hybrid Work in IT," Info-Tech Research Group, 2022)

    …and employees are demanding more flexibility

    90%

    of employees said they want schedule and location flexibility ("Global Employee Survey," EY, 2021).

    17%

    of resigning IT employees cited lack of flexible work options as a reason ("IT Talent Trends 2022," Info-Tech Research Group, 2022).

    71%

    of executives said they felt "pressure to change working models and adapt workplace policies to allow for greater flexibility" (LinkedIn, 2021).

    Therefore, organizations who fail to offer flexibility will be left behind

    Difficulty attracting and retaining talent

    98% of IT employees say flexible work options are important in choosing an employer ("IT Talent Trends 2022," Info-Tech Research Group, 2022).

    Worsening employee wellbeing and burnout

    Knowledge workers with minimal to no schedule flexibility are 2.2x more likely to experience work-related stress and are 1.4x more likely to suffer from burnout (Slack, 2022; N=10,818).

    Offering workplace flexibility benefits organizations and employees

    Higher performance

    IT departments that offer some degree of location flexibility are more effective at supporting the organization than those who do not.

    35% of service desk functions report improved service since implementing location flexibility.
    ("State of Hybrid Work in IT," Info-Tech Research Group, 2023).

    Enhanced employer brand

    Employees are 2.1x more likely to recommend their employer to others when they are satisfied with their organization's flexible work arrangements (LinkedIn, 2021).

    Improved attraction

    41% of IT departments cite an expanded hiring pool as a key benefit of hybrid work.

    Organizations that mention "flexibility" in their job postings have 35% more engagement with their posts (LinkedIn, 2022).

    Increased job satisfaction

    IT employees who have more control over their working arrangement experience a greater sense of contribution and trust in leadership ("State of Hybrid Work in IT," Info-Tech Research Group, 2023).

    Better work-life balance

    81% of employees say flexible work will positively impact their work-life balance (FlexJobs, 2021).

    Boosted inclusivity

    • Caregivers regardless of gender, supporting them in balancing responsibilities
    • Individuals with disabilities, enabling them to work from the comfort of their homes
    • Women who may have increased responsibilities
    • Women of color to mitigate the emotional tax experienced at work

    Info-Tech Insight

    Flexible work options are not a concession to lower productivity. Properly implemented, flex work enables employees to be more productive at reaching business goals.

    Despite the popularity of flexible work options, not all employees can participate

    IT organizations differ on how much flexibility different roles can have.

    IT employees were asked what percentage of IT roles were currently in a hybrid or remote work arrangement ("State of Hybrid Work in IT," Info-Tech Research Group, 2023).

    However, the benefits of remote work are not available to all, which raises fairness and equity concerns between remote and onsite employees.

    45%

    of employers said, "one of the biggest risks will be their ability to establish fairness and equity among employees when some jobs require a fixed schedule or location, creating a 'have and have not' dynamic based on roles" ("Businesses Suffering," EY, 2021).

    Offering schedule flexibility to employees who need to be fully onsite can be used to close the fairness and equity gap.

    When offered the choice, 54% of employees said they would choose schedule flexibility over location flexibility ("Global Employee Survey," EY, 2021).

    When employees were asked "What choice would you want your employer to provide related to when you have to work?" The top three choices were:

    68%

    Flexibility on when to start and finish work

    38%

    Compressed or four-day work weeks

    33%

    Fixed hours (e.g. 9am to 5pm)

    Disclaimer: "Percentages do not sum to 100%, as each respondent could choose up to three of the [five options provided]" ("Global Employee Survey," EY, 2021).

    Beware of the "all or nothing" approach

    There is no one-size-fits-all approach to workplace flexibility.

    Understanding the needs of various employee segments in the organization is critical to the success of a flexible work program.

    Working parents want more flexibility

    82%

    of working mothers desire flexibility in where they work.

    48%

    of working fathers "want to work remotely 3 to 5 days a week."

    Historically underrepresented groups value more flexibility

    38%

    "Thirty-eight percent of Black male employees and 33% of Black female employees would prefer a fully flexible schedule, compared to 25% of white female employees and 26% of white male employees."
    (Slack, 2022; N=10,818)

    33%

    Workplace flexibility must be customized to the organization to avoid longer working hours and heavy workloads that impact employee wellbeing

    84%

    of remote workers and 61% of onsite workers reported working longer hours post pandemic. Longer working hours were attributed to reasons such as pressure from management and checking emails after working hours (Indeed, 2021).

    2.6x

    Respondents who either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "Generally, I find my workload reasonable" were 2.6x more likely to be engaged compared to those who stated they disagreed or strongly disagreed (McLean & Company Engagement Survey Database;2022; N=5,615 responses).

    Longer hours and unsustainable workloads can contribute to stress and burnout, which is a threat to employee engagement and retention. With careful management (e.g. setting clear expectations and establishing manageable workloads), flexible work arrangement benefits can be preserved.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Employees' lived experiences and needs determine if people use flexible work programs – a flex program that has limited use or excludes people will not benefit the organization.

    Develop a flexible work program that meets employee and organizational needs

    This is an image of a sample flexible work program which meets employee and organizational needs.

    Insight summary

    Overarching insight: IT excels at hybrid location work and is more effective as a business function when location, time, and time-off flexibility are an option for its employees.

    Introduction

    Step 1 insight

    Step 2 insight

    Step 3 insight

    • Flexible work options are not a concession to lower productivity. Properly implemented, flex work enables employees to be more productive at reaching business goals.
    • Employees' lived experiences and needs determine if people use flexible work programs – a flex program that has limited use or excludes people will not benefit the organization.
    • Flexible work benefits everyone. IT employees experience greater engagement, motivation, and company loyalty. IT organizations realize benefits such as better service coverage, reduced facilities costs, and increased productivity.
    • Hybrid work is a start. A comprehensive flex work program extends beyond flexible location to flexible time and time off. Organizations must understand the needs of unique employee groups to uncover the options that will attract and retain talent. Provide greater inclusivity to employees by broadening the scope to include flex location, flex time, and flex time off.
    • No two employee segments are the same. To be effective, flexible work options must align with the expectations and working processes of each segment.
    • Every role is eligible for hybrid location work. If onsite work duties prevent an employee group from participating, see if processes can be digitized or automated. Flexible work is an opportunity to go beyond current needs to future proofing your organization.
    • Flexible work options must balance organizational and employee needs. If an option is beneficial to employees but there is little or no benefit to the organization, or if the cost of the option is too high, it will not support the long-term success of the organization.
    • Prioritize flexible work options that employees want. Providing too many options often leads to information overload and results in employees not understanding what is available, lowering adoption of the flexible work program.
    • Leaders' collective support of the flexible program determines the program's successful adoption. Don't sweep cultural barriers under the rug; acknowledge and address them to overcome them.
    • Negative performance of a flexible work option does not necessarily mean failure. Take the time to evaluate whether the option simply needs to be tweaked or whether it truly isn't working for the organization.
    • A set of formal guidelines for IT ensures flexible work is:
      1. Administered fairly across all IT employees.
      2. Defensible and clear.
      3. Scalable to the rest of the organization.

    Case Study

    Expanding hybrid work at Info-Tech

    Challenge

    In 2020, Info-Tech implemented emergency work-from-home for its IT department, along with the rest of the organization. Now in 2023, hybrid work is firmly embedded in Info-Tech's culture, with plans to continue location flexibility for the foreseeable future.

    Adjusting to the change came with lessons learned and future-looking questions.

    Lessons Learned

    Moving into remote work was made easier by certain enablers that had already been put in place. These included issuing laptops instead of desktops to the user base and using an existing cloud-based infrastructure. Much support was already being done remotely, making the transition for the support teams virtually seamless.

    Continuing hybrid work has brought benefits such as reduced commuting costs for employees, higher engagement, and satisfaction among staff that their preferences were heard.

    Looking Forward

    Every flexible work implementation is a work in progress and must be continually revisited to ensure it continues to meet organizational and employee needs. Current questions being explored at Info-Tech are:

    • The concept of the "office as a tool" – how does use of the office change when it is used for specific collaboration-related tasks, rather than everything? How should the physical space change to support this?
    • What does a viable replacement for quick hallway meetings look like in a remote world where communication is much more deliberate? How can managers adjust their practices to ensure the benefits of informal encounters aren't lost?

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Preparation

    Step 1

    Step 2

    Step 3

    Follow-up

    Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.

    Call #2: Assess employee and organizational needs.

    Call #3: Shortlist flex work options and assess feasibility.

    Call #4: Finalize flex work options and create rollout plan.

    Call #5: (Optional) Review rollout progress or evaluate pilot success.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is 3 to 5 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1

    Day 2

    Day 3

    Day 4

    Day 5

    Activities

    Prepare to assess flex work feasibility

    Assess flex work feasibility

    Finalize flex work options

    Prepare for implementation

    Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

    1.1 Identify employee and organizational needs.

    1.2 Identify employee segments.

    1.3 Establish program goals and metrics.

    1.4 Shortlist flex work options.

    2.1 Conduct employee/manager focus groups to assess feasibility of flex work options.

    3.1 Finalize list of approved flex work options.

    3.2 Brainstorm solutions to implementation issues.

    3.2 Identify how to overcome cultural barriers.

    4.1 Design employee and manager guide prototype.

    4.2 Align HR programs and policies to support flexible work.

    4.3 Create a communication plan.

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

    Deliverables

    1. Organizational context summary
    2. List of shortlisted flex work options
    1. Summary of flex work options' feasibility per employee segment
    1. 1.Final list of flex work options
    2. 2.Implementation barriers and solutions summary
    1. Employee and manager guide to flexible work
    2. Flex work roadmap and communication plan
    1. Completed flexible work feasibility workbook
    2. Flexible work communication plan

    Step 1

    Assess employee and organizational needs

    1. Assess employee and organizational flexibility needs
    2. Identify potential flex options and assess feasibility
    3. Implement selected option(s)

    After completing this step you will have:

    • Identified key stakeholders and their responsibilities
    • Uncovered the current and desired state of the organization
    • Analyzed feedback to identify flexibility challenges
    • Identified and prioritized employee segments
    • Determined the program goals
    • Identified the degree of flexibility for work location, timing, and deliverables

    Identify key stakeholders

    Organizational flexibility requires collaborative and cross-functional involvement to determine which flexible options will meet the needs of a diverse workforce. HR leads the project to explore flexible work options, while other stakeholders provide feedback during the identification and implementation processes.

    HR

    • Assist with the design, implementation, and maintenance of the program.
    • Provide managers and employees with guidance to establish successful flexible work arrangements.
    • Help develop communications to launch and maintain the program.

    Senior Leaders

    • Champion the project by modeling and promoting flexible work options
    • Help develop and deliver communications; set the tone for flexible work at the organization.
    • Provide input into determining program goals.

    Managers

    • Model flexible work options and encourage direct reports to request and discuss options.
    • Use flexible work program guidelines to work with direct reports to select suitable flexible work options.
    • Develop performance metrics and encourage communication between flexible and non-flexible workers.

    Flexible Workers

    • Indicate preferences of flexible work options to the manager.
    • Identify ways to maintain operational continuity and communication while working flexibly.
    • Flag issues and suggest improvements to the manager.
    • Develop creative ways to work with colleagues who don't work flexibly.

    Non-Flexible Workers

    • Share feedback on issues with flexible arrangements and their impact on operational continuity.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Flexible work is a holistic team effort. Leaders, flexible workers, teammates, and HR must clearly understand their roles to ensure that teams are set up for success.

    Uncover the current and desired state of flexibility in the organization

    Current State

    Target State

    Review:

    • Existing policies related to flexibility (e.g. vacation, work from anywhere)
    • Existing flexibility programs (e.g. seasonal hours) and their uptake
    • Productivity of employees
    • Current culture at the organization. Look for:
      • Employee autonomy
      • Reporting structure and performance management processes
      • Trust and psychological safety of employees
      • Leadership behavior (e.g. do leaders model work-life balance, or does the organization have a work 24/7 mentality?)

    Identify what is driving the need for flexible work options. Ask:

    • Why does the organization need flexible options?
      • For example, the introduction of flexibility for some employees has created a "have and have not" dynamic between roles that must be addressed.
    • What does the organization hope to gain from implementing flexible options? For example:
      • Improved retention
      • Increased attraction, remaining competitive for talent
      • Increased work-life balance for employees
      • Reduced burnout
    • What does the organization aspire to be?
      • For example, an organization that creates an environment that values output, not face time.

    These drivers identify goals for the organization to achieve through targeted flexible work options.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Hybrid work is a start. A comprehensive flex work program extends beyond flexible location, so organizations must understand the needs of unique employee groups to uncover the options that will attract and retain talent. Provide greater inclusivity to employees by broadening the scope to include flex location, flex time, and flex time off.

    Identify employee segments

    Using the data, feedback, and challenges analyzed and uncovered so far, assess the organization and identify employee segments.

    Identify employee segments with common characteristics to assess if they require unique flexible work options. Assess the feasibility options for the segments separately in Step 2.

    • Segments' unique characteristics include:
      • Role responsibilities (e.g. interacting with users, creating reports, development and testing)
      • Work location/schedule (e.g. geographic, remote vs. onsite, 9 to 5)
      • Work processes (e.g. server maintenance, phone support)
      • Group characteristics (e.g. specific teams, new hires)

    Identify employee segments and sort them into groups based on the characteristics above.

    Examples of segments:

    • Functional area (e.g. Service Desk, Security)
    • Job roles (e.g. desktop support, server maintenance)
    • Onsite, remote, or hybrid
    • Full-time or part-time
    • Job level (e.g. managers vs. independent contributors)
    • Employees with dependents

    Prioritize employee segments

    Determine whether the organization needs flexible work options for the entire organization or specific employee segments.
    For specific employee segments:

    • Answer the questions on the right to identify whether an employee segment is high, medium, or low priority. Complete slides 23 to 25 for each high-priority segment, repeating the process for medium-priority segments when resources allow.

    For the entire organization:

    • When identifying an option for the entire organization, consider all segments. The approach must create consistency and inclusion; keep this top of mind when identifying flexibility on slides 23 to 25. For example, the work location flexibility would be low in an organization where some segments can work remotely and others must be onsite due to machinery requirements.

    High priority: The employee segment has the lowest engagement scores or highest turnover within the organization. Segment sentiment is that current flexibility is nonexistent or not sufficiently meeting needs.
    Medium priority: The employee segment has low engagement or high turnover. Segment sentiment is that currently available flexibility is minimal or not sufficiently meeting needs.
    Low priority: The segment does not have the lowest engagement or the highest turnover rate. Segment sentiment is that currently available flexibility is sufficiently meeting needs.

    1. What is the impact on the organization if this segment's challenges aren't addressed (e.g. if low engagement and high turnover are not addressed)?
    2. How critical is flexibility to the segment's needs/engagement?
    3. How time sensitive is it to introduce flexibility to this segment (e.g. is the organization losing employees in this segment at a high rate)?
    4. Will providing flexibility to this segment increase organizational productivity or output

    Identify challenges to address with flexibility

    Uncover the lived experiences and expectations of employees to inform selection of segments and flexible options.

    1. Collect data from existing sources, such as:
      • Engagement surveys
      • New hire/exit surveys
      • Employee experience monitor surveys
      • Employee retention pulse surveys
      • Burnout surveys
      • DEI pulse surveys
    2. Analyze employee feedback on experiences with:
      • Work duties
      • Workload
      • Work-life balance
      • Operating processes and procedures
      • Achieving operational outcomes
      • Collaboration and communication
      • Individual experience and engagement
    3. Evaluate the data and identify challenges

    Example challenges:

    • Engagement: Low average score on work-life balance question; flexible work suggested in open-ended responses.
    • Retention: Exit survey indicating that lack of work-life balance is consistently a reason employees leave. Include the cost of turnover (e.g. recruitment, training, severance).
    • Burnout: Feedback from employees through surveys or HR business partner anecdotes indicating high burnout; high usage of wellness services or employee assistance programs.
    • Absenteeism: High average number of days employees were absent in the past year. Include the cost of lost productivity.
    • Operational continuity: Provide examples of when flexible work would have enabled operational continuity in the case of disaster or extended customer service coverage.
    • Program uptake: If the organization already has a flexible work program, provide data on the low proportion of eligible employees using available options.

    1.1 Prepare to evaluate flexible work options

    1-3 hours

    Follow the guidance on preceding slides to complete the following activities.
    Note: If you are only considering remote or hybrid work, use the Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook. Otherwise, proceed with the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook.

    1. Identify key stakeholders. Be sure to record the level of involvement and responsibility expected from each stakeholder. Use the "Stakeholders" tab of the workbook.
    2. Uncover current and desired state. Review and record your current state with respect to culture, productivity, and current flexible work options, if any. Next, record your desired future state, including reasons for implementing flexible work, and goals for the program. Record this in the "Current and Desired State" tab of the workbook.
    3. Identify and prioritize employee segments. Identify and record employee segments. Depending on the size of your department, you may identify a few or many. Be as granular as necessary to fully separate employee groups with different needs. If your resources or needs prevent you from rolling out flexible work to the entire department, record the priority level of each segment so you can focus on the highest priority first.
    4. Identify challenges with flexibility. With each employee segment in mind, analyze your available data to identify and record each segment's main challenges regarding flexible work. These will inform your program goals and metrics.

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Download the Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • List of departmental roles
    • Data on employee engagement, productivity, sentiment regarding flexible work, etc.

    Output

    • List of stakeholders and responsibilities
    • Flexible work challenges and aims
    • Prioritized list of employee segments

    Materials

    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
      Or
    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • IT department head
    • HR business partner
    • Flexible work program committee

    Determine goals and metrics for the flexible work program

    Sample program goals

    Sample metrics

    Increase productivity

    • Employee, team, and department key performance indicators (KPIs) before and after flexible work implementation
    • Absenteeism rate (% of lost working days due to all types of absence)

    Improve business satisfaction and perception of IT value

    Increase retention

    • % of exiting employees who cite lack of flexible work options or poor work-life balance as a reason they left
    • Turnover and retention rates

    Improve the employee value proposition (EVP) and talent attraction

    • # of responses on the new hire survey where flexible work options or work-life balance are cited as a reason for accepting an employment offer
    • # of views of career webpage that mentions flexible work program
    • Time-to-fill rates

    Improve engagement and work-life balance

    • Overall engagement score – deploy Info-Tech's Employee Engagement Diagnostics
    • Score for questions about work-life balance on employee engagement or pulse survey, including:
      • "I am able to maintain a balance between my work and personal life."
      • "I find my stress levels at work manageable."

    Info-Tech Insight

    Implementing flex work without solid performance metrics means you won't have a way of determining whether the program is enabling or hampering your business practices.

    1.2 Determine goals and metrics

    30 minutes

    Use the examples on the preceding slide to identify program goals and metrics:

    1. Brainstorm program goals. Be sure to consider both the business benefits (e.g. productivity, retention) and the employee benefits (work-life balance, engagement). A successful flexible work program benefits both the organization and its employees.
    2. Brainstorm metrics for each goal. Identify metrics that are easy to track accurately. Use Info-Tech's IT and HR metrics libraries for reference. Ideally, the metrics you choose should already exist in your organization so no extra effort will be necessary to implement them. It is also important to have a baseline measure of each one before flexible work is rolled out.
    3. Record your outputs on the "Goals and Metrics" tab of the workbook.

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Download the IT Metrics Library

    Download the HR Metrics Library

    Input

    • Organizational and departmental strategy

    Output

    • List of program goals and metrics

    Materials

    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
      Or
    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee

    Determine work location flexibility for priority segments

    Work location looks at where a segment can complete all or some of their tasks (e.g. onsite vs. remote). For each prioritized employee segment, evaluate the amount of location flexibility available.

    Work Duties

    Processes

    Operational Outcomes

    High degree of flexibility

    • Low dependence on onsite equipment
    • Work easily shifts to online platforms
    • Low dependence on onsite external interactions (e.g. clients, customers, vendors)
    • Low interdependence of work duties internally (most work is independent)
    • Work processes and expectations are or can be formally documented
    • Remote work processes are sustainable long term

    Most or all operational outcomes can be achieved offsite (e.g. products/service delivery not impacted by WFH)

    • Some dependence on onsite equipment
    • Some work can shift to online platforms
    • Some dependence on onsite external interactions
    • Some interdependence of work duties internally (collaboration is critical)
    • Most work processes and expectations have been or can be formally documented
    • Remote work processes are sustainable (e.g. workarounds can be supported and didn't add work)

    Some operational outcomes can be achieved offsite (e.g. some impact of WFH on product/service delivery)

    Low degree of flexibility

    • High dependence on onsite equipment
    • Work cannot shift to online platforms
    • High dependence on onsite external interactions
    • High interdependence of work duties internally (e.g. line work)
    • Few work processes and expectations can be formally documented
    • Work processes cannot be done remotely, and workarounds for remote work are not sustainable long term

    Operational outcomes cannot be achieved offsite (e.g. significant impairment to product/service delivery)

    Note

    If roles within the segment have differing levels of location flexibility, use the lowest results (e.g. if role A in the segment has a high degree of flexibility for work duties and role B has a low degree of flexibility, use the results for role B).

    Identify work timing for priority segments

    Work timing looks at when work can or needs to be completed (e.g. Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm).

    Work Duties

    Processes

    Operational Outcomes

    High degree of flexibility

    • No need to be available to internal and/or external customers during standard work hours
    • Equipment is available at any time
    • Does not rely on synchronous (occurring at the same time) work duties internally
    • Work processes and expectations are or can be formally documented
    • Low reliance on collaboration
    • Work is largely asynchronous (does not occur at the same time)

    Most or all operational outcomes are not time sensitive

    • Must be available to internal and/or external customers during some standard work hours
    • Some reliance on synchronous work duties internally (collaboration is critical)
    • Most work processes and expectations have been or can be formally documented
    • Moderate reliance on collaboration
    • Some work is synchronous

    Some operational outcomes are time sensitive and must be conducted within set date or time windows

    Low degree of flexibility

    • Must be available to internal and/or external customers during all standard work hours (e.g. Monday to Friday 9 to 5)
    • High reliance on synchronous work duties internally (e.g. line work)
    • Few work processes and expectations can be formally documented
    • High reliance on collaboration
    • Most work is synchronous

    Most or all operational outcomes are time sensitive and must be conducted within set date or time windows

    Note

    With additional coordination, flex time or flex time off options are still possible for employee segments with a low degree of flexibility. For example, with a four-day work week, the segment can be split into two teams – one that works Monday to Thursday and one that works Tuesday to Friday – so that employees are still available for clients five days a week.

    Examine work deliverables for priority segments

    Work deliverables look at the employee's ability to deliver on their role expectations (e.g. quota or targets) and whether reducing the time spent working would, in all situations, impact the work deliverables (e.g. constrained vs. unconstrained).

    Work Duties

    Operational Outcomes

    High degree of flexibility

    • Few or no work duties rely on equipment or processes that put constraints on output (unconstrained output)
    • Employees have autonomy over which work duties they focus on each day
    • Most or all operational outcomes are unconstrained (e.g. a marketing analyst who builds reports and strategies for clients can produce more reports, produce better reports, or identify new strategies)
    • Work quota or targets are achievable even if working fewer hours
    • Some work duties rely on equipment or processes that put constraints on output
    • Employees have some ability to decide which work duties they focus on each day
    • Some operational outcomes are constrained or moderately unconstrained (e.g. an analyst build reports based on client data; while it's possible to find efficiencies and build reports faster, it's not possible to attain the client data any faster)
    • Work quota or targets may be achievable if working fewer hours

    Low degree of flexibility

    • Most or all work duties rely on equipment or processes that put constraints on output (constrained output)
    • Daily work duties are prescribed (e.g. a telemarketer is expected to call a set number of people per day using a set list of contacts and a defined script)
    • Most or all operational outcomes are constrained (e.g. a machine operator works on a machine that produces 100 parts an hour; neither the machine nor the worker can produce more parts)
    • Work quota or targets cannot be achieved if fewer hours are worked

    Note

    For segments with a low degree of work deliverable flexibility (e.g. very constrained output), flexibility is still an option, but maintaining output would require additional headcount.

    1.3 Determine flexibility needs and constraints

    1-2 hours

    Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to document the parameters of each work segment.

    1. Determine work location flexibility. Work location looks at where a segment can complete all or some of their tasks (e.g. onsite vs. remote). For each prioritized employee segment, evaluate the amount of location flexibility available.
    2. Identify work timing. Work timing looks at when work can or needs to be completed (e.g. Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm).
    3. Examine work deliverables. Work deliverables look at the employee's ability to deliver on their role expectations (e.g. quota or targets) and whether reducing the time spent working would, in all situations, impact the work deliverables (e.g. constrained vs. unconstrained).
    4. Record your outputs on the "Current and Desired State" tab of the workbook.

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • List of employee segments

    Output

    • Summary of flexibility needs and constraints for each employee segment

    Materials

    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
      Or
    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee
    • Employee segment managers

    Step 2

    Identify potential flex options and assess feasibility

    1. Assess employee and organizational flexibility needs
    2. Identify potential flex options and assess feasibility
    3. Implement selected option(s)

    After completing this step you will have:

    • Created a shortlist of potential options for each prioritized employee segment
    • Evaluated the feasibility of each potential option
    • Determined the cost and benefit of each potential option
    • Gathered employee sentiment on potential options
    • Finalized options with senior leadership

    Prepare to identify and assess the feasibility of potential flexible work options

    First, review the Flexible Work Solutions Catalog

    Before proceeding to the next slide, review the Flexible Work Options Catalog to identify and shortlist five to seven flexible work options that are best suited to address the challenges faced for each of the priority employee segments identified in Step 1.

    Then, assess the feasibility of implementing selected options using slides 29 to 32

    Assess the feasibility of implementing the shortlisted solutions for the prioritized employee segments against the feasibility factors in this step. Repeat for each employee segment. Use the following slides to consult with and include leaders when appropriate.

    • Document your analysis in tabs 6 to 8 of the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook.
    • Note implementation issues throughout the assessment and record them in the tool. They will be addressed in Step 3: Implement Selected Program(s). Don't rule out an option simply because it presents some challenges; careful implementation can overcome many challenges.
    • At the end of this step, determine the final list of flexible work options and gain approval from senior leaders for implementation.

    Evaluate feasibility by reviewing the option's impact on continued operations and job performance

    Operational coverage

    Synchronous communication

    Time zones

    Face-to-face

    communication

    To what extent are employees needed to deliver products or services?

    • If constant customer service is required, stagger employees' schedules (e.g. one team works Monday-Thursday while another works Tuesday-Friday).

    To what extent do employees need to communicate with each other synchronously?

    • Break the workflow down and identify times when employees do and do not have to work at the same time to communicate with each other.

    To what extent do employees need to coordinate work across time zones?

    • If the organization already operates in different time zones, ensure that the option does not impact operations requiring continuous coverage.
    • When employees are located in different time zones, coordinate schedules based on the other operational factors.

    When do employees need to interact with each other or clients in person?

    • Examine the workflow closely to identify times when face-to-face communication is not required. Schedule "office days" for employees to work together when in-person interaction is needed.
    • When the interaction is only required with clients, determine whether employees are able to meet clients offsite.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Every role is eligible for hybrid location work. If onsite work duties prevent an employee group from participating, see if processes can be digitized or automated. Flexible work is an opportunity to go beyond current needs to future-proof your organization.

    Assess the option's alignment with organizational culture

    Symbols

    Values

    Behaviors

    How supportive of flexible work are the visible aspects of the organization's culture?

    • For example, the mission statement, newsletters, or office layout.
    • Note: Visible elements will need to be adapted to ensure they reinforce the value of the flexible work option.

    How supportive are both the stated and lived values of the organization?

    • When the flexible work option includes less direct supervision, assess how empowered employees feel to make decisions.
    • Assess whether all types of employees (e.g. virtual) are included, valued, and supported.

    How supportive are the attitudes and behaviors, especially of leaders?

    • Leaders set the expectations for acceptable behaviors in the organization. Determine how supportive leaders are toward flexible workers by examining their attitudes and perceptions.
    • Identify if employees are open to different ways of doing work.

    Determine the resources required for the option

    People

    Process

    Technology

    Do employees have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to adopt this option?

    • Identify any areas (e.g. process, technology) employees will need to be trained on and assess the associated costs.
    • Determine whether the option will require additional headcount to ensure operational continuity (e.g. two part-time employees in a job-sharing arrangement) and calculate associated costs (e.g. recruitment, training, benefits).

    How much will work processes need to change?

    • Interview organizational leaders with knowledge of the employee segment's core work processes. Determine whether a significant change will be required.
    • If a significant change is required, evaluate whether the benefits of the option outweigh the costs of the process and behavioral change (see the "net benefit" factor on slide 33).

    What new technologies will be required?

    • Identify the technology (e.g. that supports communication, work processes) required to enable the flexible work option.
    • Note whether existing technology can be used or additional technology will be required, and further investigate the viability and costs of these options.

    Examine the option's risks

    Data

    Health & Safety

    Legal

    How will data be kept secure?

    • Determine whether the organization's data policy and technology covers employees working remotely or other flexible work options.
    • If the employee segment handles sensitive data (e.g. personal employee information), consult relevant stakeholders to determine how data can be kept secure and assess any associated costs.

    How will employees' health and safety be impacted?

    • Consult your organization's legal counsel to determine whether the organization will be liable for the employees' health and safety while working from home or other locations.
    • Determine whether the organization's policies and processes will need to be modified.

    What legal risks might be involved?

    • Identify any policies in place or jurisdictional requirements to avoid any legal risks. Consult your organization's legal counsel about the situations below.
      • If the option causes significant changes to the nature of jobs, creating the risk of constructive dismissal.
      • If there are any risks to providing less supervision (e.g. higher chance of harassment).
      • When only some employee segments are eligible for the option, determine whether there is a risk of inequitable access.
      • If the option impacts any unionized employees or collective agreements.

    Determine whether the benefits of the option outweigh the costs

    Include senior leadership in the net benefit process to ensure any unfeasible options are removed from consideration before presenting to employees.

    1. Document the employee and employer benefits of the option from the previous feasibility factors on slides 29 to 32.
    • Include the benefits of reaching program goals identified in Step 1.
    • Quantify the benefits in dollar value where possible.
  • Document the costs and risks of the option, referring to the costs noted from previous feasibility factors.
    • Quantify the costs in dollar value where possible.
  • Compare the benefits and costs.
    • Add an option to your final list if the benefits are greater than the costs.
  • This is an image of a table with the main heading being Net Benefit, with the following subheadings: Benefits to organization; Benefits to employees; Costs.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Flexible work options must balance organizational and employee needs. If an option is beneficial to employees but there is little or no benefit to the organization as a whole, or if the cost of the option is too high, it will not support the long-term success of the organization.

    2.1a Identify and evaluate flexible work options

    30 minutes per employee segment per work option

    If you are only considering hybrid or remote work, skip to activity 2.1b. Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to conduct feasibility assessments.

    1. Shortlist flexible work options. Review the Flexible Work Options Catalog to identify and shortlist five to seven flexible work options that are best suited to address the challenges faced for each of the priority employee segments. Record these on the "Options Shortlist" tab of the workbook. Even if the decision is simple, ensure you record the rationale to help communicate your decision to employees. Transparent communication is the best way to avoid feelings of unfairness if desired work options are not implemented.
    2. Evaluate option feasibility. For each of the shortlisted options, complete one "Feasibility - Option" tab in the workbook. Make as many copies of this tab as needed.
      • When evaluating each option, consider each employee segment individually as you work through the prompts in the workbook. You may find that segments differ greatly in the feasibility of various types of flexible work. You will use this information to inform your overall policy and any exceptions to it.
      • You may need to involve each segment's management team to get an accurate picture of day-to-day responsibilities and flexible work feasibility.
    3. Weigh benefits and costs. At the end of each flexible work option evaluation, record the anticipated costs and benefits. Discuss whether this balance renders the option viable or rules it out.

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Download the Flexible Work Options Catalog

    Input

    • List of employee segments

    Output

    • Shortlist of flexible work options
    • Feasibility analysis for each work option

    Materials

    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
    • Flexible Work Options Catalog

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee
    • Employee segment managers

    2.1b Assess hybrid work feasibility

    30 minutes per employee segment

    Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to conduct a feasibility assessment. This exercise relies on having trialed hybrid or remote work before. If you have never implemented any degree of remote work, consider completing the full feasibility assessment in activity 2.1a.

    1. Evaluate hybrid work feasibility. Review the feasibility prompts on the "Work Unit Remote Work Assessment" tab and record your insight for each employee segment.
      • When evaluating each option, consider each employee segment individually as you work through the prompts in the workbook. You may find that segments differ greatly in their ability to accommodate hybrid work. You will use this information to inform your overall policy and any exceptions to it.
      • You may need to involve each segment's management team to get an accurate picture of day-to-day responsibilities and hybrid work feasibility.

    Download the Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • List of employee segments

    Output

    • Feasibility analysis for each work option

    Materials

    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee
    • Employee segment managers

    Ask employees which options they prefer and gather feedback for implementation

    Deliver a survey and/or conduct focus groups with a selection of employees from all prioritized employee segments.

    Share

    • Present your draft list of options to select employees.
    • Communicate that the organization is in the process of assessing the feasibility of flexible work options and would like employee input to ensure flex work meets needs.
    • Be clear that the list is not final or guaranteed.

    Ask

    • Ask which options are preferred more than others.
    • Ask for feedback on each option – how could it be modified to meet employee needs better? Use this information to inform implementation in Step 3.

    Decide

    • Prioritize an option if many employees indicated an interest in it.
    • If employees indicate no interest in an option, consider eliminating it from the list, unless it will be required. There is no value in providing an option if employees won't use it.

    Survey

    • List the options and ask respondents to rate each on a Likert scale from 1 to 5.
    • Ask some open-ended questions with comment boxes for employee suggestions.

    Focus Group

    • Conduct focus groups to gather deeper feedback.
    • See Appendix I for sample focus group questions.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Prioritize flexible work options that employees want. Providing too many options often leads to information overload and results in employees not understanding what is available, lowering adoption of the flexible work program.

    Finalize options list with senior leadership

    1. Select one to three final options and outline the details of each. Include:
      • Scope: To what extent will the option be applied? E.g. work-from-home one or two days a week.
      • Eligibility: Which employee segments are eligible?
      • Cost: What investment will be required?
      • Critical implementation issues: Will any of the implementation issues identified for each feasibility factor impact whether the option will be approved?
      • Resources: What additional resources will be required (e.g. technology)?
    2. Present the options to stakeholders for approval. Include:
      • An outline of the finalized options, including what the option is and the scope, eligibility, and critical implementation issues.
      • The feasibility assessment results, including benefits, costs, and employee preferences. Have more detail from the other factors ready if leaders ask about them.
      • The investment (cost) required to implement the option.
    3. Proceed to Step 3 to implement approved options.

    Running an IT pilot of flex work

    • As a technology department, IT typically doesn't own flexible work implementation for the entire organization. However, it is common to trial flexible work options for IT first, before rolling out to the entire organization.
    • During a flex work pilot, ensure you are working closely with HR partners, especially regarding regulatory and compliance issues.
    • Keep the rest of the organizational stakeholders in the loop, especially regarding their agreement on the metrics by which the pilot's success will be evaluated.

    2.2a Finalize flexible work options

    2-3 hours + time to gather employee feedback

    If you are only considering hybrid or remote work, skip to activity 2.2b. Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to gather final feedback and finalize work option selections.

    1. Gather employee feedback. If employee preferences are already known, skip this step. If they are not, gather feedback to ascertain whether any of the shortlisted options are preferred. Remember that a successful flexible work program balances the needs of employees and the business, so employee preference is a key determinant in flexible work program success. Document this on the "Employee Preferences" tab of the workbook.
    2. Finalize flexible work options. Use your notes on the cost-benefit balance for each option, along with employee preferences, to decide whether the move forward with it. Record this decision on the "Options Final List" tab. Include information about eligible employee segments and any implementation challenges that came up during the feasibility assessments. This is the final decision summary that will inform your flexible program parameters and policies.

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • Flexible work options shortlist

    Output

    • Final flexible work options list

    Materials

    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee

    2.2b Finalize hybrid work parameters

    2-3 hours + time to gather employee feedback

    Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to gather final feedback and finalize work option selections.

    1. Summarize feasibility analysis. On the "Program Parameters" tab, record the main insights from your feasibility analysis. Finalize important elements, including eligibility for hybrid/remote work by employee segment. Additionally, record the standard parameters for the program (i.e. those that apply to all employee segments) and variable parameters (i.e. ones that differ by employee segment).

    Download the Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • Hybrid work feasibility analysis

    Output

    • Final hybrid work program parameters

    Materials

    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee

    Step 3

    Implement selected option(s)

    1. Assess employee and organizational flexibility needs
    2. Identify potential flex options and assess feasibility
    3. Implement selected option(s)

    After completing this step, you will have:

    • Addressed implementation issues and cultural barriers
    • Equipped the organization to adopt flexible work options successfully
    • Piloted the program and assessed its success
    • Developed a plan for program rollout and communication
    • Established a program evaluation plan
    • Aligned HR programs to support the program

    Solve the implementation issues identified in your feasibility assessment

    1. Identify a solution for each implementation issue documented in the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook. Consider the following when identifying solutions:
      • Scope: Determine whether the solution will be applied to one or all employee segments.
      • Stakeholders: Identify stakeholders to consult and develop a solution. If the scope is one employee segment, work with organizational leaders of that segment. When the scope is the entire organization, consult with senior leaders.
      • Implementation: Collaborate with stakeholders to solve implementation issues. Balance the organizational and employee needs, referring to data gathered in Steps 1 and 2.

    Example:

    Issue

    Solution

    Option 1: Hybrid work

    Brainstorming at the beginning of product development benefits from face-to-face collaboration.

    Block off a "brainstorming day" when all team members are required in the office.

    Employee segment: Product innovation team

    One team member needs to meet weekly with the implementation team to conduct product testing.

    Establish a schedule with rotating responsibility for a team member to be at the office for product testing; allow team members to swap days if needed.

    Address cultural barriers by involving leaders

    To shift a culture that is not supportive of flexible work, involve leaders in setting an example for employees to follow.

    Misconceptions

    Tactics to overcome them

    • Flexible workers are less productive.
    • Flexible work disrupts operations.
    • Flexible workers are less committed to the organization.
    • Flexible work only benefits employees, not the organization.
    • Employees are not working if they aren't physically in the office.

    Make the case by highlighting challenges and expected benefits for both the organization and employees (e.g. same or increased productivity). Use data in the introductory section of this blueprint.

    Demonstrate operational feasibility by providing an overview of the feasibility assessment conducted to ensure operational continuity.

    Involve most senior leadership in communication.

    Encourage discovery and exploration by having managers try flexible work options themselves, which will help model it for employees.

    Highlight success stories within the organization or from competitors or similar industries.

    Invite input from managers on how to improve implementation and ownership, which helps to discover hidden options.

    Shift symbols, values, and behaviors

    • Work with senior leaders to identify symbols, values, and behaviors to modify to align with the selected flexible work options.
    • Validate that the final list aligns with your organization's mission, vision, and values.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Leaders' collective support of the flexible program determines the program's successful adoption. Don't sweep cultural barriers under the rug; acknowledge and address them to overcome them.

    Equip the organization for successful implementation

    Info-Tech recommends providing managers and employees with a guide to flexible work, introducing policies, and providing training for managers.

    Provide managers and employees with a guide to flexible work

    Introduce appropriate organization policies

    Equip managers with the necessary tools and training

    Use the guide to:

    • Familiarize employees and managers with the flexible work program.
    • Gain employee and manager buy-in and support for the program.
    • Explain the process and give guidance on selecting flexible work options and working with their colleagues to make it a success.

    Use Info-Tech's customizable policy templates to set guidelines, outline arrangements, and scope the organization's flexible work policies. This is typically done by, or in collaboration with, the HR department.

    Download the Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees

    Download the Flex Location Policy

    Download the Flex Time-Off Policy

    Download the Flex Time Policy

    3.1 Prepare for implementation

    2-3 hours

    Use the guidelines on the preceding slides to brainstorm solutions to implementation issues and prepare to communicate program rollout to stakeholders.

    1. Solve implementation issues.
      • If you are working with the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook: For each implementation challenge identified on the "Final Options List" tab, brainstorm solutions. If you are working with the Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook: Work through the program enablement prompts on the "Program Enablement" tab.
      • You may need to involve relevant stakeholders to help you come up with appropriate solutions for each employee segment.
      • Ensure that any anticipated cultural barriers have been documented and are addressed during this step. Don't underestimate the importance of a supportive organizational culture to the successful rollout of flexible work.
    2. Prepare the employee guide. Modify the Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees template to reflect your final work options list and the processes and expectations employees will need to follow.
    3. Create a communication plan. Use Info-Tech's Communicate Any IT Initiative blueprint and Appendix II to craft your messaging.

    Download the Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees

    Download the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook

    Input

    • Flexible work options final list

    Output

    • Employee guide to flexible work
    • Flexible work rollout communication plan

    Materials

    • Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees
    • Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook
      Or
    • Fast-Track Hybrid Work Program Workbook

    Participants

    • Flexible work program committee
    • Employee segment managers

    Run an IT pilot for flexible work

    Prepare for pilot

    Launch Pilot

    Identify the flexible work options that will be piloted.

    • Refer to the final list of selected options for each priority segment to determine which options should be piloted.

    Select pilot participants.

    • If not rolling out to the entire IT department, look for the departments and/or team(s) where there is the greatest need and the biggest interest (e.g. team with lowest engagement scores).
    • Include all employees within the department, or team if the department is too large, in the pilot.
    • Start with a group whose managers are best equipped for the new flexibility options.

    Create an approach to collect feedback and measure the success of the pilot.

    • Feedback can be collected using surveys, focus groups, and/or targeted in-person interviews.

    The length of the pilot will greatly vary based on which flexible work options were selected (e.g. seasonal hours will require a shorter pilot period compared to implementing a compressed work week). Use discretion when deciding on pilot length and be open to extending or shortening the pilot length as needed.

    Launch pilot.

    • Launch the program through a town hall meeting or departmental announcement to build excitement and buy-in.
    • Develop separate communications for employee segments where appropriate. See Appendix II for key messaging to include.

    Gather feedback.

    • The feedback will be used to assess the pilot's success and to determine what modifications will be needed later for a full-scale rollout.
    • When gathering feedback, tailor questions based on the employee segment but keep themes similar. For example:
      • Employees: "How did this help your day-to-day work?"
      • Managers: "How did this improve productivity on your team?"

    Track metrics.

    • The success of the pilot is best communicated using your department's unique KPIs.
    • Metrics are critical for:
      • Accurately determining pilot success.
      • Getting buy-in to expand the pilot beyond IT.
      • Justifying to employees any changes made to the flexible work options.

    Assess the pilot's success and determine next steps

    Review the feedback collected on the previous slide and use this decision tree to decide whether to relaunch a pilot or proceed to a full-scale rollout of the program.

    This is an image of the flow chart used to assess the pilot's success and determine the next steps.  It will help you to determine whether you will Proceed to full-scale rollout on next slide, Major modifications to the option/launch (e.g. change operating time) – adjust and relaunch pilot or select a new employee segment and relaunch pilot, Minor modifications to the option/launch (e.g. introduce additional communications) – adjust and proceed to full scale rollout, or Return to shortlist (Step 2) and select a different option or launch pilot with a different employee segment.

    Prepare for full-scale rollout

    If you have run a team pilot prior to rolling out to all of IT, or run an IT pilot before an organizational rollout, use the following steps to transition from pilot to full rollout.

    1. Determine modifications
      • Review the feedback gathered during the pilot and determine what needs to change for a full-scale implementation.
      • Update HR policies and programs to support flexible work. Work closely with your HR business partner and other organizational leaders to ensure every department's needs are understood and compliance issues are addressed.
    2. Roll out and evaluate
      • Roll out the remainder of the program (e.g. to other employee segments or additional flexible work options) once there is significant uptake of the pilot by the target employee group and issues have been addressed.
      • Determine how feedback will be gathered after implementation, such as during engagement surveys, new hire and exit surveys, stay interviews, etc., and assess whether the program continues to meet employee and organizational needs.

    Rolling out beyond IT

    For a rollout beyond IT, HR will likely take over.

    However, this is your chance to remain at the forefront of your organization's flexible work efforts by continuing to track success and gather feedback within IT.

    Align HR programs and organizational policies to support flexible work

    Talent Management

    Learning & Development

    Talent Acquisition

    Reinforce managers' accountability for the success of flexible work in their teams:

    • Include "managing virtual teams" in the people management leadership competency.
    • Recognize managers who are modeling flexible work.

    Support flexible workers' career progression:

    • Monitor the promotion rates of flexible workers vs. non-flexible workers.
    • Make sure flexible workers are discussed during talent calibration meetings and have access to career development opportunities.

    Equip managers and employees with the knowledge and skills to make flexible work successful.

    • Provide guidance on selecting the right options and maintaining workflow.
    • If moving to a virtual environment, train managers on how to make it a success.

    Incorporate the flexible work program into the organization's employee value proposition to attract top talent who value flexible work options.

    • Highlight the program on the organization's career site and in job postings.

    Organizational policies

    Determine which organizational policies will be impacted as a result of the new flexible work options. For example, the introduction of flex time off can result in existing vacation policies needing to be updated.

    Plan to re-evaluate the program and make improvements

    Collect data

    Collect data

    Act on data

    Uptake

    Gather data on the proportion of employees eligible for each option who are using the option.

    If an option is tracking positively:

    • Maintain or expand the program to more of the organization.
    • Conduct a feasibility assessment (Step 2) for new employee segments.

    Satisfaction

    Survey managers and employees about their satisfaction with the options they are eligible for and provide an open box for suggestions on improvements.

    If an option is tracking negatively:

    • Investigate why. Gather additional data, interview organizational leaders, and/or conduct focus groups to gain deeper insight.
    • Re-assess the feasibility of the option (Step 2). If the costs outweigh the benefits based on new data, determine whether to cancel the option.
    • Take appropriate action based on the outcome of the evaluation, such as modifying or cancelling the option or providing employees with more support.
      • Note: Cancelling an option can impact the engagement of employees using the option. Ensure that the data, reasons for cancelling the option, and potential substitute options are communicated to employees in advance.

    Program goal progress

    Monitor progress against the program goals and metrics identified in Step 1 to evaluate the impact on issues that matter to the organization (e.g. retention, productivity, diversity).

    Career progression

    Evaluate flexible workers' promotion rates and development opportunities to determine if they are developing.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Negative performance of a flexible work option does not necessarily mean failure. Take the time to evaluate whether the option simply needs to be tweaked or whether it truly isn't working for the organization.

    Insight summary

    Overarching insight: IT excels at hybrid location work and is more effective as a business function when location, time, and time-off flexibility are an option for its employees.

    Introduction

    • Flexible work options are not a concession to lower productivity. Properly implemented, flex work enables employees to be more productive at reaching business goals.
    • Employees' lived experiences and needs determine if people use flexible work programs – a flex program that has limited use or excludes people will not benefit the organization.
    • Flexible work benefits everyone. IT employees experience greater engagement, motivation, and company loyalty. IT organizations realize benefits such as better service coverage, reduced facilities costs, and increased productivity.

    Step 1 insight

    • Hybrid work is a start. A comprehensive flex work program extends beyond flexible location to flexible time and time off. Organizations must understand the needs of unique employee groups to uncover the options that will attract and retain talent. Provide greater inclusivity to employees by broadening the scope to include flex location, flex time, and flex time off.
    • No two employee segments are the same. To be effective, flexible work options must align with the expectations and working processes of each segment.

    Step 2 insight

    • Every role is eligible for hybrid location work. If onsite work duties prevent an employee group from participating, see if processes can be digitized or automated. Flexible work is an opportunity to go beyond current needs to future proofing your organization.
    • Flexible work options must balance organizational and employee needs. If an option is beneficial to employees but there is little or no benefit to the organization, or if the cost of the option is too high, it will not support the long-term success of the organization.
    • Prioritize flexible work options that employees want. Providing too many options often leads to information overload and results in employees not understanding what is available, lowering adoption of the flexible work program.

    Step 3 insight

    • Leaders' collective support of the flexible program determines the program's successful adoption. Don't sweep cultural barriers under the rug; acknowledge and address them to overcome them.
    • Negative performance of a flexible work option does not necessarily mean failure. Take the time to evaluate whether the option simply needs to be tweaked or whether it truly isn't working for the organization.
    • A set of formal guidelines for IT ensures flexible work is:
      1. Administered fairly across all IT employees.
      2. Defensible and clear.
      3. Scalable to the rest of the organization.

    Research Contributors and Experts

    Quinn Ross
    CEO
    The Ross Firm Professional Corporation

    Margaret Yap
    HR Professor
    Ryerson University

    Heather Payne
    CEO
    Juno College

    Lee Nguyen
    HR Specialist
    City of Austin

    Stacey Spruell
    Division HR Director
    Travis County

    Don MacLeod
    Chief Administrative Officer
    Zorra Township

    Stephen Childs
    CHRO
    Panasonic North America

    Shawn Gibson
    Sr. Director
    Info Tech Research Group

    Mari Ryan
    CEO/Founder
    Advancing Wellness

    Sophie Wade
    Founder
    Flexcel Networks

    Kim Velluso
    VP Human Resources
    Siemens Canada

    Lilian De Menezes
    Professor of Decision Sciences
    Cass Business School, University of London

    Judi Casey
    WorkLife Consultant and former Director, Work and Family Researchers Network
    Boston College

    Chris Frame
    Partner – Operations
    LiveCA

    Rose M. Stanley, CCP, CBP, WLCP, CEBS
    People Services Manager
    Sunstate Equipment Co., LLC

    Shari Lava
    Director, Vendor Research
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Carol Cochran
    Director of People & Culture
    FlexJobs

    Kidde Kelly
    OD Practitioner

    Dr. David Chalmers
    Adjunct Professor
    Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University

    Kashmira Nagarwala
    Change Manager
    Siemens Canada

    Dr. Isik U. Zeytinoglu
    Professor of Management and Industrial Relations McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business

    Claire McCartney
    Diversity & Inclusion Advisor
    CIPD

    Teresa Hopke
    SVP of Client Relations
    Life Meets Work – www.lifemeetswork.com

    Mark Tippey
    IT Leader and Experienced Teleworker

    Dr. Kenneth Matos
    Senior Director of Research
    Families and Work Institute

    1 anonymous contributor

    Appendix I: Sample focus group questions

    See Info-Tech's Focus Group Guidefor guidance on setting up and delivering focus groups. Customize the guide with questions specific to flexible work (see sample questions below) to gain deeper insight into employee preferences for the feasibility assessment in Step 2 of this blueprint.

    Document themes in the Targeted Flexible Work Program Workbook.

    • What do you need to balance/integrate your work with your personal life?
    • What challenges do you face in achieving work-life balance/integration?
    • What about your job is preventing you from achieving work-life balance/integration?
    • How would [flexible work option] help you achieve work-life balance/integration?
    • How well would this option work with the workflow of your team or department? What would need to change?
    • What challenges do you see in adopting [flexible work option]?
    • What else would be helpful for you to achieve work-life balance/integration?
    • How could we customize [flexible work option] to ensure it meets your needs?
    • If this program were to fail, what do you think would be the top reasons and why?

    Appendix II: Communication key messaging

    1. Program purpose

    Start with the name and high-level purpose of the program.

    2. Business reasons for the program

    Share data you gathered in Step 1, illustrating challenges causing the need for the program and the benefits.

    3. Options selection process

    Outline the process followed to select options. Remember to share the involvement of stakeholders and the planning around employees' feedback, needs, and lived experiences.

    4. Options and eligibility

    Provide a brief overview of the options and eligibility. Specify that the organization is piloting these options and will modify them based on feedback.

    5. Approval not guaranteed

    Qualify that employees need to be "flexible about flexible work" – the options are not guaranteed and may sometimes be unavailable for business reasons.

    6. Shared responsibility

    Highlight the importance of everyone (managers, flexible workers, the team) working together to make flexible work achievable.

    7. Next steps

    Share any next steps, such as where employees can find the organization's Guide to Flexible Work for Managers and Employees, how to make flexible work a success, or if managers will be providing further detail in a team meeting.

    8. Ongoing communications

    Normalize the program and embed it in organizational culture by continuing communications through various media, such as the organization's newsletter or announcements in town halls.

    Works Cited

    Baziuk, Jennifer, and Duncan Meadows. "Global Employee Survey - Key findings and implications for ICMIF." EY, June 2021. Accessed May 2022.
    "Businesses suffering 'commitment issues' on flexible working," EY, 21 Sep. 2021. Accessed May 2022.
    "IT Talent Trends 2022". Info-Tech Research Group, 2022.
    "Jabra Hybrid Ways of Working: 2021 Global Report." Jabra, Aug. 2021. Accessed May 2022.
    LinkedIn Talent Solutions. "2022 Global Talent Trends." LinkedIn, 2022. Accessed May 2022.
    Lobosco, Mark. "The Future of Work is Flexible: 71% of Leaders Feel Pressure to Change Working Models." LinkedIn, 9 Sep. 2021. Accessed May 2022.
    Ohm, Joy, et al. "Covid-19: Women, Equity, and Inclusion in the Future of Work." Catalyst, 28 May 2020. Accessed May 2022.
    Pelta, Rachel. "Many Workers Have Quit or Plan to After Employers Revoke Remote Work." FlexJobs, 2021. Accessed May 2022.
    Slack Future Forum. "Inflexible return-to-office policies are hammering employee experience scores." Slack, 19 April 2022. Accessed May 2022.
    "State of Hybrid Work in IT: A Trend Report". Info-Tech Research Group, 2023.
    Threlkeld, Kristy. "Employee Burnout Report: COVID-19's Impact and 3 Strategies to Curb It." Indeed, 11 March 2021. Accessed March 2022.

    Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss

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    Seventy-four percent of organizations do not have a formal process for capturing and retaining knowledge - which, when lost, results in decreased productivity, increased risk, and money out the door.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Seventy-four percent of organizations do not have a formal process for capturing and retaining knowledge – which, when lost, results in decreased productivity, increased risk, and money out the door. It’s estimated that Fortune 500 companies lose approximately $31.5 billion each year by failing to share knowledge.
    • Don’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach to knowledge transfer strategy! Right-size your approach based on your business goals.
    • Prioritize knowledge transfer candidates based on their likelihood of departure and the impact of losing that knowledge.
    • Select knowledge transfer tactics based on the type of knowledge that needs to be captured – explicit or tacit.

    Impact and Result

    Successful completion of the IT knowledge transfer project will result in the following outcomes:

    1. Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained.
    2. Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified.
    3. Effective knowledge transfer plans built.
    4. Knowledge transfer roadmap built.
    5. Knowledge transfer roadmap communicated and approval obtained.

    Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to transfer knowledge on your team to mitigate risks from employees leaving the organization.

    Minimize risk and IT costs resulting from attrition through effective knowledge transfer.

    • Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss Storyboard

    2. Project Stakeholder Register Template – A template to help you identify and document project management stakeholders.

    Use this template to document the knowledge transfer stakeholder power map by identifying the stakeholder’s name and role, and identifying their position on the power map.

    • Project Stakeholder Register Template

    3. IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template – Define your project and lay the foundation for subsequent knowledge transfer project planning

    Use this template to communicate the value and rationale for knowledge transfer to key stakeholders.

    • IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template

    4. IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool – Identify the risk profile of knowledge sources and the knowledge they have

    Use this tool to identify and assess the knowledge and individual risk of key knowledge holders.

    • IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    5. IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template – A template to help you determine the most effective knowledge transfer tactics to be used for each knowledge source by listing knowledge sources and their knowledge, identifying type of knowledge to be transferred and choosing tactics that are appropriate for the knowledge type

    Use this template to track knowledge activities, intended recipients of knowledge, and appropriate transfer tactics for each knowledge source.

    • IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template

    6. IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template – A template that provides a framework to conduct interviews with knowledge sources, including comprehensive questions that cover what type of knowledge a knowledge source has and how unique the knowledge is

    Use this template as a starting point for managers to interview knowledge sources to extract information about the type of knowledge the source has.

    • IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template

    7. IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template – A presentation template that provides a vehicle used to communicate IT knowledge transfer recommendations to stakeholders to gain buy-in

    Use this template as a starting point to build your proposed IT knowledge transfer roadmap presentation to management to obtain formal sign-off and initiate the next steps in the process.

    • IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    Further reading

    Mitigate Key IT Employee Knowledge Loss

    Transfer IT knowledge before it’s gone.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Common Obstacles

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Seventy-four percent of organizations do not have a formal process for capturing and retaining knowledge1 which, when lost, results in decreased productivity, increased risk, and money out the door. You need to:

    • Build a strategic roadmap to retain and share knowledge.
    • Build a knowledge transfer strategy based on your organization’s business goals.
    • Increase departmental efficiencies through increased collaboration.
    • Retain key IT knowledge
    • Improve junior employee engagement by creating development opportunities.
    • Don’t follow a one-size fits all approach. Right-size your approach based on your organizational goals.
    • Prioritize knowledge transfer candidates based on their likelihood of departure and the impact of losing that knowledge.
    • What you’re transferring impacts how you should transfer it. Select knowledge transfer tactics based on the type of knowledge that needs to be captured – explicit or tacit.

    Our client-tested methodology and project steps allow you to tailor your knowledge transfer plan to any size of organization, across industries. Successful completion of the IT knowledge transfer project will result in the following outcomes:

    • Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained.
    • Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified.
    • Effective knowledge transfer plans built.
    • Knowledge transfer roadmap built.
    • Knowledge transfer roadmap communicated.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Seventy-four percent of organizations do not have a formal process for capturing and retaining knowledge which, when lost, results in decreased productivity, increased risk, and money out the door.1

    1 McLean & Company, 2016, N=120

    Stop your knowledge from walking out the door

    Today, the value of an organization has less to do with its fixed assets and more to do with its intangible assets. Intangible assets include patents, research and development, business processes and software, employee training, and employee knowledge and capability.

    People (and their knowledge and capabilities) are an organization’s competitive advantage and with the baby boomer retirement looming, organizations need to invest in capturing employee knowledge before the employees leave. Losing employees in key roles without adequate preparation for their departure has a direct impact on the bottom line in terms of disrupted productivity, severed relationships, and missed opportunities.

    Knowledge Transfer (KT) is the process and tactics by which intangible assets – expertise, knowledge, and capabilities – are transferred from one stakeholder to another. A well-devised knowledge transfer plan will mitigate the risk of knowledge loss, yet as many as 74%2 of organizations have no formal approach to KT – and it’s costing them money, reputation, and time.

    84%of all enterprise value on the S&P 500 is intangibles.3

    $31.5 billion lost annually by Fortune 500 companies failing to share knowledge. 1

    74% of organizations have no formal process for facilitating knowledge transfer. 2

    1 Shedding Light on Knowledge Management, 2004, p. 46

    2 McLean & Company, 2016, N=120

    3 Visual Capitalists, 2020

    Losing knowledge will undermine your organization’s strategy in four ways

    In a worst-case scenario, key employees leaving will result in the loss of valuable knowledge, core business relationships, and profits.

    1

    Inefficiency due to “reinvention of the wheel.” When older workers leave and don’t effectively transfer their knowledge, younger generations duplicate effort to solve problems and find solutions.

    2

    Loss of competitive advantage. What and who you know is a tremendous source of competitive edge. Losing knowledge and/or established client relationships hurts your asset base and stifles growth, especially in terms of proprietary or unique knowledge.

    3

    Reduced capacity to innovate. Older workers know what works and what doesn’t, as well as what’s new and what’s not. They can identify the status quo faster, to make way for novel thinking.

    4

    Increased vulnerability. One thing that comes with knowledge is a deeper understanding of risk. Losing knowledge can impede your organizational ability to identify, understand, and mitigate risks. You’ll have to learn through experience all over again.

    Are you part of the 74% of organizations with no knowledge transfer planning in place? Can you afford not to have it?

    Consider this:

    55-60

    67%

    78%

    $14k / minute

    the average age of mainframe workers – making close to 50% of workers over 60.2

    of Fortune 100 companies still use mainframes3 requiring. specialized skills and knowledge

    of CIOs report mainframe applications will remain a key asset in the next decade.1

    is the cost of mainframe outages for an average enterprise.1

    A system failure to a mainframe could be disastrous for organizations that haven’t effectively transferred key knowledge. Now think past the mainframe to key processes, customer/vendor relationships, legal requirements, home grown solutions etc. in your organization.

    What would knowledge loss cost you in terms of financial and reputational loss?

    Source: 1 Big Tech Problem as Mainframes Outlast Workforce

    Source: 2 IT's most wanted: Mainframe programmers

    Source: 3The State of the Mainframe, 2022

    Case Study

    Insurance organization fails to mitigate risk of employee departure and incurs costly consequences – in the millions

    INDUSTRY: Insurance

    SOURCE: ITRG Member

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    • A rapidly growing organization's key Senior System Architect unexpectedly fell ill and needed to leave the organization.
    • This individual had been with the organization for more than 25 years and was the primary person in IT responsible for several mission-critical systems.
    • Following this individual’s departure, one of the systems unexpectedly went down.
    • As this individual had always been the go-to person for the system, and issues were few and far between, no one had thought to document key system elements and no knowledge transfer had taken place.
    • The failed system cost the organization more than a million dollars in lost revenue.
    • The organization needed to hire a forensic development team to reverse engineer the system.
    • This cost the organization another $200k in consulting fees plus the additional cost of training existing employees on a system which they had originally been hoping to upgrade.

    Forward thinking organizations use knowledge transfer not only to avoid risks, but to drive IT innovation

    IT knowledge transfer is a process that, at its most basic level, ensures that essential IT knowledge and capabilities don’t leave the organization – and at its most sophisticated level, drives innovation and customer service by leveraging knowledge assets.

    Knowledge Transfer Risks:

    Knowledge Transfer Opportunities:

    ✗ Increased training and development costs when key stakeholders leave the organization.

    ✗ Decreased efficiency through long development cycles.

    ✗ Late projects that tie up IT resources longer than planned, and cost overruns that come out of the IT budget.

    ✗ Lost relationships with key stakeholders within and outside the organization.

    ✗ Inconsistent project/task execution, leading to inconsistent outcomes.

    ✗ IT losing its credibility due to system or project failure from lost information.

    ✗ Customer dissatisfaction from inconsistent service.

    ✓ Mitigated risks and costs from talent leaving the organization.

    ✓ Business continuity through redundancies preventing service interruptions and project delays.

    ✓ Operational efficiency through increased productivity by never having to start projects from scratch.

    ✓ Increased engagement from junior staff through development planning.

    ✓ Innovation by capitalizing on collective knowledge.

    ✓ Increased ability to adapt to change and save time-to-market.

    ✓ IT teams that drive process improvement and improved execution.

    Common obstacles

    In building your knowledge transfer roadmap, the size of your organization can present unique challenges

    How you build your knowledge transfer roadmap will not change drastically based on the size of your organization; however, the scope of your initiative, tactics you employ, and your communication plan for knowledge transfer may change.


    How knowledge transfer projects vary by organization size:

    Small Organization

    Medium Organization

    Large Organization

    Project Opportunities

    ✓ Project scope is much more manageable.

    ✓ Communication and planning can be more manageable.

    ✓ Fewer knowledge sources and receivers can clarify prioritization needs.

    ✓ Project scope is more manageable.

    ✓ Moderate budget for knowledge transfer activities.

    ✓ Communication and enforcement is easier.

    ✓ Budget available to knowledge transfer initiatives.

    ✓ In-house expertise may be available.

    Project Risks

    ✗ Limited resources for the project.

    ✗ In-house expertise is unlikely.

    ✗ Knowledge transfer may be informal and not documented.

    ✗ Limited overlap in responsibilities, resulting in fewer redundancies.

    ✗ Limited staff with knowledge transfer experience for the project.

    ✗ Knowledge assets are less likely to be documented.

    ✗ Knowledge transfer may be a lower priority and difficult to generate buy-in.

    ✗ More staff to manage knowledge transfer for, and much larger scope for the project.

    ✗ Impact of poor knowledge transfer can result in much higher costs.

    ✗Geographically dispersed business units make collaboration and communication difficult.

    ✗ Vast amounts of historical knowledge to capture.

    Capture both explicit and tacit knowledge

    Explicit

    Tacit

    • “What knowledge” – knowledge can be articulated, codified, and easily communicated.
    • Easily explained and captured – documents, memos, speeches, books, manuals, process diagrams, facts, etc.
    • Learn through reading or being told.
    • “How knowledge” – intangible knowledge from an individual’s experience that is more from the process of learning, understanding, and applying information (insights, judgments, and intuition).
    • Hard to verbalize, and difficult to capture and quantify.
    • Learn through observation, imitation, and practice.

    Types of explicit knowledge

    Types of tacit knowledge

    Information

    • Specialized technical knowledge.
    • Unique design capabilities/ methods/ models.
    • Legacy systems, details, passwords.
    • Special formulas/algorithms/ techniques/contacts.

    Process

    • Specialized research and development processes.
    • Proprietary production processes.
    • Decision-making processes.
    • Legacy systems.
    • Variations from documented processes.

    Skills

    • Techniques for executing on processes.
    • Relationship management.
    • Competencies built through deliberate practice enabling someone to act effectively.

    Expertise

    • Company history and values.
    • Relationships with key stakeholders.
    • Tips and tricks.
    • Competitor history and differentiators.

    Examples: reading music, building a bike, knowing the alphabet, watching a YouTube video on karate.

    Examples: playing the piano, riding a bike, reading or speaking a language, earning a black belt in karate.

    Knowledge transfer is not a one-size-fits-all project

    The image contains a picture of Info-Tech's Knowledge Transfer Maturity Model. Level 0: Accidental, goal is not prioritized. Level 1: Stabilize, goal is risk mitigation. Level 2: Proactive, goal is operational efficiency. Level 3: Knowledge Culture, goal is innovation & customer service.

    No formal knowledge transfer program exists; knowledge transfer is ad hoc, or may be conducted through an exit interview only.

    74% of organizations are at level 0.1

    At level one, knowledge transfer is focused around ensuring that high risk, explicit knowledge is covered for all high-risk stakeholders.

    Organizations have knowledge transfer plans for all high-risk knowledge to ensure redundancies exist and leverage this to drive process improvements, effectiveness, and employee engagement.

    Increase end-user satisfaction and create a knowledge value center by leveraging the collective knowledge to solve repeat customer issues and drive new product innovation.

    1 Source: McLean & Company, 2016, N=120

    Assess your fit for this blueprint by considering the following statements

    I’m an IT Leader who…

    Stabilize

    …has witnessed that new employees have recently left or are preparing to leave the organization, and worries that we don’t have their knowledge captured anywhere.

    …previously had to cut down our IT department, and as a result there is a lack of redundancy for tasks. If someone leaves, we don’t have the information we need to continue operating effectively.

    …is worried that the IT department has no succession planning in place and that we’re opening ourselves up to risk.

    Proactive

    …feels like we are losing productivity because the same problems are being solved differently multiple times.

    …worries that different employees have unique knowledge which is critical to performance and that they are the only ones who know about it.

    …has noticed that the processes people are using are different from the ones that are written down.

    …feels like the IT department is constantly starting projects from scratch, and employees aren’t leveraging each other’s information, which is causing inefficiencies.

    …feels like new employees take too long to get up to speed.

    …knows that we have undocumented systems and more are being built each day.

    Knowledge Culture

    …feels like we’re losing out on opportunities to innovate because we’re not sharing information, learning from others’ mistakes, or capitalizing on their successes.

    …notices that staff don’t have a platform to share information on a regular basis, and believes if we brought that information together, we would be able to improve customer service and drive product innovation.

    …wants to create a culture where employees are valued for their competencies and motivated to learn.

    …values knowledge and the contributions of my team.

    This blueprint can help you build a roadmap to resolve each of these pain points. However, not all organizations need to have a knowledge culture. In the next section, we will walk you through the steps of selecting your target maturity model based on your knowledge goals.

    Case Study

    Siemens builds a knowledge culture to drive customer service improvements and increases sales by $122 million

    INDUSTRY: Electronics Engineering

    SOURCE: KM Best Practices

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    • As a large electronics and engineering global company, Siemens was facing increased global competition.
    • There was an emphasized need for agility and specialized knowledge to remain competitive.
    • The new company strategy to address competitive forces focused on becoming a knowledge enterprise and improving knowledge-sharing processes.
    • New leadership roles were created to develop a knowledge management culture.
    • “Communities of practice” were created with the goal of “connecting people to people” by allowing them to share best practices and information across departments.
    • An internal information-sharing program was launched that combined chat, database, and search engine capabilities for 12,000 employees.
    • Employees were able to better focus on customer needs based on offering services and products with high knowledge content.
    • With the improved customer focus, sales increased by $122 million and there was a return of $10-$20 per dollar spent on investment in the communities of practice.

    Info-Tech’s approach

    Five steps to future-proof your IT team

    The five steps are in a cycle. The five steps are: Obtain approval for IT knowledge transfer project, Identify your  knowledge and stakeholder risks, Build knowledge transfer plans, Build your knowledge transfer roadmap, Communicate your knowledge transfer roadmap to stakeholders.

    The Info-Tech difference:

    1. Successfully build a knowledge transfer roadmap based on your goals, no matter what market segment or size of business.
    2. Increase departmental efficiencies through increased collaboration.
    3. Retain key IT knowledge.
    4. Improve junior employee engagement by creating development opportunities.

    Use Info-Tech tools and templates

    Project outcomes

    1. Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained

    2. Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified

    3. Tactics for individuals’ knowledge transfer identified

    4. Knowledge transfer roadmap built

    5. Knowledge transfer roadmap approved

    Info-Tech tools and templates to help you complete your project deliverables

    Project Stakeholder Register Template

    IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template

    Project Planning and Monitoring Tool

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template

    IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template

    IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template

    Your completed project deliverables

    IT Knowledge Transfer Plans

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap

    Info-Tech’s methodology to mitigate key IT employee knowledge loss

    1. Initiate

    2. Design

    3. Implement

    Phase Steps

    1. Obtain approval for IT knowledge transfer project.
    2. Identify your knowledge and stakeholder risks.
    1. Build knowledge transfer plans.
    2. Build your knowledge transfer roadmap.
    1. Communicate your knowledge transfer roadmap to stakeholders.

    Phase Outcomes

    • Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained.
    • Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified.
    • IT knowledge transfer project charter created.
    • Tactics for individuals’ knowledge transfer identified.
    • Knowledge transfer roadmap built.
    • IT knowledge transfer plans established.
    • IT Knowledge transfer roadmap presented.
    • Knowledge transfer roadmap approved.

    Blueprint deliverables

    Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

    IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter

    Establish a clear project scope, decision rights, and executive sponsorship for the project.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter.

    IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    Identify and assess the knowledge and individual risk of key knowledge holders.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool.

    IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide

    Extract information about the type of knowledge sources have.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide.

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation

    Communicate IT knowledge transfer recommendations to stakeholders to gain buy-in.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation.

    Key deliverable:

    IT Knowledge Transfer Plan

    Track knowledge activities, intended recipients, and appropriate transfer tactics for each knowledge source.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer Plan.

    Blueprint benefits

    IT Benefits

    Business Benefits

    • Business continuity through redundancies preventing service interruptions and project delays.
    • Operational efficiency through increased productivity by never having to start projects from scratch.
    • Increased engagement from junior staff through development planning.
    • IT teams that drive process improvement and improved execution.
    • Mitigated risks and costs from talent leaving the organization.
    • Innovation by capitalizing on collective knowledge.
    • Increased ability to adapt to change and save time-to-market.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “ Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

    Call #1: Structure the project. Discuss transfer maturity goal and metrics.

    Call #2: Build knowledge transfer plans.

    Call #3: Identify priorities & review risk assessment tool.

    Call #4: Build knowledge transfer roadmap. Determine logistics of implementation.

    Call #5: Determine logistics of implementation.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is five to six calls.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Day 1

    Day 2

    Day 3

    Day 4

    Day 5

    Define the Current and Target State

    Identify Knowledge Priorities

    Build Knowledge Transfer Plans

    Define the Knowledge Transfer Roadmap

    Next Steps and
    Wrap-Up (offsite)

    Activities

    1.1 Have knowledge transfer fireside chat.

    1.2 Identify current and target maturity.

    1.3 Identify knowledge transfer metrics

    1.4 Identify knowledge transfer project stakeholders

    2.1 Identify your knowledge sources.

    2.2 Complete a knowledge risk assessment.

    2.3 Identify knowledge sources’ level of knowledge risk.

    3.1 Build an interview guide.

    3.2 Interview knowledge holders.

    4.1 Prioritize the sequence of initiatives.

    4.2 Complete the project roadmap.

    4.3 Prepare communication presentation.

    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

    5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

    Deliverables

    1. Organizational benefits and current pain points of knowledge transfer.
    2. Identification of target state of maturity.
    3. Metrics for knowledge transfer.
    4. Project stakeholder register.
    1. List of high risk knowledge sources.
    2. Departure analysis.
    3. Knowledge risk analysis.
    1. Knowledge transfer interview guide.
    2. Itemized knowledge assets.
    1. Prioritized sequence based on target state maturity goals.
    2. Project roadmap.
    3. Communication deck.

    Phase #1

    Initiate your IT knowledge transfer project

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Obtain approval for project

    1.2 Identify knowledge and stakeholder risks

    2.1 Build knowledge transfer plans

    2.2 Build knowledge transfer roadmap

    3.1 Communicate your roadmap

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Hold a working session with key stakeholders.
    • Identify your current state of maturity for knowledge transfer.
    • Identify your target state of maturity for knowledge transfer.
    • Define key knowledge transfer metrics.
    • Identify your project team and their responsibilities.
    • Build the project charter and obtain approval.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • IT Leadership
    • Other key stakeholders

    Step 1.1

    Obtain Approval for Your IT Knowledge Transfer Project

    Activities

    1.1.1 Hold a Working Session With Key Stakeholders

    1.1.2 Conduct a Current and Target State Analysis.

    1.1.3 Identify Key Metrics

    1.1.4 Identify Your Project Team

    1.1.5 Populate an RACI

    1.1.6 Build the Project Charter and Obtain Approval

    Initiate Your IT Knowledge Transfer Project

    The primary goal of this section is to gain a thorough understanding of the reasons why your organization should invest in knowledge transfer and to identify the specific challenges to address.

    Outcomes of this step

    Organizational benefits and current pain points of knowledge transfer

    Hold a working session with the key stakeholders to structure the project

    Don’t build your project charter in a vacuum. Involve key stakeholders to determine the desired knowledge transfer goals, target maturity and KPIs, and ultimately build the project charter.

    Building the project charter as a group will help you to clarify your key messages and help secure buy-in from critical stakeholders up-front, which is key.

    In order to execute on the knowledge transfer project, you will need significant involvement from your IT leadership team. The trouble is that knowledge transfer can be inherently stressful for employees as it can cause concerns around job security. Members of your IT leadership team will also be individuals who need to participate in knowledge transfer, so get them involved upfront. The working session will help stakeholders feel more engaged in the project, which is pivotal for success.

    You may feel like a full project charter isn’t necessary, and depending on your organizational size, it might not be. However, the exercise of building the charter is important regardless. No matter your current climate, some level of socializing the value and plans for knowledge transfer will be necessary.

    Meeting Agenda

    1. Short project introduction
    2. Led by: Project Sponsor

    • Why the project was initiated.
  • Make the case for the project
  • Led by: Project Manager

    • Current state: What project does the project address?
    • Future state: What is our target state of maturity?
  • Success criteria
  • Led by: Project Manager

    • How will success be measured?
  • Define the project team
  • Led by: Project Manager

    • Description of planned project approach.
    • Stakeholder assessment.
    • What is required of the sponsor and stakeholders?
  • Determine next steps
  • Led by: Project Manager

    1.1.1 Key Stakeholder Working Session

    Identify the pain points you’re experiencing with knowledge transfer and some of the benefits which you’d like to see from a program to determine the key objectives By doing so, you’ll get a holistic view of what you need to achieve.

    Collect this information by:

    1. Asking the working group participants (as a whole or in smaller groups) to discuss pain points created by ineffective knowledge transfer practices.
    • Challenges related to stakeholders.
    • Challenges created by process issues.
    • Issues achieving the intended outcome due to ineffective knowledge transfer.
    • Difficulties improving knowledge transfer practices.
  • Discussing opportunities to be gained from improving these practices.
  • Having participants write these down on sticky notes and place them on a whiteboard or flip chart.
  • Reviewing all the points as a group and grouping challenges and benefits into themes.
  • Having the group prioritize the risks and benefits in terms of what the solution “must have,” “should have,” “could have,” and “won’t have.”
  • Documenting this in the IT Knowledge Transfer Charter template.
  • Input Output
    • Reasons for the project
    • Stakeholder requirements
    • Pain point and risks
    • Identified next steps
    • Target state
    • Completed IT Knowledge Transfer Charter
    Materials Participants
    • Agenda (see previous slide)
    • Sticky notes (optional)
    • Pens (optional)
    • Whiteboard (optional
    • Markers (optional)
    • IT leadership

    Examples of Possible Pain Points

    • Employees have recently left or are preparing to leave the organization, and we worry that we don’t have their knowledge captured anywhere.
    • We previously had to cut down our IT department, and as a result there is a lack of redundancy for tasks. If someone leaves, we don’t have the information we need to continue operating effectively.
    • We’re worried that the IT department has no succession planning in place and that we’re opening ourselves up to risk.
    • It feels like we are losing productivity because the same problems are being solved multiple times, differently.
    • We’re worried that different employees have unique knowledge which is critical to performance, and that they are the only ones who know about it.
    • We’ve noticed that the processes people are using are different from the ones that are written down.
    • It feels like the IT department is constantly starting projects from scratch and employees aren’t leveraging each other’s information, which is causing inefficiencies.
    • It feels like new employees take too long to get up to speed.
    • We know that we have undocumented systems and more are being built each day.
    • We feel like we’re losing out on opportunities to innovate because we’re not sharing information, learning from others’ mistakes, or capitalizing on their successes.
    • We’ve noticed that staff don’t have a platform to share information on a regular basis. We believe if we brought that information together, we would be better able to improve customer service and drive product innovation.
    • We want to create a culture where employees are valued for their competencies and motivated to learn.
    • We value knowledge and the contributions of our team.

    1.1.2 Conduct a Current and Target State Analysis

    Identify your current and target state of maturity

    How to determine your current and target state of maturity:

    1. Provide the previous two slides with the details of the maturity assessment to the group, to review.
    2. Ask each participant to individually determine what they think is the IT team’s current state of maturity. After a few minutes, discuss as a group and come to an agreement.
    3. Review each of the benefits and timing for each of the maturity levels. Compare the benefits listed to those that you named in the previous exercise and determine which maturity level best describes your target state.
    4. Discuss as a group and agree on one maturity level.
    5. Review the other levels of maturity and determine what is in and out of scope for the project (hint: higher level benefits would be considered out of scope). Document this in the IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter template.
    Input Output
    • Knowledge Transfer Maturity Level charts
    • Target maturity level documented in the IT Knowledge Transfer Charter
    Materials Participants
    • Paper and pens
    • Handouts of maturity levels
    • IT Leadership Team

    IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template

    Info-Tech’s Knowledge Transfer Maturity Model

    Depending on the level of maturity you are trying to achieve, a knowledge transfer project could take weeks, months, or even years. Your maturity level depends on the business goal you would like to achieve, and impacts who and what your roadmap targets.

    The image contains a picture of Info-Tech's Knowledge Transfer Maturity Model. Level 0: Accidental, goal is not prioritized. Level 1: Stabilize, goal is risk mitigation. Level 2: Proactive, goal is operational efficiency. Level 3: Knowledge Culture, goal is innovation & customer service.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The maturity levels build on one another; if you start with a project, it is possible to move from a level 0 to a level 1, and once the project is complete, you can advance to a level 2 or 3. However, it’s important to set clear boundaries upfront to limit scope creep, and it’s important to set appropriate expectations for what the project will deliver.

    Knowledge Transfer Maturity Level: Accidental and Stabilize

    Goal

    Description

    Time to implement

    Benefits

    Level 0: Accidental

    Not Prioritized

    • No knowledge transfer process is present.
    • Knowledge transfer is completed in an ad hoc manner.
    • Some transfer may take place through exit interviews.

    N/A

    • Simple to implement and maintain.

    Level 1: Stabilize

    Risk Mitigation

    At level one, knowledge transfer is focused around ensuring that redundancies exist for explicit knowledge for:

    1. ALL high-risk knowledge.
    2. ALL high-risk stakeholders.

    Your high-risk knowledge is any information which is proprietary, unique, or specialized.

    High risk stakeholders are those individuals who are at a higher likelihood of departing the organization due to retirement or disengagement.

    0 – 6 months

    • Mitigates risks from talent leaving the organization.
    • Ensures business continuity through redundancies.
    • Provides stability to sustain high-performing services, and mitigates risks from service interruptions.

    Knowledge Transfer Maturity Level: Proactive and Knowledge Culture

    Goal

    Description

    Time to implement

    Benefits

    Level 2: Proactive

    Operational Efficiency

    Level 2 extends Level 1.

    Once stabilized, you can work on KT initiatives that allow you to be more proactive and cover high risk knowledge that may not be held by those see as high risk individuals.

    Knowledge transfer plans must exist for ALL high risk knowledge.

    3m – 1yr

    • Enhances productivity by reducing need to start projects from scratch.
    • Increases efficiency by tweaking existing processes with best practices.
    • Sees new employees become productive more quickly through targeted development planning.
    • Increases chance that employees will stay at the organization longer, if they can see growth opportunities.
    • Streamlines efficiencies by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes.

    Level 3: Knowledge Culture

    Drive Innovation Through Knowledge

    Level 3 extends Level 2.

    • Knowledge Transfer covers explicit and tacit information throughout the IT organization.
    • The program should be integrated with leadership development and talent management.
    • Key metrics should be tied to process improvement, innovation, and customer service.

    1-2 years

    • Increases end-user satisfaction by leveraging the collective knowledge to solve repeat customer issues.
    • Drives product innovation through collaboration.
    • Increases employee engagement by recognizing and rewarding knowledge sharing.
    • Increases your ability to adapt to change and save time-to-market through increased learning.
    • Enables the development of new ideas through iteration.
    • Supports faster access to knowledge.

    Select project-specific KPIs

    Use the selected KPIs to track the value of knowledge transfer

    You need to ensure your knowledge transfer initiatives are having the desired effect and adjust course when necessary. Establishing an upfront list of key performance indicators that will be benchmarked and tracked is a crucial step.

    Many organizations overlook the creation of KPIs for knowledge transfer because the benefits are often one step removed from the knowledge transfer itself. However, there are several metrics you can use to measure success.

    Hint: Metrics will vary based on your knowledge transfer maturity goals.

    Metrics For Knowledge Transfer

    Creating KPIs for knowledge transfer is a crucial step that many organizations overlook because the benefits are often one step removed from the knowledge transfer itself. However, there are several qualitative and quantitative metrics you can use to measure success depending on your maturity level goals.

    Stabilize

    • Number of high departure risk employees identified.
    • Number of high-risk employees without knowledge transfer plans.
    • Number of post-retirement knowledge issues.

    Be Proactive

    • Number of issues arising from lack of redundancy.
    • Percentage of high-risk knowledge items without transfer plans.
    • Time required to get new employees up to speed.

    Promote Knowledge Culture

    • Percentage of returned deliverables for rework.
    • Percentage of errors repeated in reports.
    • Number of employees mentoring their colleagues.
    • Number of issues solved through knowledge sharing.
    • Percentage of employees with knowledge transfer/development plans.

    1.1.3 Identify Key Metrics

    Identify key metrics the organization will use to measure knowledge transfer success

    How to determine knowledge transfer metrics:

    1. Assign each participant 1-4 of the desired knowledge transfer benefits and pain points which you identified as priorities.
    2. Independently have them brainstorm how they would measure the success of each, and after 10 minutes, present their thoughts to the group.
    3. Write each of the metric suggestions on a whiteboard and agree to 3-5 benefits which you will track. The metrics you choose should relate to the key pain points you have identified and match your desired maturity level.
    InputOutput
    • Knowledge transfer pain points and benefits
    • 3-5 key metrics to track
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard
    • IT Leadership Team

    Identify knowledge transfer project team

    Determine Project Participants

    Pick a Project Sponsor

    • The project participants are the IT managers and directors whose day-to-day lives will be impacted by the knowledge transfer roadmap and its implementation.
    • These individuals will be your roadmap ream and will help with planning. Most of these individuals should be in the workshop, but ensure you have everyone covered. Some examples of individuals you should consider for your team are:
      • Director/Manager Level:
        • Applications
        • Infrastructure
        • Operations
      • Service Delivery Managers
      • Business Relationship Managers
    • The project sponsor should be a member of your IT department’s senior executive team whose goals and objectives will be impacted by knowledge transfer implementation.
      • This is the person you will get to sign-off on the project charter document.
    The image contains a triangle that has been split into three parts. The top section is labelled: Project Sponsor, middle section: Project Participants, and the bottom is labelled Project Stakeholders.

    The project sponsor is the main catalyst for the creation of the roadmap. They will be the one who signs off on the project roadmap.

    The Project Participants are the key stakeholders in your organization whose input will be pivotal to the creation of the roadmap.

    The project stakeholders are the senior executives who have a vested interest in knowledge transfer. Following completion of this workshop, you will present your roadmap to these individuals for approval.

    1.1.4 Identify Your Project Team

    How to define the knowledge transfer project team:

    1. Through discussion, generate a complete list of key stakeholders, considering each of the roles indicated in the chart on the Key Project Management Stakeholders slide. Write their names on a whiteboard.
    2. Using the quadrant template on the next slide, draw the stakeholder power map.
    3. Evaluate each stakeholder on the list based on their level of influence and support of the project. Write the stakeholder’s name on a sticky note and place it in the appropriate place on the grid.
    4. Create an engagement plan based on the stakeholder’s placement.
    5. Use Info-Tech’s Project Stakeholder Register Template to identify and document your project management stakeholders.

    Project Stakeholder Register Template

    Input Output
    • Initial stakeholder analysis
    • Complete list of project participants.
    • Complete project stakeholder register.
    Materials Participants
    • Whiteboard / Flip chart
    • Markers / Pens
    • Project Stakeholder Register Template
    • IT Leadership Team
    • Other stakeholders

    Have a strategic approach for engaging stakeholders to help secure buy-in

    If your IT leadership team isn’t on board, you’re in serious trouble! IT leaders will not only be highly involved in the knowledge transfer project, but they also may be participants, so it’s essential that you get their buy-in for the project upfront.

    Document the results in the Project Stakeholder Register Template; use this as a guide to help structure your communication with stakeholders based on where they fall on the grid.

    How to Manage:

    Focus on increasing these stakeholders’ level of support!

    1. Have a one-on-one meeting to seek their views on critical issues and address concerns.
    2. Identify key pain points they have experienced and incorporate these in the project goal statements.
    3. Where possible, leverage KT champions to help encourage support.
    The image contains a small graph to demonstrate the noise makers, the blockers, the changers, and the helpers.

    Capitalize on champions to drive the project/change.

    1. Use them for internal PR of the objectives and benefits.
    2. Ask them what other stakeholders can be leveraged.
    3. Involve them early in creating project documents.

    How to Manage:

    How to Manage:

    Pick your battles – focus on your noise makers first, and then move on to your blockers.

    1. Determine the level of involvement the blockers will have in the project (i.e. what you will need from them in the future) and determine next steps based on this (one-on-one meeting, group meeting, informal communication, or leveraging helpers/ champions to encourage them).

    Leverage this group where possible to help socialize the program and to help encourage dissenters to support.

    1. Mention their support in group settings.
    2. Focus on increasing their understanding via informal communication.

    How to Manage:

    Key Project Management Stakeholders

    Role

    Project Role

    Required

    CIO

    Will often play the role of project sponsor and should be involved in key decision points.

    IT Managers Directors

    Assist in the identification of high-risk stakeholders and knowledge and will be heavily involved in the development of each transfer plan.

    Project Manager

    Should be in charge of leading the development and execution of the project.

    Business Analysts

    Responsible for knowledge transfer elicitation analysis and validation for the knowledge transfer project.

    Situational

    Technical Lead

    Responsible for solution design where required for knowledge transfer tactics.

    HR

    Will aid in the identification of high-risk stakeholders or help with communication and stakeholder management.

    Legal

    Organizations that are subject to knowledge confidentiality, Sarbanes-Oxley, federal rules, etc. may need legal to participate in planning.

    Ensure coverage of all project tasks

    Populate a Project RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) chart

    Apps MGR

    Dev. MGR

    Infra MGR

    Build the project charter

    R

    R

    I

    Identify IT stakeholders

    R

    R

    I

    Identify high risk stakeholders

    R

    A

    R

    Identify high risk knowledge

    I C C

    Validate prioritized stakeholders

    I C R

    Interview key stakeholders

    R R A

    Identify knowledge transfer tactics for individuals

    C C A

    Communicate knowledge transfer goals

    C R A

    Build the knowledge transfer roadmap

    C R A

    Approve knowledge transfer roadmap

    C R C

    1.1.5 Populate an RACI

    Populate a RACI chart to identify who should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each key activity.

    How to define RACI for the project team:

    1. Write out the list of all stakeholders along the top of a whiteboard. Write out the key project steps along the left-hand side (use this list as a starting point).
    2. For each initiative, identify each team member’s role. Are they:
    3. Responsible: The one responsible for getting the job done.

      Accountable: Only one person can be accountable for each task.

      Consulted: Involvement through input of knowledge and information.

      Informed: Receiving information about process execution and quality.

    4. As you proceed through the project, continue to add tasks and assign responsibility to the RACI chart on the next slide.
    InputOutput
    • Stakeholder list
    • Key project steps
    • Project RACI chart
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Whiteboard
    • IT Leadership Team

    1.1.6 Build the Project Charter and Obtain Sign-off

    Complete the IT knowledge transfer project charter.

    Build the project charter and obtain sign-off from your project sponsor. Use your organization’s project charter if one exists. If not, customize Info-Tech’s IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template to suit your needs.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT knowledge transfer project charter template.

    IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template

    Step 1.2

    Identify Your Knowledge and Stakeholder Risks

    Activities

    1.2.1 Identify Knowledge Sources

    1.2.2 Complete a Knowledge Risk Assessment

    1.2.3 Review the Prioritized List of Knowledge Sources

    The primary goal of this section is to identify who your primary risk targets are for knowledge transfer.

    Outcomes of this step

    • A list of your high-risk knowledge sources
    • Departure analysis
    • Knowledge risk analysis

    Prioritize your knowledge transfer initiatives

    Throughout this section, we will walk through the following 3 activities in the tool to determine where you need to focus attention for your knowledge transfer roadmap based on knowledge value and likelihood of departure.

    1. Identify Knowledge Sources

    Create a list of knowledge sources for whom you will be conducting the analysis, and identify which sources currently have a transfer plan in place.

    2. Value of Knowledge

    Consider the type of knowledge held by each identified knowledge source and determine the level of risk based on the knowledge:

    1. Criticality
    2. Availability

    3. Likelihood of Departure

    Identify the knowledge source’s risk of leaving the organization based on their:

    1. Age cohort
    2. Engagement level

    This tool contains sensitive information. Do not share this tool with knowledge sources. The BA and Project Manager, and potentially the project sponsor, should be the only ones who see the completed tool.

    The image contains screenshots from the Knowledge Risk Assessment Tool.

    Focus on key roles instead of all roles in IT

    Identify Key Roles

    Hold a meeting with your IT Leadership team, or meet with members individually, and ask these questions to identify key roles:

    • What are the roles that have a significant impact on delivering the business strategy?
    • What are the key differentiating roles for our IT organization?
    • Which roles, if vacant, would leave the organization open to non-compliance with regulatory or legal requirements?
    • Which roles have a direct impact on the customer?
    • Which roles, if vacant, would create system, function, or process failure for the organization?

    Key roles include:

    • Strategic roles: Roles that give the greatest competitive advantage. Often these are roles that involve decision-making responsibility.
    • Core roles: Roles that must provide consistent results to achieve business goals.
    • Proprietary roles: Roles that are tied closely to unique or proprietary internal processes or knowledge that cannot be procured externally. These are often highly technical or specialized.
    • Required roles: Roles that support the department and are required to keep it moving forward day-to-day.
    • Influential roles: Positions filled by employees who are the backbone of the organization, i.e. the go-to people who are the corporate culture.

    Info-Tech Insight

    This step is meant to help speed up and simplify the process for large IT organizations. IT organizations with fewer than 30 people, or organizations looking to build a knowledge culture, can opt to skip this step and include all members of the IT team. This way, everyone is considered and you can prioritize accordingly.

    1.2.1 Identify Key Knowledge Sources

    1. Identify key roles, as shown on the previous slide. This can be done by brainstorming names on sticky notes and placing them on a whiteboard.
    2. Document using IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool Tab 2. Input with first name, last name, department/ IT area, and manager of each identified Knowledge Source.
    3. Also answer the question of whether the Knowledge Source currently has a knowledge transfer plan in place.
    • Not in place
    • Partially in place
    • In place
  • Conduct sanity check: once you have identified key roles, ask – “did we miss anybody?”
  • InputOutput
    • Employee list
    • List of knowledge sources for IT
    MaterialsParticipants
    • IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool.
    • IT Leadership Team

    IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    Document key knowledge sources (example)

    Use information about the current state of knowledge transfer plans in your organization to understand your key risks and focus areas.

    The image contains a screenshot of the knowledge source.

    Legend:

    1. Document knowledge source information (name, department, and manager).

    2. Select the current state of knowledge transfer plans for each knowledge source.

    Once you have identified key roles, conduct a sanity check and ask – “did we miss anybody?” For example:

    • There are three systems administrators. One of them, Joe, has been with the organization for 15 years.
    • Joe’s intimate systems knowledge and long-term relationship with one of the plant systems vendors has made him a go-to person during times of operational systems crisis and has resulted in systems support discounts.
    • While the systems administrator role by itself is not considered key (partly due to role redundancy), Joe is a key person to flag for knowledge transfer activities as losing him would make achieving core business goals more difficult.

    Case Study

    Municipal government learns the importance of thorough knowledge source identification after losing key stakeholder

    INDUSTRY: Government

    Challenge

    Solution

    Results

    • A municipal government was introducing a new integration project that was led by their controller.
    • The controller left abruptly, and while the HR department conducted an exit interview, they didn’t realize until after the individual had left how much information was lost.
    • Nobody knew the information needed to complete the integration, so they had to make do with what they had.
    • The Director of IT at the time was the most familiar with the process.
    • Even though she would not normally do this type of project, at the time she was the only person with knowledge of the process and luckily was able to complete the integration.
    • The Director of IT had to put other key projects on hold, and lost productivity on other prioritized work.
    • The organization realized how much they were at risk and changed how they approached knowledge. They created a new process to identify “single point of failures” and label people as high risk. These processes started with the support organization’s senior level key people to identify their processes and record everything they do and what they know.

    Identify employees who may be nearing retirement and flag them as high risk

    Risk Parameter

    Description

    How to Collect this Data:

    Age Cohort

    • 60+ years of age or older, or anyone who has indicated they will be retiring within five years (highest risk).
    • Employees in their early 50s: are still many years away from retirement but have a sufficient number of years remaining in their career to make a move to a new role outside of your organization.
    • Employees in their late 50s: are likely more than five years away from retirement but are less likely than younger employees to leave your organization for another role because of increasing risk in making such a move, and persistent employer unwillingness to hire older employees.
    • Employees under 50: should never be considered low risk only based on age – which is why the second component of stakeholder risk is engagement.

    For those people on your shortlist, pull some hard demographic data.

    Compile a report that breaks down employees into age-based demographic groups.

    Flag those over the age of 50 – they’re in the “retirement zone” and could decide to leave at any time.

    Check to see which stakeholders identified fall into the “over 50” age demographic.

    Document this information in the IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool.

    Info-Tech Insight

    150% of an employee’s base salary and benefits is the estimated cost of turnover according to The Society of Human Resource Professionals.1

    1McLean & Company, Make the Case for Employee Engagement

    Identify disengaged employees who may be preparing to leave the organization

    Risk Parameter

    Description

    How to Collect this Data:

    Engagement

    An engaged stakeholder is energized and passionate about their work, leading them to exert discretionary effort to drive organizational performance (lowest risk).

    An almost engaged stakeholder is generally passionate about their work. At times they exert discretionary effort to help achieve organizational goals.

    Indifferent employees are satisfied, comfortable, and generally able to meet minimum expectations. They see their work as “just a job,” prioritizing their needs before organizational goals.

    Disengaged employees have little interest in their job and the organization and often display negative attitudes (highest risk).

    Option 1:

    The optimal approach for determining employee engagement is through an engagement survey. See McLean & Company for more details.

    Option 2:

    Ask the identified stakeholder’s manager to provide an assessment of their engagement either independently or via a meeting.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Engaged employees are five times more likely than disengaged employees to agree that they are committed to their organization.1

    1Source: McLean & Company, N = 13683

    The level of risk of the type of information is defined by criticality and availability

    Risk Parameter

    Description

    How to Collect this Data:

    Criticality

    Roles that are critical to the continuation of business and cannot be left vacant without risking business operations. Would the role, if vacant, create system, function, or process failure for the organization?

    Option 1: (preferred)

    Meet with IT managers/directors over the phone or directly and review each of the identified reports to determine the risk.

    Option 2: Send the IT mangers/directors the list of their direct reports, and ask them to evaluate their knowledge type risk independently and return the information to you.

    Option 3: (if necessary) Review individual job descriptions independently, and use your judgment to come up with a rating for each. Send the assessment to the stakeholders’ managers for validation.

    Availability

    Refers to level of redundancy both within and outside of the organization. Information which is highly available is considered lower risk. Key questions to consider include: does this individual have specialized, unique, or proprietary expertise? Are there internal redundancies?

    1.2.2 Complete a Knowledge Risk Assessment

    Complete a Tab 3 assessment for each of your identified Knowledge Sources. The Knowledge Source tab will pre-populate with information from Tab 2 of the tool. For each knowledge source, you will determine their likelihood of departure and degree of knowledge risk.

    Likelihood of departure:

    1. Document the age cohort risk for each knowledge source on Tab 3 of the IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool. Age Cohort: Under 50, 51-55, 56-60, or over 60.
    2. Document the engagement risk for each knowledge source on Tab 3, “Assessment”, of the IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool. Engagement level: Engaged, Almost engaged, Indifferent employees, Disengaged.
    3. Degree of knowledge risk is based on:

    4. Document the knowledge type risk for each stakeholder on Tab 3, “Assessment” in the IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool.
    • Criticality: Would the role, if vacant, create system, function, or process failure for the organization?
    • Availability: Does this individual have specialized, unique, or proprietary expertise? Are there internal redundancies?
    Input Output
    • Knowledge source list (Tab 2)
    • Employee demographics information
    • List of high-risk knowledge sources
    Materials Participants
    • Sticky notes
    • Pens
    • Whiteboard
    • Marker
    • IT Leadership Team
    • HR

    IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    Results matrix

    The image contains a screenshot of risk assessment. The image contains a matrix example from tab 4.

    Determine where to focus your efforts

    The IT Knowledge Transfer Map on Tab 5 helps you to determine where to focus your knowledge transfer efforts

    Knowledge sources have been separated into the three maturity levels (Stabilize, Proactive, and Knowledge Culture) and prioritized within each level.

    Focus first on your stabilize groups, and based on your target maturity goal, move on to your proactive and knowledge culture groups respectively.

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer Map on tab 5.

    Sequential Prioritization

    Orange line Level 1: Stabilize

    Blue Line Level 2: Proactive

    Green Line Level 3: Knowledge Culture

    Each pie chart indicates which of the stakeholders in that risk column currently has knowledge transfer plans.

    Each individual also has their own status ball on whether they currently have a knowledge transfer plan.

    1.2.3 Review the Prioritized List

    Review results

    Identify knowledge sources to focus on for the knowledge transfer roadmap. Review the IT Knowledge Transfer Map on Tab 5 to determine where to focus your knowledge transfer efforts

    1. Show the results from the assessment tool.
    2. Discuss matrix and prioritized list.
    • Does it match with maturity goals?
    • Do prioritizations seem correct?
    InputOutput
    • Knowledge source risk profile
    • Risk Assessment (Tab 3)
    • Prioritized list of knowledge sources to focus on for the knowledge transfer roadmap
    MaterialsParticipants
    • n/a
    • IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool
    • IT Leadership Team

    IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

    Phase #2

    Design your knowledge transfer plans

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Obtain approval for project

    1.2 Identify knowledge and stakeholder risks

    2.1 Build knowledge transfer plans

    2.2 Build knowledge transfer roadmap

    3.1 Communicate your roadmap

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Building knowledge transfer plans for all prioritized knowledge sources.
    • Understanding which transfer tactics are best suited for different knowledge types.
    • Identifying opportunities to leverage collaboration tools for knowledge transfer.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • IT Leadership
    • Other key stakeholders
    • Knowledge sources

    Define what knowledge needs to be transferred

    Each knowledge source has unique information which needs to be transferred. Chances are you don’t know what you don’t know. The first step is therefore to interview knowledge sources to find out.

    Identify the knowledge receiver

    Depending on who the information is going to, the knowledge transfer tactic you employ will differ. Before deciding on the knowledge receiver and tactic, consider three key factors:

    • How will this knowledge be used in the future?
    • What is the next career step for the knowledge receiver?
    • Are the receiver and the source going to be in the same location?

    Identify which knowledge transfer tactics you will use for each knowledge asset

    Not all tactics are good in every situation. Always keep the “knowledge type” (information, process, skills, and expertise), knowledge sources’ engagement level, and the knowledge receiver in mind as you select tactics.

    Determine knowledge transfer tactics

    Determine tactics for each stakeholder based on qualities of their specific knowledge.

    This tool is built to accommodate up to 30 knowledge items; Info-Tech recommends focusing on the top 10-15 items.

    1. Send documents to each manager. Include:
    • a copy of this template.
    • interview guide.
    • tactics booklet.
  • Instruct managers to complete the template for each knowledge source and return it to you.
  • These steps should be completed by the BA or IT Manager. The BA is helpful to have around because they can learn about the tactics and answer any questions about the tactics that the managers might have when completing the template.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Knowledge Source's Name.

    IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template

    Step 2.1

    Build Your Knowledge Transfer Plans

    Activities

    2.1.1 Interview Knowledge Sources to Uncover Key Knowledge Items

    2.1.2 Identify When to use Knowledge Transfer Tactics

    2.1.3 Build Individual Knowledge Transfer Plans

    The primary goal of this section is to build an interview guide and interview knowledge sources to identify key knowledge assets.

    Outcomes of this step

    • Knowledge Transfer Interview Guide
    • Itemized knowledge assets
    • Completed knowledge transfer plans

    2.1.1 Interview Knowledge Sources

    Determine key knowledge items

    The first step is for managers to interview knowledge sources in order to extract information about the type of knowledge the source has.

    Meet with the knowledge sources and work with them to identify essential knowledge. Use the following questions as guidance:

    1. What are you an expert in?
    2. What do others ask you for assistance with?
    3. What are you known for?
    4. What are key responsibilities you have that no one else has or knows how to do?
    5. Are there any key systems, processes, or applications which you’ve taken the lead on?
    6. When you go on vacation, what is waiting for you in your inbox?
    7. If you went on vacation, would there be any systems that, if there was a failure, you would be the only one who knows how to fix?
    8. Would you say that all the key processes you use, or tools, codes etc. are documented?
    Input Output
    • Knowledge type information
    • Prioritized list of key knowledge sources.
    • Knowledge activity information
    • What are examples of good use cases for the technique?
    • Why would you use this technique over others?
    • Is this technique suitable for all projects? When wouldn’t you use it?
    Materials Participants
    • Interview guide
    • Pen
    • Paper
    • IT Leadership Team
    • Knowledge sources

    IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template

    2.1.2 Understand Knowledge Transfer Tactics

    Understand when and how to use different knowledge transfer tactics

    1. Break the workshop participants into teams. Assign each team two to four knowledge transfer tactics and provide them with the associated handout(s) from the following slides. Using the material provided, have each team brainstorm around the following questions:
      1. What types of information can the technique be used to collect?
      2. What are examples of good use cases for the technique?
      3. Why would you use this technique over others?
      4. Is this technique suitable for all projects? When wouldn’t you use it?
    2. Have each group present their findings from the brainstorming to the group.
    3. Once everyone has presented, have the groups select which tactics they would be interested in using and which ones they would not want to use by putting green and red dots on each.
    4. As a group, confirm the list of tactics you would be interested in using and disqualify the others.
    Input Output
    • List of knowledge tactics to utilize.
    Materials Participants
    • Knowledge transfer tactics handouts
    • Flip chart paper
    • Markers
    • Green and red dot stickers
    • IT Leadership Team
    • Project team

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Interviews

    Interviews provide an opportunity to meet one-on-one with key stakeholders to document key knowledge assets. Interviews can be used for explicit and tacit information, and in particular, capture processes, rules, coding information, best practices, etc.

    Benefits:

    • Good bang-for-your-buck interviews are simple to conduct and can be used for all types of knowledge.
    • Interviews can obtain a lot of information in a relatively short period of time.
    • Interviews help make tacit knowledge more explicit through effective questioning.
    • They have highly flexible formatting as interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or by email.

    How to get started:

    1. Have the business analyst (BA) review the employee’s knowledge transfer plan and highlight the areas to be discussed in the interview.
    2. The BA will then create an interview guide detailing key questions which would need to be asked to ascertain the information.
    3. Schedule a 30-60 minute interview. When complete, document the interview and key lessons learned. Send the information back to the interviewee for validation of what was discussed.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Minimal

    Technology Support: N/A

    Process Development: Minimal

    Duration: Annual

    Participants

    Business analysts

    Knowledge source

    Materials

    Interview guide

    Notepad

    Pen

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Process Mapping

    Business process mapping refers to building a flow chart diagram of the sequence of actions which defines what a business does. The flow chart defines exactly what a process does and the specific succession of steps including all inputs, outputs, flows, and linkages. Process maps are a powerful tool to frame requirements in the context of the complete solution.

    Benefits:

    • They are simple to build and analyze; most organizations and users are familiar with flow diagrams, making them highly usable.
    • They provide an end-to-end picture of a process.
    • They’re ideal for gathering full and detailed requirements of a process.
    • They include information around who is responsible, what they do, when, where it occurs, triggers, to what degree, and how often it occurs.
    • They’re great for legacy systems.

    How to get started:

    1. Have the BA prepare beforehand by doing some preliminary research on the purpose of the process, and the beginning and end points.
    2. With the knowledge holder, use a whiteboard and identify the different stakeholders who interact with the process, and draw swim lanes for each.
    3. Together, use sticky notes and/or dry erase markers etc. to draw out the process.
    4. When you believe you’re complete, start again from the beginning and break the process down to more details.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Minimal

    Technology Support: N/A

    Process Development: Minimal

    Duration: Annual

    Participants

    Business analysts

    Knowledge source

    Materials

    Whiteboard / flip-chart paper

    Marker

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Use Cases

    Use case diagrams are a common transfer tactic where the BA maps out step-by-step how an employee completes a project or uses a system. Use cases show what a system or project does rather than how it does it. Use cases are frequently used by product managers and developers.

    Benefits:

    • Easy to draw and understand.
    • Simple way to digest information.
    • Can get very detailed.
    • Should be used for documenting processes, experiences etc.
    • Initiation and brainstorming.
    • Great for legacy systems.

    How to get started:

    1. The BA will schedule a 30-60 minute in-person meeting with the employee, draw a stick figure on the left side of the board, and pose the initial question: “If you need to do X, what is your first step?” Have the stakeholder go step-by-step through the process until the end goal. Draw this process across the whiteboard. Make sure you capture the triggers, causes of events, decision points, outcomes, tools, and interactions.
    2. Starting at the beginning of the diagram, go through each step again and ask the employee if the step can be broken down into more granular steps. If the answer is yes, break down the use case further.
    3. Ask the employee if there are any alternative flows that people could use, or any exceptions. If there are, map these out on the board.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Minimal

    Technology Support: N/A

    Process Development: Minimal

    Duration: Annual

    Participants

    Business analysts

    Knowledge source

    Materials

    Whiteboard / flip-chart paper

    Marker

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Job Shadow

    Job shadowing is a working arrangement where the “knowledge receiver” learns how to do a job by observing an experienced employee complete key tasks throughout their normal workday.

    Benefits:

    • Low cost and minimal effort required.
    • Helps employees understand different elements of the business.
    • Helps build relationships.
    • Good for knowledge holders who are not great communicators.
    • Great for legacy systems.

    How to get started:

    1. Determine goals and objectives for the knowledge transfer, and communicate these to the knowledge source and receiver.
    2. Have the knowledge source identify when they will be performing a particular knowledge activity and select that day for the job shadow. If the information is primarily experience, select any day which is convenient.
    3. Ask the knowledge receiver to shadow the source and ask questions whenever they have them.
    4. Following the job shadow, have the knowledge receiver document what they learned that day and file that information.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Required

    Technology Support: N/A

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    BA

    IT manager

    Knowledge source and receiver

    Materials

    N/A

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Peer Assist

    Meeting or workshop where peers from different teams share their experiences and knowledge with individuals or teams that require help with a specific challenge or problem.

    Benefits:

    • Improves productivity through enhanced problem solving.
    • Encourages collaboration between teams to share insight, and assistance from people outside your team to obtain new possible approaches.
    • Promotes sharing and development of new connections among different staff, and creates opportunities for innovation.
    • Can be combined with Action Reviews.

    How to get started:

    1. Create a registry of key projects that different individuals have solved. Where applicable, leverage the existing work done through action reviews.
    2. Create and communicate a process for knowledge sources and receivers to reach out to one another. Email or social collaboration platforms are the most common.
    3. The source may then reply with documentation or a peer can set up an interview to discuss.
    4. Information should be recorded and saved on a corporate share drive with appropriate metadata to ensure ease of search.
    5. See Appendix for further details.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Minimal

    Technology Support: N/A

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    Knowledge sources

    Knowledge receiver

    BA to build a skill repository

    Materials

    Intranet

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Transition Workshop

    A half- to full-day exercise where an outgoing leader facilitates a knowledge transfer of key insights they have learned along the way and any high-profile knowledge they may have.

    Benefits:

    • Accelerates knowledge transfer following a leadership change.
    • Ensures business continuity.
    • New leader gets a chance to understand the business drivers behind team decisions and skills of each member.
    • The individuals on the team learn about the new leader’s values and communication styles.

    How to get started:

    1. Outgoing leader organizes a one-time session where they share information with the team (focus on tacit knowledge, such as team successes and challenges) and team can ask questions.
    2. Incoming leader and remaining team members share information about norms, priorities, and values.
    3. Document the information.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Required

    Technology Support: Some

    Process Development: Some

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    IT leader

    Incoming IT team

    Key stakeholders

    Materials

    Meeting space

    Video conferencing (as needed)

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Action Review

    Action Review is a team-based discussion at the end of a project or step to review how the activity went and what can be done differently next time. It is ideal for transferring expertise and skills.

    Benefits:

    • Learning is done during and immediately after the project so that knowledge transfer happens quickly.
    • Results can be shared with other teams outside of the immediate members.
    • Makes tacit knowledge explicit.
    • Encourages a culture where making mistakes is OK, but you need to learn from them.

    How to get started:

    1. Hold an initial meeting with IT teams to inform them of the action reviews. Create an action review goals statement by working with IT teams to discuss what they hope to get out of the initiative.
    2. Ask project teams to present their work and answer the following questions:
      1. What was supposed to happen?
      2. What actually happened?
      3. Why were there differences?
      4. What can we learn and do differently next time?
    3. Have each individual or group present, record the meeting minutes, and send the details to the group for future reference. Determine a share storage place on your company intranet or shared drive for future reference.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training:Minimal

    Technology Support: Minimal

    Process Development: Some

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    IT unit/group

    Any related IT stakeholder impacted by or involved in a project.

    Materials

    Meeting space

    Video conferencing (as needed)

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Mentoring

    Mentoring can be a formal program where management sets schedules and expectations. It can also be informal through an environment for open dialogue where staff is encouraged to seek advice and guidance, and to share their knowledge with more novice members of the organization.

    Benefits:

    • Speeds up learning curves and helps staff acclimate to the organizational culture.
    • Communicates organizational values and appropriate behaviors, and is an effective way to augment training efforts.
    • Leads to higher engagement by improving communication among employees, developing leadership, and helping employees work effectively.
    • Improves succession planning by preparing and grooming employees for future roles and ensuring the next wave of managers is qualified.

    How to get started:

    1. Have senior management define the goals for a mentorship program. Depending on your goals, the frequency, duration, and purpose for mentorship will change. Create a mission statement for the program.
    2. Communicate the program with mentors and mentees and define what the scope of their roles will be.
    3. Implement the program and measure success.

    Creating a mentorship program is a full project in itself. For full details on how to set up a mentorship program, see McLean & Company’s Build a Mentoring Program.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Required

    Technology Support: N/a

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    IT unit/group

    Materials

    Meeting space

    Video conferencing (as needed)

    Documentation

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Story Telling

    Knowledge sources use anecdotal examples to highlight a specific point and pass on information, experience, and ideas through narrative.

    Benefits:

    • Provides context and transfers expertise in a simple way between people of different contexts and background.
    • Illustrates a point effectively and makes a lasting impression.
    • Helps others learn from past situations and respond more effectively in future ones.
    • Can be completed in person, through blogs, video or audio recordings, or case studies.

    How to get started:

    1. Select a medium for how your organization will record stories, whether through blogs, video or audio recordings, or case studies. Develop a template for how you’re going to record the information.
    2. Integrate story telling into key activities – project wrap-up, job descriptions, morning meetings, etc.
    3. Determine the medium for retaining and searching stories.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Required

    Technology Support: Some

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    Knowledge source

    Knowledge receiver

    Videographer (where applicable)

    Materials

    Meeting space

    Video conferencing (as needed)

    Documentation

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Job Share

    Job share exists when at least two people share the knowledge and responsibilities of two job roles.

    Benefits:

    • Reduces the risk of concentrating all knowledge in one person and creating a single point of failure.
    • Increases the number of experts who hold key knowledge that can be shared with others, i.e. “two heads are better than one.”
    • Ensures redundancies exist for when an employee leaves or goes on vacation.
    • Great for getting junior employees up to speed on legacy system functionality.
    • Results in more agile teams.
    • Doubles the amount of skills and expertise.

    How to get started:

    1. Determine which elements of two individuals’ job duties could be shared by two people. Before embarking on a job share, ensure that the two individuals will work well together as a team and individually.
    2. Establish a vision, clear values, and well-defined roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships to avoid duplication of effort and confusion.
    3. Start with a pilot group of employees who are in support of the initiative, track the results, and make adjustments where needed.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training: Some

    Technology Support: Minimal

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    IT manager

    HR

    Employees

    Materials

    Job descriptions

    Knowledge Transfer Tactics:

    Communities of Practice

    Communities of practice are working groups of individuals who engage in a process of regularly sharing information with each other across different parts of the organization by focusing on common purpose and working practices. These groups meet on a regular basis to work together on problem solving, to gain information, ask for help and assets, and share opinions and best practices.

    Benefits:

    • Supports a collaborative environment.
    • Creates a sense of community and positive working relationships, which is a key driver for engagement.
    • Encourages creative thinking and support of one another.
    • Facilitates transfer of wide range of knowledge between people from different specialties.
    • Fast access to information.
    • Multiple employees hear the answers to questions and discussions, resulting in wider spread knowledge.
    • Can be done in person or via video conference, and is best when supported by social collaboration tools.

    How to get started:

    1. Determine your medium for these communities and ensure you have the needed technology.
    2. Develop training materials, and a rewards and recognition process for communities.
    3. Have a meeting with staff, ask them to brainstorm a list of different key “communities,” and ask staff to self select into communities.
    4. Have the communities determine the purpose statement for each group, and set up guidelines for functionality and uses.

    Knowledge Types

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Dependencies

    Training:Required

    Technology Support: Required

    Process Development:Required

    Duration:Ongoing

    Participants

    Employees

    BA (to assist in establishing)

    IT managers (rewards and recognition)

    Materials

    TBD

    The effectiveness of each knowledge transfer tactic varies based on the type of knowledge you are trying to transfer

    This table shows the relative strengths and weaknesses of each knowledge transfer tactic compared to four different knowledge types.

    Not all techniques are effective for types of knowledge; it is important to use a healthy mixture of techniques to optimize effectiveness.

    Very strong = Very effective

    Strong = Effective

    Medium = Somewhat effective

    Weak = Minimally effective

    Very weak = Not effective

    Knowledge Type

    Tactic

    Explicit

    Tacit

    Information

    Process

    Skills

    Expertise

    Interviews

    Very strong

    Strong

    Strong

    Strong

    Process mapping

    Medium

    Very strong

    Very weak

    Very weak

    Use cases

    Medium

    Very strong

    Very weak

    Very weak

    Job shadow

    Very weak

    Medium

    Very strong

    Very strong

    Peer assist

    Strong

    Medium

    Very strong

    Very strong

    Action review

    Medium

    Medium

    Strong

    Weak

    Mentoring

    Weak

    Weak

    Strong

    Very strong

    Transition workshop

    Strong

    Strong

    Strong

    Strong

    Story telling

    Weak

    Weak

    Strong

    Very strong

    Job share

    Weak

    Weak

    Very strong

    Very strong

    Communities of practice

    Strong

    Weak

    Very strong

    Very strong

    Consider your stakeholders’ level of engagement prior to selecting a knowledge transfer tactic

    Level of Engagement

    Tactic

    Disengaged/ Indifferent

    Almost Engaged - Engaged

    Interviews

    Yes

    Yes

    Process mapping

    Yes

    Yes

    Use cases

    Yes

    Yes

    Job shadow

    No

    Yes

    Peer assist

    Yes

    Yes

    Action review

    Yes

    Yes

    Mentoring

    No

    Yes

    Transition workshop

    Yes

    Yes

    Story telling

    No

    Yes

    Job share

    Maybe

    Yes

    Communities of practice

    Maybe

    Yes

    When considering which tactics to employ, it’s important to consider the knowledge holder’s level of engagement. Employees whom you would identify as being disengaged may not make good candidates for job shadowing, mentoring, or other tactics where they are required to do additional work or are asked to influence others.

    Knowledge transfer can be controversial for all employees as it can cause feelings of job insecurity. It’s essential that motivations for knowledge transfer are communicated effectively.

    Pay particular attention to your communication style with disengaged and indifferent employees, communicate frequently, and tie communication back to what’s in it for them.

    Putting disengaged employees in a position where they are mentoring others can be a risk. Their negativity could influence others not to participate as well or negate the work you’re doing to create a positive knowledge sharing culture.

    Consider using collaboration tools as a medium for knowledge transfer

    There is a wide variety of different collaboration tools available to enable interpersonal and team connections for work-related purposes. Familiarize yourself with all types of collaboration tools to understand what is available to help facilitate knowledge transfer.

    Collaboration Tools

    Content Management

    Real Time Communication

    Community Collaboration

    Social Collaboration

    Tools for collaborating around documents. They store content and allow for easy sharing and editing, e.g. content repositories and version control.

    Can be used for:

    • Action review
    • Process maps and use cases
    • Storing interview notes
    • Stories: blogs, video, and case studies

    Tools that enable real-time employee interactions. They permit “on-demand” workplace communication, e.g. IM, video and web conferencing.

    Can be used for:

    • Action review
    • Interviews
    • Mentoring
    • Peer assist
    • Story telling
    • Transition workshops

    Tools that allow teams and communities to come together and share ideas or collaborate on projects, e.g. team portals, discussion boards, and ideation tools.

    Can be used for:

    • Action review
    • Communities of practice
    • Peer assist
    • Story Telling

    Social tools borrow concepts from consumer social media and apply them to the employee-centric context, e.g. employee profiles, activity streams, and microblogging.

    Can be used for:

    • Peer assist
    • Story telling
    • Communities of practice

    For more information on Collaboration Tools and how to use them, see Info-Tech’s Establish a Communication and Collaboration System Strategy.

    Identify potential knowledge receivers

    Hold a meeting with your IT leaders to identify who would be the best knowledge receivers for specific knowledge assets

    • Before deciding on a successor, determine how the knowledge asset will be used in the future. This will impact who the receiver will be and your tactic. That is, if you are looking to upgrade a technology in the future, consider who would be taking on that project and what they would need to know.
    • Prior to the meeting, each manager should send a copy of the knowledge assets they have identified to the other managers.
    • Participants should come equipped with names of members of their teams and have an idea of what their career aspirations are.
    • Don’t assume that all employees want a career change. Be sure to have conversations with employees to determine their career aspirations.

    Ask how effectively the potential knowledge receiver would serve in the role today.

    • Review their competencies in terms of:
      • Relationship-building skills
      • Business skills
      • Technical skills
      • Industry-specific skills or knowledge
    • Consider what competencies the knowledge receiver currently has and what must be learned.
    • Finally, determine how difficult it will be for the knowledge receiver to acquire missing skills or knowledge, whether the resources are available to provide the required development, and how long it will take to provide it.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Wherever possible, ask employees about their personal learning styles. It’s likely that a collaborative compromise will have to be struck for knowledge transfer to work well.

    Using the IT knowledge transfer plan tool

    The image contains a screenshot of the IT Knowledge Transfer tool.

    We will use the IT Knowledge Transfer Plans as the foundation for building your knowledge transfer roadmap.

    2.1.3 Complete Knowledge Transfer Plans

    Complete one plan template for each of the knowledge sources

    1. Fill in the top with the knowledge source’s name. Remember that one template should be filled out for each source.
    2. List their key knowledge activities as identified through the interview.
    3. For each knowledge activity, identify and list the most appropriate recipient of this knowledge.
    4. For each knowledge activity, use the drop-down options to identify the type of knowledge that it falls under.
    5. Depending on the type of knowledge, different tactic drop-down options are available. Select which tactic would be most appropriate for this knowledge as well as the people involved in the knowledge transfer.

    The Strength Level column will indicate how well matched the tactic is to the type of knowledge.

    Input Output
    • Results of knowledge source interviews
    • A completed knowledge transfer plan for each identified knowledge source.
    Materials Participants
    • A completed knowledge transfer plan for each identified knowledge source.
    • IT leadership team

    IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template

    Step 2.2

    Build Your Knowledge Transfer Roadmap

    Activities

    2.2.1 Merge Your Knowledge Transfer Plans

    2.2.2 Define Knowledge Transfer Initiatives’ Timeframes

    The goal of this step is to build the logistics of the knowledge transfer roadmap to prepare to communicate it to key stakeholders.

    Outcomes of this step

    • Prioritized sequence based on target state maturity goals.
    • Project roadmap.

    Plan and monitor the knowledge transfer project

    Depending on the desired state of maturity, the number of initiatives your organization has will vary and there could be a lengthy number of tasks and subtasks required to reach your organization knowledge transfer target state. The best way to plan, organize, and manage all of them is with a project roadmap.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Project Planning and Monitoring tool.

    Project Planning & Monitoring Tool

    Steps to use the project planning and monitoring tool:

    1. Begin by identifying all the project deliverables in scope for your organization. Review the previous content pertaining to specific people, process, and technology deliverables that your organization plans on creating.
    2. Identify all the tasks and subtasks necessary to create each deliverable.
    3. Arrange the tasks in the appropriate sequential order.
    4. Assign each task to a member of the project team.
    5. Estimate the day the task will be started and completed.
    6. Specify any significant dependencies or prerequisites between tasks.
    7. Update the project roadmap throughout the project by accounting for injections and entering the actual starting and ending dates.
    8. Use the project dashboard to monitor the project progress and identify risks early.

    Project Planning & Monitoring Tool

    Prioritize your tactics to build a realistic roadmap

    Initiatives should not and cannot be tackled all at once;

    • At this stage, each of the identified stakeholders should have a knowledge transfer plan for each of their reports with rough estimates for how long initiatives will take.
    • Simply looking at this raw list of transition plans can be daunting. Logically bundle the identified needs into IT initiatives to create the optimal IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap.
    • It’s important not to try to do too much too quickly. Focus on some quick wins and leverage the success of these initiatives to drive the project forward.

    The image contains a screenshot of the prioritize tactics step.

    Populate the task column of the Project Planning and Monitoring Tool. See the following slides for more details on how to do this.

    Some techniques require a higher degree of effort than others

    Effort by Stakeholder

    Tactic

    Business Analyst

    IT Manager

    Knowledge Holder

    Knowledge Receiver

    Interviews

    Medium

    N/A

    Low

    Low

    These tactics require the least amount of effort, especially for organizations that are already using these tactics for a traditional requirements gathering process.

    Process Mapping

    Medium

    N/A

    Low

    Low

    Use Cases

    Medium

    N/A

    Low

    Low

    Job Shadow

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    These tactics generally require more involvement from IT management and the BA in tandem for preparation. They will also require ongoing effort for all stakeholders. Stakeholder buy-in is key for success.

    Peer Assist

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    Action Review

    Low

    Medium

    Medium

    Low

    Mentoring

    Medium

    High

    High

    Medium

    Transition Workshop

    Medium

    Low

    Medium

    Low

    Story Telling

    Medium

    Medium

    Low

    Low

    Job Share

    Medium

    High

    Medium

    Medium

    Communities of Practice

    High

    Medium

    Medium

    Medium

    Consider each tactic’s dependencies as you build your roadmap

    Implementation Dependencies

    Tactic

    Training

    Technology Support

    Process Development

    Duration

    Interviews

    Minimal

    N/A

    Minimal

    Annual

    Start your knowledge transfer project here to get quick wins for explicit knowledge.

    Process Mapping

    Minimal

    N/A

    Minimal

    Annual

    Use Cases

    Minimal

    N/A

    Minimal

    Annual

    Job Shadow

    Required

    N/A

    Required

    Ongoing

    Don’t change too much too quickly or try to introduce all of the tactics at once. Focus on 1-2 key tactics and spend a significant amount of time upfront building an effective process and rolling it out. Leverage the effectiveness of the initial tactics to push these initiatives forward.

    Peer Assist

    Minimal

    N/A

    Required

    Ongoing

    Action Review

    Minimal

    Minimal

    Some

    Ongoing

    Mentoring

    Required

    N/A

    Required

    Ongoing

    Transition Workshop

    Required

    Some

    Some

    Ongoing

    Story Telling

    Some

    Required

    Required

    Ongoing

    Job Share

    Some

    Minimal

    Required

    Ongoing

    Communities of Practice

    Required

    Required

    Required

    Ongoing

    2.2.1 Merge Your Knowledge Transfer Plans

    Populate the task column of the Project Planning and Monitoring Tool

    1. Take an inventory of all the tactics and techniques which you plan to employ. Eliminate redundancies where possible.
    2. Start your implementation with your highest risk group using explicit knowledge transfer tactics. Interviews, use cases, and process mapping will give you some quick wins and will help gain momentum for the project.
    3. Proactive and knowledge culture should then move forward to other tactics, the majority of which will require training and process design. Pick one to two other key tactics you would like to employ and build those out.
    4. Once you get more advanced, you can continue to grow the number of tactics you employ, but in the beginning, less is more. Keep growing your implementation roadmap one tactic at a time and track key metrics as you go.
    InputOutput
    • A list of project tasks to be completed.
    MaterialsParticipants
    • Project Planning Monitoring Tool.
    • IT Leadership Team

    Project Planning & Monitoring Tool

    2.2.2 Define Initiatives’ Timeframes

    Populate the estimated start and completion date and task owner columns of the Project Planning and Monitoring Tool.

    1. Define the time frame: time frames will depend on several factors. Consider the following while defining timelines for your knowledge transfer tactics:
    • Tactics you choose to employ
    • Availability of resources to implement the initiative
    • Technology requirements
  • Input the Start Date and End Date for each initiative via the drop-down. (Year 1-M1 = year 1, month 1 of implementation.)
  • Define the status of initiative:
    • Planned
    • In progress
    • Completed
  • The initiative owner will ensure each step of the rollout is executed as planned, and will:
    • Engage all required stakeholders at appropriate stages of the project.
    • Engage all required resources to implement the process and make sure that communication channels are open and available between all relevant parties.
    Input Output
    • Timeframes for all project tasks.
    Materials Participants
    • Project Planning and Monitoring Tool.
    • IT Leadership Team

    Project Planning & Monitoring Tool

    Once you start the implementation, leverage the Project Planning and Monitoring Tool for ongoing status updates

    Track your progress

    • Update your project roadmap as you complete the project and keep track of your progress by completing the “Actual Start Date” and “Actual Completion Date” as you go through your project.
    • Use the Progress Report tab in project team meetings to update stakeholders on which tasks have been completed on schedule, for an analysis of tasks to date, and project time management.
    The image contains screenshots from the Project Planning and Monitoring Tool.

    Phase #3

    Implement your knowledge transfer plans and roadmap

    Phase 1

    Phase 2

    Phase 3

    1.1 Obtain approval for project

    1.2 Identify knowledge and stakeholder risks

    2.1 Build knowledge transfer plans

    2.2 Build knowledge transfer roadmap

    3.1 Communicate your roadmap

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Preparing a key stakeholder communication presentation.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • IT Leadership
    • Other key stakeholders

    Step 3.1

    Communicate Your Knowledge Transfer Roadmap to Stakeholders

    Activities

    3.1.1 Prepare IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation

    The goal of this step is to be ready to communicate the roadmap with the project team, project sponsor, and other key stakeholders.

    Outcomes of this step

    • Key stakeholder communication deck.

    Use Info-Tech’s template to communicate with stakeholders

    Obtain approval for the IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap by customizing Info-Tech’s IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template designed to effectively convey your key messages. Tailor the template to suit your needs.

    It includes:

    • Project Context
    • Project Scope and Objectives
    • Knowledge Transfer Roadmap
    • Next Steps

    The image contains screenshots of the IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template.

    Info-Tech Insight

    The support of IT leadership is critical to the success of your roadmap roll-out. Remind them of the project benefits and impact them hard with the risks/pain points.

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template

    3.1.1 Prepare a Presentation for Your Project Team and Sponsor

    Now that you have created your knowledge transfer roadmap, the final step of the process is to get sign-off from the project sponsor to begin the planning process to roll-out your initiatives.

    Know your audience:

    1. Revisit your project charter to determine the knowledge transfer project stakeholders who will be included in your presentation audience.
    2. You want your presentation to be succinct and hard-hitting. Management’s time is tight, and they will lose interest if you drag out the delivery. Impact them hard and fast with the pains and benefits of your roadmap.
    3. The presentation should take no more than an hour. Depending on your audience, the actual presentation delivery could be quite short (12-13 slides). However, you want to ensure adequate time for Q & A.
    Input Output
    • Project charter
    • A completed presentation to communicate your knowledge transfer roadmap.
    Materials Participants
    • IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template
    • IT leadership team
    • Project sponsor
    • Project stakeholders

    IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Build an IT Succession Plan

    Train Managers to Handle Difficult Conversations

    Lead Staff Through Change

    Bibliography

    Babcock, Pamela. “Shedding Light on Knowledge Management.” HR Magazine, 1 May 2004.

    King, Rachael. "Big Tech Problem as Mainframes Outlast Workforce." Bloomberg, 3 Aug. 2010. Web.

    Krill, Paul. “IT’s Most Wanted: Mainframe Programmers.” IDG Communications, Inc. 1 December 2011.

    McLean & Company. “Mitigate the Risk of Baby Boomer Retirement with Scalable Succession Planning.” 7 March 2016.

    McLean & Company. “Make the Case For Employee Engagement.” McLean and Company. 27 March 2014.

    PwC. “15th Annual Global CEO Survey: Delivering Results Growth and Value in a Volatile World.” PwC, 2012.

    Rocket Software, Inc. “Rocket Software 2022 Survey Report: The State of the Mainframe.” Rocket Software, Inc. January 2022. Accessed 30 April 2022.

    Ross, Jenna. “Intangible Assets: A Hidden but Crucial Driver of Company Value.” Visual Capitalist, 11 February 2020. Accessed 2 May 2022.

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

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    • Parent Category Name: Project Management Office
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    • As an IT leader, you oversee a project environment in which the organizational demand for new products, services, and enhancements far outweighs IT’s resource capacity to adequately deliver on everything.
    • As a result, project throughput suffers. IT starts a lot of projects, but has constant difficulties delivering the bulk of them on time, on budget, in scope, and of high quality. What’s more, many of the projects that consume IT’s time are of questionable value to the business.
    • You need a project portfolio management (PPM) strategy to help bring order to IT’s project activity. With the right PPM strategy, you can ensure that you’re driving the throughput of the best projects and maximizing stakeholder satisfaction with IT.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • IT leaders commonly conflate PPM and project management, falsely believing that they already have a PPM strategy via their project management playbook. While the tactical focus of project management can help ensure that individual projects are effectively planned, executed, and closed, it is no supplement for the insight into “the big picture” that a PPM strategy can provide.
    • Many organizations falter at PPM by mistaking a set of processes for a strategy. While processes are no doubt important, without an end in mind – such as that provided by a deliberate strategy – they inevitably devolve into inertia or confusion.
    • Executive layer buy-in is a critical prerequisite for the success of a PPM strategy. Without it, any efforts to reconcile supply and demand, and improve the strategic value of IT’s project activity, could be quashed by irresponsible, non-compliant stakeholders.

    Impact and Result

    • Manage the portfolio as more than just the sum of its parts. Create a coherent strategy to maximize the sum of values that projects deliver as a whole – as a project portfolio, rather than a collection of individual projects.
    • Get to value early. Info-Tech’s methodology tackles one of PPM’s most pressing challenges upfront by helping you to articulate a strategy and get executive buy-in for it before you define your process goals. When senior management understands why a PPM strategy is necessary and of value to them, the path to implementation is much more stable.
    • Create PPM processes you can sustain. Translate your PPM strategy into specific, tangible near-term and long-term goals, which are realized through a suite of project portfolio management processes tailored to your organization and its culture.

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop a project portfolio management strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Executive Brief
    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phases 1-3

    1. Get executive buy-in for your PPM strategy

    Choose the right PPM strategy for your organization and get executive buy-in before you start to set PPM process goals.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 1: Get Executive Buy-In for Your PPM Strategy
    • PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template
    • PPM Strategy-Process Goals Translation Matrix Template

    2. Align PPM processes to your strategic goals

    Use the advice and tools in this phase to align the PPM processes that make up the infrastructure around projects with your new PPM strategy.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 2: Align PPM Processes to Your Strategic Goals
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool

    3. Complete your PPM strategic plan

    Refine your PPM strategic plan with inputs from the previous phases by adding a cost-benefit analysis and PPM tool recommendation.

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy – Phase 3: Complete Your PPM Strategic Plan
    • Project Portfolio Analyst / PMO Analyst
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Get Executive Buy-In for Your PPM Strategy

    The Purpose

    Choose the right PPM strategy for your organization and ensure executive buy-in.

    Set process goals to address PPM strategic expectations and steer the PPM strategic plan.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A right-sized PPM strategy complete with executive buy-in for it.

    A prioritized list of PPM process goals.

    Activities

    1.1 Assess leadership mandate.

    1.2 Determine potential resource capacity.

    1.3 Create a project inventory.

    1.4 Prepare to communicate your PPM strategy to key stakeholders.

    1.5 Translate each strategic goal into process goals.

    1.6 Set metrics and preliminary targets for PPM process goals.

    Outputs

    Choice of PPM strategy and the leadership mandate

    Analysis of current project capacity

    Analysis of current project demand

    PPM Strategic Plan – Executive Brief

    PPM strategy-aligned process goals

    Metrics and long-term targets for PPM process goals

    2 Align PPM Processes to Your Strategic Goals

    The Purpose

    Examine your current-state PPM processes and create a high-level description of the target-state process for each of the five PPM processes within Info-Tech’s PPM framework.

    Build a sound business case for implementing the new PPM strategy by documenting roles and responsibilities for key PPM activities as well as the time costs associated with them.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Near-term and long-term goals as well as an organizationally specific wireframe for your PPM processes.

    Time cost assumptions for your proposed processes to ensure sustainability.

    Activities

    2.1 Develop and refine the project intake, prioritization, and approval process.

    2.2 Develop and refine the resource management process.

    2.3 Develop and refine the portfolio reporting process.

    2.4 Develop and refine the project closure process

    2.5 Develop and refine the benefits realization process.

    Outputs

    Process capability level

    Current-state PPM process description

    Retrospective examination of the current-state PPM process

    Action items to achieve the target states

    Time cost of the process at current and target states

    3 Complete Your PPM Strategic Plan

    The Purpose

    Perform a PPM tool analysis in order to determine the right tool to support your processes.

    Estimate the total cost-in-use of managing the project portfolio, as well as the estimated benefits of an optimized PPM strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A right-sized tool selection to help support your PPM strategy.

    A PPM strategy cost-benefit analysis.

    Activities

    3.1 Right-size the PPM tools for your processes.

    3.2 Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of implementing the new PPM strategy.

    3.3 Define roles and responsibilities for the new processes.

    3.4 Refine and consolidate the near-term action items into a cohesive plan.

    Outputs

    Recommendation for a PPM tool

    Cost-benefit analysis

    Roles and responsibilities matrix for each PPM process

    An implementation timeline for your PPM strategy

    Further reading

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

    Drive IT project throughput by throttling resource capacity.

    Analyst Perspective

    “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzŭ

    "Organizations typically come to project portfolio management (PPM) with at least one of two misconceptions: (1) that PPM is synonymous with project management and (2) that a collection of PPM processes constitutes a PPM strategy.

    Both foundations are faulty: project management and PPM are separate disciplines with distinct goals and processes, and a set of processes do not comprise a strategy – they should flow from a strategy, not precede one. When built upon these foundations, the benefits of PPM go unrealized, as the means (i.e. project and portfolio processes) commonly eclipse the ends of a PPM strategy – e.g. a portfolio better aligned with business goals, improved project throughput, increased stakeholder satisfaction, and so on.

    Start with the end in mind: articulate a PPM strategy that is truly project portfolio in nature, i.e. focused on the whole portfolio and not just the individual parts. Then, let your PPM strategy guide your process goals and help to drive successful outcomes, project after project." (Barry Cousins, Senior Director of Research, PMO Practice, Info-Tech Research Group)

    Our understanding of the problem

    This Research Is Designed For:

    • CIOs who want to maximize IT’s fulfillment of both business strategic goals and operational needs.
    • CIOs who want to better manage the business and project sponsors’ expectations and satisfaction.
    • CIOs, PMO directors, and portfolio managers who want a strategy to set the best projects for the highest chance of success.

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Get C-level buy-in on a strategy for managing the project portfolio and clarify their expectations on how it should be managed.
    • Draft strategy-aligned, high-level project portfolio management process description.
    • Put together a strategic plan for improving PPM processes to reclaim wasted project capacity and increase business satisfaction of IT.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • Steering committee and C-suite management who want to maximize IT’s value to business.
    • Project sponsors who seek clarity and fairness on pushing their projects through a myriad of priorities and objectives.
    • CIOs, PMO directors, and portfolio managers who want to enable data-driven decisions from the portfolio owners.

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Optimize IT’s added value to the business through project delivery.
    • Provide clarity on how IT’s project portfolio should be managed and the expectations for its management.
    • Improve project portfolio visibility by making trustworthy project portfolio data available, with which to steer the portfolio.

    Executive Summary

    Situation

    • As CIO, there are too many projects and not enough resource capacity to deliver projects on time, on budget, and in scope with high quality.
    • Prioritizing projects against one another is difficult in the face of conflicting priorities and agenda; therefore, projects with dubious value/benefits consume resource capacity.

    Complication

    • Not all IT projects carry a direct value to business; IT is accountable for keeping the lights on and it consumes a significant amount of resources.
    • Business and project sponsors approve projects without considering the scarcity of resource capacity and are frustrated when the projects fail to deliver or linger in the backlog.

    Resolution

    • Create a coherent strategy to maximize the total value that projects deliver as a whole portfolio, rather than a collection of individual projects.
    • Ensure that the steering committee or senior executive layer buys into the strategy by helping them understand why the said strategy is necessary, and more importantly, why the strategy is valuable to them.
    • Translate the strategic expectations to specific, tangible goals, which are realized through a suite of project portfolio management processes tailored to your organization and its culture.
    • Putting into place people, processes, and tools that are sustainable and manageable, plus a communication strategy to maintain the stakeholder buy-in.

    Info-Tech Insight

    1. Time is money; therefore, the portfolio manager is an accountant of time. It is the portfolio manager’s responsibility to provide the project portfolio owners with reliable data and close the loop on portfolio decisions.
    2. Business satisfaction is driven by delivering projects that align to and maximize business value. Use Info-Tech’s method for developing a PPM strategy and synchronize its definition of “best projects” with yours.

    Projects that deliver on strategic goals of the business is the #1 driver of business satisfaction for IT

    Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision Survey (N=21,367) has identified a direct correlation between IT project success and overall business satisfaction with IT.

    Comparative rankings of IT services in two columns 'Reported Importance' and 'Actual Importance' with arrows showing where each service moved to in the 'Actual Importance' ranking. The highlighted move is 'Projects' from number 10 in 'Reported' to number 1 in 'Actual'. 'Reported' rankings from 1 to 12 are 'Network Infrastructure', 'Service Desk', 'Business Applications', 'Data Quality', Devices', 'Analytical Capability', 'Client-Facing Technology', 'Work Orders', 'Innovation Leadership', 'Projects', 'IT Policies', and 'Requirements Gathering'. 'Actual' rankings from 1 to 12 are 'Projects', 'Work Orders', 'Innovation Leadership', 'Business Applications', 'Requirements Gathering', 'Service Desk', 'Client-Facing Technology', 'Network Infrastructure', 'Analytical Capability', 'Data Quality', 'IT Policies', and 'Devices'.

    Reported Importance: Initially, when CIOs were asked to rank the importance of IT services, respondents ranked “projects” low on the list – 10 out of a possible 12.

    Actual Importance: Despite this low “reported importance,” of those organizations that were “satisfied” to “fully satisfied” with IT, the service that had the strongest correlation to high business satisfaction was “projects,” i.e. IT’s ability to help plan, support, and execute projects and initiatives that help the business achieve its strategic goals.

    On average, executives perceive IT as being poorly aligned with business strategy

    Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision Survey data highlights the importance of IT projects in supporting the business achieve its strategic goals. However, Info-Tech’s CEO-CIO Alignment Survey (N=124) data indicates that CEOs perceive IT to be poorly aligned to business’ strategic goals:

    • 43% of CEOs believe that business goals are going unsupported by IT.
    • 60% of CEOs believe that improvement is required around IT’s understanding of business goals.
    • 80% of CIOs/CEOs are misaligned on the target role for IT.
    • 30% of business stakeholders* are supporters of their IT departments.
    • (Source: Info-Tech CIO/CEO Alignment Diagnostics, * N=32,536)

    Efforts to deliver on projects are largely hampered by causes of project failure outside a project manager’s control

    The most recent data from the Project Management Institute (PMI) shows that more projects are meeting their original goals and business intent and less projects are being deemed failures. However, at the same time, more projects are experiencing scope creep. Scope creeps result in schedule and cost overrun, which result in dissatisfied project sponsors, stakeholders, and project workers.

    Graph of data from Project Management Institute comparing projects from 2015 to 2017 that 'Met original goals/business intent', 'Experienced scope creep', and were 'Deemed failures'. Projects from the first two categories went up in 2017, while projects that were deemed failures went down.

    Meanwhile, the primary causes of project failures remain largely unchanged. Interestingly, most of these primary causes can be traced to sources outside of a project manager’s control, either entirely or in part. As a result, project management tactics and processes are limited in adequately addressing them.

    Relative rank

    Primary cause of project failure

    2015

    2016

    2017

    Trend

    Change in organization's priorities 1st 1st 1st Stable
    Inaccurate requirements gathering 2nd 3rd 2nd Stable
    Change in project objectives 3rd 2nd 3rd Stable
    Inadequate vision/goal for project 6th 5th 4th Rising
    Inadequate/poor communication 5th 7th 5th Stable
    Poor change management 11th 9th 6th Rising
    (Source: Project Management Institute, Pulse of the Profession, 2015-2017)

    Project portfolio management (PPM) can improve business alignment of projects and reduce chance of project failure

    PPM is about “doing the right things.”

    The PMI describes PPM as:

    Interrelated organizational processes by which an organization evaluates, selects, prioritizes, and allocates its limited internal resources to best accomplish organizational strategies consistent with its vision, mission, and values. (PMI, Standard for Portfolio Management, 3rd ed.)

    Selecting and prioritizing projects with the strongest alignment to business strategy goals and ensuring that resources are properly allocated to deliver them, enable IT to:

    1. Improve business satisfaction and their perception of IT’s alignment with the business.
    2. Better engage the business and the project customers.
    3. Minimize the risk of project failure due to changing organizational/ project vision, goals, and objectives.

    "In today’s competitive business environment, a portfolio management process improves the linkage between corporate strategy and the selection of the ‘right’ projects for investment. It also provides focus, helping to ensure the most efficient and effective use of available resources." (Lou Pack, PMP, Senior VP, ICF International (PMI, 2015))

    PPM is a common area of shortcomings for IT, with much room for improvement

    Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Survey (N=879) shows that PPM tends to be regarded as neither an effective nor an important process amongst IT organizations.

    Two deviation from median charts highlighting Portfolio Management's ranking compared to other IT processes in 'Effectiveness scores' and 'Importance scores'. PPM ranks 37th out of 45 in Effectiveness and 33rd out of 45 in Importance.

    55% ... of IT organizations believe that their PPM processes are neither effective nor important.

    21% ... of IT organizations reported having no one responsible or accountable for PPM.

    62% ... of projects in organizations effective in PPM met/exceeded the expected ROI (PMI, 2015).

    In addition to PPM’s benefits, improving PPM processes presents an opportunity for getting ahead of the curve in the industry.

    Info-Tech’s methodology for developing a PPM strategy delivers extraordinary value, fast

    Our methodology is designed to tackle your hardest challenge first to deliver the highest-value part of the deliverable. For developing a PPM strategy, the biggest challenge is to get the buy-in of the executive layer.

    "Without senior management participation, PPM doesn’t work, and the organization is likely to end up with, or return to, a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease mindset for all those involved." (Mark Price Perry, Business Driven Project Portfolio Management)

    In the first step of the blueprint, you will be guided through the following steps:

    1. Choose the right PPM strategy: driven by the executives, supported by management.
    2. Objectively assess your current project portfolio with minimal effort to build a case for the PPM strategy.
    3. Engage the executive layer to get the critical prerequisite of a PPM strategy: their buy-in.

    A PPM strategic plan is the end deliverable of this blueprint. In the first step, download the pre-filled template with content that represents the most common case. Then, throughout the blueprint, customize with your data.

    Use this blueprint to develop, or refine, a PPM strategy that works for your organization

    Get buy-in for PPM strategy from decision makers.

    Buy-in from the owners of project portfolio (Steering Committee, C-suite management, etc.) is a critical prerequisite for any PPM strategy. This blueprint will give you the tools and templates to help you make your case and win the buy-in of portfolio owners.

    Connect strategic expectations to PPM process goals.

    This blueprint offers a methodology to translate the broad aim of PPM to practical, tactical goals of the five core PPM processes, as well as how to measure the results. Our methodology is supported with industry-leading frameworks, best practices, and our insider research.

    Develop your PPM processes.

    This blueprint takes you through a series of steps to translate the process goals into a high-level process description, as well as a business case and a roadmap for implementing the new PPM processes.

    Refine your PPM processes.

    Our methodology is also equally as applicable for making your existing PPM processes better, and help you draft a roadmap for improvement with well-defined goals, roles, and responsibilities.

    Info-Tech’s PPM model consists of five core processes

    There are five core processes in Info-Tech’s thought model for PPM.

    Info-Tech's Process Model detailing the steps and their importance in project portfolio management. Step 3: 'Status and Progress Reporting' sits above the others as a process of importance throughout the model. In the 'Intake' phase of the model are Step 1: 'Intake, Approval, and Prioritization' and Step 2: 'Resource Management'. In the 'Execution' phase is 'Project Management', the main highlighted section, and a part of Step 3, the overarching 'Status and Progress Reporting'. In the 'Closure' phase of the model are Step 4: 'Project Closure' and Step 5: 'Benefits Tracking'.

    These processes create an infrastructure around projects, which aims to enable:

    1. Initiation of the “best” projects with the right resources and project information.
    2. Timely and trustworthy reporting to facilitate the flow of information for better decision making.
    3. Proper closure of projects, releasing resources, and managing benefits realization.

    PPM has many moving pieces. To ensure that all of these processes work in harmony, you need a PPM strategy.

    De-couple project management from PPM to break down complexity and create flexibility

    Tailor project management (PM) processes to fit your projects.

    Info-Tech’s PPM thought model enables you to manage your project portfolio independent of your PM methodology or capability. Projects interact with PPM via:

    • A project charter that authorizes the use of resources and defines project benefits.
    • Status reports that feed up-to-date, trustworthy data to your project portfolio.
    • Acceptance of deliverables that enable proper project closure and benefits reporting.

    Info-Tech’s PPM strategy is applicable whether you use Agile, waterfall, or anything in between for PM.

    The process model from the previous page but with project management processes overlaid. The 'Intake' phase is covered by 'Project Charter'. The 'Execution' phase, or 'Project Management' is covered by 'Status report'. The 'Closure' phase is covered by 'Deliverable Acceptance'.

    Learn about project management approach for small projects in Info-Tech’s Tailor PM Processes to Fit Your Projects blueprint.

    Sample of the Info-Tech blueprint 'Tailor PM Processes to Fit Your Projects'.

    Info-Tech’s approach to PPM is informed by industry best practices and rooted in practical insider research

    Info-Tech uses PMI and ISACA frameworks for areas of this research.

    Logo for 'Project Management Institute (PMI)'.' Logo for 'COBIT 5 an ISACA Framework'.
    PMI’s Standard for Portfolio Management, 3rd ed. is the leading industry framework, proving project portfolio management best practices and process guidelines. COBIT 5 is the leading framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT.

    In addition to industry-leading frameworks, our best-practice approach is enhanced by the insights and guidance from our analysts, industry experts, and our clients.

    Logo for 'Info-Tech Research Group'.

    33,000+ Our peer network of over 33,000 happy clients proves the effectiveness of our research.

    1000+ Our team conducts 1,000+ hours of primary and secondary research to ensure that our approach is enhanced by best practices.

    Re-position IT as the “facilitator of business projects” for PPM success

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Construction
    Source: Info-Tech Client

    Chaos in the project portfolio

    At first, there were no less than 14 teams of developers, each with their own methodologies and processes. Changes to projects were not managed. Only 35% of the projects were completed on time.

    Business drives, IT facilitates

    Anyone had the right to ask for something; however, converting ideas to a formal project demand required senior leadership within a business division getting on board with the idea.

    The CIO and senior leadership decided that projects, previously assigned to IT, were to be owned and driven by the business, as the projects are undertaken to serve its needs and rarely IT’s own. The rest of the organization understood that the business, not IT, was accountable for prioritizing project work: IT was re-positioned as a facilitator of business projects. While it was a long process, the result speaks for itself: 75% of projects were now being completed on time.

    Balancing the target mix of the project portfolio

    What about maintaining and feeding the IT infrastructure? The CIO reserved 40% of IT project capacity for “keeping the lights on,” and 20% for reactive, unplanned activities, with an aim to lower this percentage. With the rest of the time, IT facilitated business projects

    Three key drivers of project priority

    1. Does the project meet the overall company goals and objectives?
      “If they don't, we must ask why we are bothering with it.”
    2. Does the project address a regulatory or compliance need?
      “Half of our business is heavily regulated. We must focus on it.”
    3. Are there significant savings to be had?
      “Not soft; hard savings. Can we demonstrate that, after implementing this, can we see good hard results? And, can we measure it?”

    "Projects are dumped on IT, and the business abdicates responsibility. Flip that over, and say ‘that's your project’ and ‘how can we help you?’"

    Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research

    Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.

    A small monochrome icon of a wrench and screwdriver creating an X.

    This icon denotes a slide where a supporting Info-Tech tool or template will help you perform the activity or step associated with the slide. Refer to the supporting tool or template to get the best results and proceed to the next step of the project.

    A small monochrome icon depicting a person in front of a blank slide.

    This icon denotes a slide with an associated activity. The activity can be performed either as part of your project or with the support of Info-Tech team members, who will come onsite to facilitate a workshop for your organization.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Develop a PPM strategy – project overview

    1. Get executive buy-in for your PPM strategy

    2. Align PPM processes to your strategic goals

    3. Complete your PPM strategic plan

    Supporting Tool icon

    Best-Practice Toolkit

    1.1 Choose the right PPM strategy for your organization

    1.2 Translate PPM strategy expectations to specific process goals

    2.1 Develop and refine project intake, prioritization, and resource management processes

    2.2 Develop and refine portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization processes

    3.1 Select a right-sized PPM solution for supporting your new processes

    3.2 Finalize customizing your PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Guided Implementations

    • Scoping call: discuss current state of PPM and review strategy options.
    • How to wireframe realistic process goals, rooted in your PPM strategic expectations, that will be sustained by the organization.
    • Examine your current-state PPM process and create a high-level description of the target-state process for each of the five PPM processes (1-2 calls per each process).
    • Assess your PPM tool requirements to help support your processes.
    • Determine the costs and potential benefits of your PPM practice.
    Associated Activity icon

    Onsite Workshop

    Module 1:
    Set strategic expectations and realistic goals for the PPM strategy
    Module 2:
    Develop and refine strategy-aligned PPM processes
    Module 3:
    Compose your PPM strategic plan
    Phase 1 Outcome:
    • Analysis of the current state of PPM
    • Strategy-aligned goals and metrics for PPM processes
    Phase 2 Outcome:
    • PPM capability levels
    • High-level descriptions of near- and long-term target state
    Phase 3 Outcome:
    • PPM tool recommendations
    • Cost-benefit analysis
    • Customized PPM strategic plan

    Workshop overview

    Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Workshop Day 1

    Workshop Day 2

    Workshop Day 3

    Workshop Day 4

    Workshop Day 5

    Get leadership buy-in for PPM strategy Set PPM process goals and metrics with strategic expectations Develop and Refine PPM processes Develop and Refine PPM processes Complete the PPM strategic plan

    Activities

    • 1.1 Assess leadership mandate.
    • 1.2 Determine potential resource capacity.
    • 1.3 Create a project inventory.
    • 1.4 Communicate your PPM strategy to key stakeholders.
    • 2.1 Translate each strategic goal into process goals.
    • 2.2 Set metrics and preliminary targets for PPM process goals.
    • 3.1 Develop and refine the project intake, prioritization, and approval process.
    • 3.2 Develop and refine the resource management process.
    • 4.1 Develop and refine the portfolio reporting process.
    • 4.2 Develop and refine the project closure process.
    • 4.3 Develop and refine the benefits realization process.
    • 5.1 Right-size the PPM tools for your processes.
    • 5.2 Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of implementing the new PPM strategy.
    • 5.3 Define roles and responsibilities for the new processes.

    Deliverables

    1. Choice of PPM strategy and the leadership mandate
    2. Analysis of current project capacity
    3. Analysis of current project demand
    4. PPM Strategic Plan – Executive Brief
    1. PPM strategy-aligned process goals
    2. Metrics and long-term targets for PPM process goals
      For each of the five PPM processes:
    1. Process capability level
    2. Current-state PPM process description
    3. Retrospective examination of the current-state PPM process
    4. Action items to achieve the target states
    5. Time cost of the process at current and target states
    1. Recommendation for a PPM tool
    2. Cost-benefit analysis
    3. Roles and responsibilities matrix for each PPM process

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

    PHASE 1

    Get Executive Buy-In for Your PPM Strategy

    Phase 1 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 1: Get executive buy-in for your PPM strategy

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 1.1: Choose the right PPM strategy Step 1.2: Translate strategic expectations to process goals
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Scoping call to discuss the current state of PPM and review strategy options.
    Work with an analyst to:
    • Discuss how to wireframe realistic process goals, rooted in your PPM strategic expectations, that will be sustained by the organization.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Execute a leadership mandate survey.
    • Perform a high-level supply/demand analysis.
    • Prepare an executive presentation to get strategy buy-in.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Develop realistic process goals based in your PPM strategic expectations.
    • Set metrics and preliminary targets for your high-priority PPM process goals.
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix

    Phase 1 Results & Insights

    • Executive layer buy-in is a critical prerequisite for the success of a top-down PPM strategy. Ensure your executives are onboard before proceeding to implement your PPM strategy.

    Prepare to get to value early with step 1.1 of this blueprint

    The first step of this blueprint will help you define your PPM strategy and get executive buy-in for it using section one of Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Where traditional models of consulting can take considerable amounts of time before delivering value to clients, Info-Tech’s methodology for developing a PPM strategy gets you to value fast.

    In the first step of this blueprint, you will define your PPM strategy and prepare an executive presentation to get buy-in for the strategy. The presentation can be prepared in just a few hours.

    • The activities in step 1.1 of this blueprint will help you customize the slides in section 1 of Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    • Section one of the Template will then serve as your presentation document.

    Once you have received buy-in for your PPM strategy, the remainder of this blueprint will help you customize section 2 of the Template.

    • Section 2 of the Template will communicate:
      • Your processes and process goals.
      • Your near-term and long-term action items for implementing the strategy.
      • Your PPM tool requirements.
      • The costs and benefits of your PPM strategy.

    Download Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Sample of Info-Tech's 'PPM Strategic Plan Template.'

    Step 1.1: Choose the right PPM strategy for your organization

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2
    Choose the right PPM strategy Translate strategy into process goals Define intake & resource mgmt. processes Define reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processes Select a right-sized PPM solution Finalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Perform a leadership mandate survey.
    • Choose your PPM strategy.
    • Calculate your resource capacity for projects.
    • Determine overall organizational demand for projects.
    • Prepare an executive presentation of the PPM strategy.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • PMO Director/Portfolio Manager
    • Project Managers
    • IT Managers

    Outcomes of this step

    • A PPM strategy
    • A resource supply/project demand analysis
    • An executive brief presentation
    • Executive buy-in for the PPM strategy

    “Too many projects, not enough resources” is the reality of most IT environments

    In today’s organizations, the desires of business units for new products and enhancements, and the appetites of senior leadership to approve more and more projects for those products and services, far outstrips IT’s ability to realistically deliver on everything.

    The vast majority of IT departments lack the resourcing to meet project demand – especially given the fact that day-to-day operational demands frequently trump project work.

    As a result, project throughput suffers – and with it, IT's reputation within the organization.

    A visualization of 'Project Demand' versus 'Resource supply' utilizing courtroom scales with numerous project titles weighing down the 'Project Demand' side and silhouettes of three little people raised aloft on the 'Resource supply' side.

    In these environments, a PPM strategy is required.

    A PPM strategy should enable executive decision makers to make sense of the excess of demand and give IT the ability to prioritize those projects that are of the most strategic value to the business.

    With the right PPM strategy, IT can improve project outcomes across its portfolio and drive business value – all while improving the workloads of IT project staff.

    Info-Tech has two PPM strategy options that you can start to deploy today

    This step will help you choose the most suitable option, depending on your project pain points and current level of executive engagement in actively steering the portfolio.

    Option A:
    Top-Down, Executive Driven Strategy

    Option B:
    Bottom-Up, Project Manager Driven Strategy

    Goals of this approach:
    • This approach is intended to assist decision makers in their job: choosing the right projects, committing to timelines for those projects, and monitoring/directing their progress.
    Goals of this approach:
    • This approach is primarily intended to ensure that projects are well managed in a standardized manner in order to provide project managers with clear direction.
    Who this approach is for:
    • IT departments looking to improve alignment of project demand and resource capacity.
    • IT departments wanting to prioritize strategically valuable work.
    • IT departments with sufficient executive backing and engagement with the portfolio.
    Who this approach is for:
    • IT departments that would not the get support for a top-down approach due to a disengaged executive layer.
    • IT departments that already have a top-down PPM strategy and feel they are sufficiently resourced to confront project demand.

    Each of these strategy options is driven by a set of specific strategic expectations to help communicate your PPM goals. See the following slides for an articulation of each strategy option.

    A top-down, executive driven strategy is the optimal route, putting leadership in a position to best conduct the portfolio

    Option A: Top-Down, Executive Driven Strategy

    Strategic Expectations:

    • Project Throughput: Maximize throughput of the best projects.
    • Portfolio Visibility: Ensure visibility of current and pending projects.
    • Portfolio Responsiveness: Make the portfolio responsive to executive steering when new projects and changing priorities need rapid action.
    • Resource Utilization: Minimize resource waste and optimize the alignment of skills to assignments.
    • Benefits Realization: Clarify accountability for post-project benefits attainment for each project, and facilitate the process of tracking/reporting those benefits.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Serve the executive with insight before you impede the projects with governance. This strategy option is where Info-Tech sees the most PPM success. A strategy focused at improving decision making at the executive layer will both improve project outcomes and help alleviate project workloads.

    A bottom-up strategy can help project managers and teams succeed where insight into the big picture is lacking

    Option B: Bottom-Up, Project Manager Driven Strategy

    Strategic Expectations:

    • Project Management Governance: All projects consuming IT resources will be continually validated in terms of best-practice process compliance.
    • Project Risk Management: Identify risks and related mitigation approaches for all high-risk areas.
    • Stakeholder Management: Ensure that project stakeholders are identified and involved.
    • Project Manager Resourcing: Provide project managers as needed.
    • Project-Level Visibility: Provide access to the details of project management processes (planning and progress) as needed.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Right-size governance to maximize success. Project management and governance success don’t necessarily equal project success. Project management processes should be a means to an end (i.e. successful project outcomes), and not an end in themselves. Ensure the ends justify the means.

    Most recurring project challenges require a top-down portfolio management approach

    While project management is a key ingredient to project success, tying to solve endemic project problems with project management alone won’t improve results over the long term.

    Why Top-Down is a better starting point than Bottom-Up.

    The most common IT project problems – schedule and budget overruns, scope creep, and poor quality – can ultimately, in the vast majority of cases, be traced back to bad decisions made at the portfolio level:

    • The wrong projects get greenlighted.
    • Shifting leadership priorities and operational demands make project plans and estimated delivery dates obsolete from the start.
    • Too many projects get approved when there are not enough resources to effectively work on them all.

    No amount of project management rigor can help alleviate these common root causes of project failure.

    With a top-down PPM strategy, however, you can make sure that leadership is informed and engaged in making the right project decisions and that project managers and teams are situated for success.

    "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." (Peter Drucker (quoted in Lessing))

    Info-Tech Insight

    Get Strategic About Project Success.

    The difference between project management and project portfolio management comes down to doing things right vs. doing the right things. Both are important, no doubt; but doing the wrong things well doesn’t provide much value to the business in the long run.

    Get insight into the big picture with a top-down strategy before imposing more administrative overhead on project managers and leads.

    Perform a leadership mandate assessment to gauge executive needs and expectations

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.1 – 15 to 30 minutes (prep time) 10 to 20 minutes (execution time)

    INPUT: Leadership expectations for portfolio and project management.

    OUTPUT: Leadership mandate bar chart

    Materials: Tab 6 of Info-Tech’s PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator

    Participants: Portfolio manager (or equivalent), PPM strategy sponsor(s), CIO and other members of senior management

    Before choosing your strategy option, survey the organization’s leadership to assess what they’re expecting from the PPM strategy.

    Use the “Leadership Mandate Survey” (located on tab 6 of Info-Tech’s PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator) to assess the degree to which your leadership expects the PPM strategy to provide outcomes across the following capabilities: portfolio reporting, project governance, and project management.

    • Deploy the 12-question survey via individual one-on-one meetings or group working sessions with your boss (the PPM strategy sponsor) as well as with the CIO and other senior managers from within IT and the business.
      • If you cannot connect with the executive layer for this survey, do your best to estimate their responses to complete the survey.
    • The survey should help distinguish if executives are looking for portfolio management or project management. It should be one input that informs your choice of strategy option A or B.
      • If leadership is looking primarily for project management, you should proceed to Info-Tech’s Tailor Project Management Processes that Fit Your Projects blueprint.

    Refer to the next slide for assistance analyzing the outputs in tab 6 and using them to inform your choice of strategy.

    How to make use of the results of the leadership survey

    Two possible result scenarios of the leadership survey. There are two bar graphs titled 'Leadership Mandate', each with an explanation of the scenario they belong to. In Scenario 1, the 'Leadership Mandate' graph has a descending trend with 'Portfolio Reporting' at the highest level, 'Project Governance' in the middle, and 'Project Management' at the lowest level. 'A result like this, with a higher portfolio reporting score, shows a higher need for a top-down approach and demonstrates well-balanced expectations for a PPM strategy from the leadership. There is greater emphasis put on the portfolio than there is project governance or project management.' In Scenario 2, the 'Leadership Mandate' graph has an ascending trend with 'Portfolio Reporting' at the lowest level, 'Project Governance' in the middle, and 'Project Management' at the highest level. 'If your graph looks like this, your executive leadership has placed greater importance on project governance and management. Completing a top-down PPM strategy may not meet their expectations at this time. In this situation, a bottom-up approach may be more applicable.'

    Customize Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template. Insert screenshots of the survey and the bar graph from tab 6 of the PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator onto slides 7 and 8, “PPM Strategy Leadership Mandate,” of the PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Proceed with the right PPM strategy for your organization

    Based upon the results of the “Leadership Mandate Survey,” and your assessment of each strategy option as described in the previous slides, choose the strategy option that is right for your IT department/PMO at this time.

    "Without a strategic methodology, project portfolio planning is frustrating and has little chance of achieving exceptional business success." (G Wahl (quoted in Merkhofer))

    Option A:

    Those proceeding with Option A should continue with remainder of this blueprint. Update your strategy statement on slide 3 of your PPM Strategic Plan Template to reflect your choice

    Option B:

    Those proceeding with Option B should exit this blueprint and refer to Info-Tech’s Tailor Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects blueprint to help define a project management standard operating procedure.

    Customize Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template. If you’re proceeding with Option A, update slide 4, “Project Portfolio Management Strategy,” of your PPM Strategic Plan Template to reflect your choice of PPM strategy. If you’re proceeding with Option B, you may want to include your strategy statement in your Project Management SOP Template.

    The success of your top-down strategy will hinge on the quality of your capacity awareness and resource utilization

    A PPM strategy should facilitate alignment between project demand with resource supply. Use Info-Tech’s PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator as a step towards this alignment.

    Info-Tech’s research shows that the ability to provide a centralized view of IT’s capacity for projects is one of the top PPM capabilities that contributes to overall project success.

    Accurate and reliable forecasts into IT’s capacity, coupled with an engaged executive layer making project approval and prioritization decisions based upon that capacity data, is the hallmark of an effective top-down PPM strategy.

    • Use Info-Tech’s PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator to help improve visibility (and with it, organizational understanding) into project demand and IT resource supply.
    • The Calculator will help you determine IT’s actual capacity for projects and analyze organizational demand by taking an inventory of active and backlog projects.

    Download Info-Tech’s PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator.

    Sample of Into-Tech's PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Where does the time go? The portfolio manager (or equivalent) should function as the accounting department for time, showing what’s available in IT’s human resources budget for projects and providing ongoing visibility into how that budget of time is being spent.

    Establish the total resource capacity of your portfolio

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.2 – 30 to 60 minutes

    INPUT: Staff resource types, Average work week, Estimated allocations

    OUTPUT: Breakdown of annual portfolio HR spend, Capacity pie chart

    Materials: PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator, tab 3

    Participants: Portfolio manager (or equivalent), Resource and/or project managers

    Use tab 3 of the calculator to determine your actual HR portfolio budget for projects, relative to the organization’s non-project demands.

    • Tab 3 analyzes your resource supply asks you to consider how your staff spend their time weekly across four categories: out of office time, administrative time (e.g. meetings, training, checking email), keep-the-lights-on time (i.e. support and maintenance), and project time.
    • The screenshot below walks you through columns B to E of tab 3, which help calculate your potential capacity. This activity will continue on the next slide, where we will determine your realized capacity for project work from this potential capacity.
    Screenshot of tab 3 in the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator. It has 4 columns, 'Resource Type', '# People', 'Hours / Week', and 'Hours / Year', which are referred to in notes as columns B through E respectively. The note on 'Resource Type' reads '1. Compile a list of each of the roles within your department in column B'. The note on '# People' reads '2. In column C, provide the number of staff currently performing each role'. The note on 'Hours / Week' reads '3. In column D, provide a baseline for the number of hours in a typical work week for each role'. The note on 'Hours / Year' reads '4. Column E will auto-populate based on E and D. The total at the bottom of column E (row 26) constitutes your department’s total capacity'.

    Determine the project/non-project ratio for each role

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.2 (continued)

    The previous slide walked you through columns B to E of tab 3. This slide walks you through columns F to J, which ask you to consider how your potential capacity is spent.

    Screenshot of tab 3 in the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator. It has 6 columns, 'Hours / Year', 'Absence', 'Working Time / Year', 'Admin', 'KTLO', and 'Project Work', which, starting at 'Absence', are referred to in notes as columns F through J respectively. The note on 'Absence' reads '5. Enter the percentage of your total time across each role that is unavailable due to foreseeable out-of-office time (vacation, sick time, etc.) in column F. Industry standard runs anywhere from 12% to 16%, depending on your industry and geographical region'. The note on 'Working Time / Year' reads '6. Column G will auto-calculate to show your overall net capacity after out-of-office percentages have been taken off the top. These totals constitute your working time for the year'. The note on 'Admin' and 'KTLO' reads '6. Column G will auto-calculate to show your overall net capacity after out-of-office percentages have been taken off the top. These totals constitute your working time for the year'. The note on 'Project Work' reads '8. The project percentage in column J will auto-calculate based upon what’s leftover after your non-project working time allocations in columns H and I have been subtracted'.

    Review your annual portfolio capacity for projects

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.2 (continued)

    The previous slides walked you through the inputs for tab “3. Project Capacity.” This slide walks you through the outputs of the tab.

    Based upon the inputs from columns B to J, the rest of tab 3 analyzes how IT available time is spent across the time categories, highlighting how much of IT’s capacity is actually available for projects after admin work, support and maintenance work, and absences have been taken into account.

    A table and pie chart of output data from Tab 3 of the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator. Pie segments are labelled 'Admin', 'Absence', 'Project Capacity', and 'Keep The Lights On'.

    Customize Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template. Update slide 10, “Current Project Capacity,” of your PPM Strategic Plan Template to include the outputs from tab 3 of the Calculator.

    Create an inventory of active and backlog projects to help gauge overall project demand

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.3 – 15 to 30 minutes

    INPUT: Number of active and backlog projects across different sizes

    OUTPUT: Total project demand in estimated hours of work effort

    Materials: PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator, tab 4

    Participants: Portfolio manager (or equivalent), Project managers

    Where tab 3 of the Calculator gave you visibility into your overall resource supply for projects, tab 4 will help you establish insight into the demand side.

    • Before starting on tab 4, be sure to enter the required project size data on the set-up tab.
    • Using a list of current active projects, categorize the items on the list by size: small, medium, large, and extra large. Enter the number of projects in each category of project in column C of tab 4.
    • Using a list of on-hold projects, or projects that have been approved but not started, categorize the list by size and enter the number of projects in each category in column D.
    • In column E, estimate the number of new requests and projects across each size that you anticipate being added to the portfolio/backlog in the next 12 months. Use historical data from the past 12 to 24 months to inform your estimates.
    • In column F, estimate the number of projects that you anticipate being completed in each size category in the next 12 months. Take the current state of active projects into account as you make your estimates, as well as throughput data from the previous 12 to 24 months.
    Screenshot of tab 4 in the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator. It has 5 columns labelled 'Project Types' with values Small to Extra-Large, 'Number of active projects currently in the portfolio', 'Number of projects currently in the portfolio backlog', 'Number of new requests anticipated to be added to the portfolio/backlog in the next 12 months', and 'Number of projects expected to be delivered within the next 12 months'.

    Make supply and demand part of the conversation as you get buy-in for your top-down strategy

    Tab 5 of the Calculator is an output tab, visualizing the alignment (or lack thereof) of project demand and resource supply.

    Once tabs 3 and 4 are complete, use tab 5 to analyze the supply/demand data to help build your case for a top-down PPM strategy and get buy-in for it.

    Screenshots of Tab 5 in the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator. A bar chart obscures a table with the note 'The bar chart shows your estimated total project demand in person hours (in black) relative to your estimated total resource capacity for projects (in green)'. Notes on the table are 'The table below the bar chart shows your estimated annual project throughput rate (based upon the number of projects you estimated you would complete this year) as well as the rate at which portfolio demand will grow (based upon the number of new requests and projects you estimated for the next 12 months)' and 'If the “Total Estimated Project Demand (in hours) in 12 Months Time” number is more than your current demand levels, then you have a supply-demand problem that your PPM strategy will need to address'.

    Customize Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template. Update slides 11 and 12, “Current Project Demand,” of your PPM Strategic Plan Template to include the outputs from tabs 4 and 5 of the Calculator.

    Recommended: Complete Info-Tech’s PPM Current State Scorecard to measure your resource utilization

    Associated Activity icon Contact your rep or call 1-888-670-8889

    This step is highly recommended but not required. Call 1-888-670-8889 to inquire about or request the PPM Diagnostics.

    Info-Tech’s PPM Current State Scorecard diagnostic provides a comprehensive view of your portfolio management strengths and weaknesses, including project portfolio management, project management, customer management, and resource utilization.

    Screenshots of Info-Tech's PPM Current State Scorecard diagnostic with a pie chart obscuring a table/key. The attached note reads 'In particular, the analysis of resource utilization in the PPM Current State Scorecard report, will help to complement the supply/demand analysis in the previous slides. The diagnostic will help you to analyze how, within that percentage of your overall capacity that is available for project work, your staff productively utilizes this time to successfully complete project tasks and how much of this time is lost within Info-Tech’s categories of resource waste.'

    Customize Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template. Update slides 14 and 15, “Current State Resource Utilization” of your PPM Strategic Plan Template to include the resource utilization outputs from your PPM Current State Scorecard.

    Finalize section one of the PPM Strategic Plan Template and prepare to communicate your strategy

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.4 – 10 to 30 minutes

    INPUT: The previous activities from this step

    OUTPUT: An presentation communication your PPM strategy

    Materials: PPM Strategic Plan Template, section 1

    Participants: Portfolio manager (or equivalent)

    By now, you should be ready to complete section one of the PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    The purpose of this section of the Template is to capture the outputs of this step and use them to communicate the value of a top-down PPM strategy and to get buy-in for this strategy from senior management before you move forward to develop your PPM processes in the subsequent phases of this blueprint.

    • Within section one, update any of the text that is (in grey) to reflect the specifics of your organization – i.e. the name of your organization and department – and the specific outcomes of step 1.2 activities. In addition, replace the placeholders for a company logo with the logo of your company.
    • Replace the tool screenshots with the outputs from your version of the PPM High-Level Supply/Demand Calculator.
    • Proofread all of the text to ensure the content accurately reflects your outcomes. Edit the content as needed to more accurately reflect your outcomes.
    • Determine the audience for the presentation of your PPM strategy and make a logistical arrangement. Include PPM strategy sponsors, senior management from within IT and the business, and other important stakeholders.

    Get executive buy-in for your top-down PPM strategy

    Executive layer buy-in is a critical prerequisite for the success of a top-down PPM strategy. Ensure your executives are on board before preceding.

    You’re now ready to communicate your PPM strategy to your leadership team and other stakeholders.

    It is essential that you get preliminary buy-in for this strategy from the executive layer before you move forward to develop your PPM processes in the subsequent phases of this blueprint. Lack of executive engagement is one of the top barriers to PPM strategy success.

    • If you have gone through the preceding activities in this step, section one of your PPM Strategic Plan Template should now be ready to present.
    • As explained in 1.1.4, you should present this section to an audience of PPM strategy sponsors, C-suite executives, and other members of the senior management team.
    • Allow at least 60 minutes for the presentation – around 20 minutes to deliver the slide presentation and 40 minutes for discussion.
    • If you get sufficient buy-in by the end of the presentation, proceed to the next step of this blueprint. If buy-in is lacking, now might not be the right time for a top-down PPM strategy. Think about adopting a bottom-up approach until leadership is more engaged in the portfolio.

    "Gaining executive sponsorship early is key…It is important for the executives in your organization to understand that the PPM initiatives and the PMO organization are there to support (but never hinder) executive decision making." (KeyedIn Projects)

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Engage(d) sponsorship. According to Prosci, the top factor in contributing to the success of a change initiative is active and visible executive sponsorship. Use this meeting to communicate to your sponsor(s) the importance of their involvement in championing the PPM strategy.

    A PPM strategic plan elevates PMO’s status to a business strategic partner

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Public Administration
    Source: IAG / Info-Tech Interview

    Challenge

    The PMO operated in a way that is, in their self-assessment, reactive; project requests and capacity were not effectively managed. Perhaps due to this, the leadership team was not always visible, or regularly available, to PM leaders. This, in turn, complicated efforts to effectively manage their projects.

    Solution

    Establishing a simple prioritization methodology enabled the senior leadership to engage and effectively steer the project portfolio by strategic importance. The criteria and tool also gave the business units a clear understanding to promote the strategic value of each of their project requests.

    Results

    PM leaders now have the support and confidence of the senior leadership team to both proactively manage and deliver on strategic projects. This new prioritization model brought the PM Leader and senior leadership team in direct access with each other.

    "By implementing this new project intake and prioritization framework, we drastically improved our ability to predict, meet, and manage project requests and unit workload. We adopted a client-focused and client-centric approach that enabled all project participants to see their role and value in successful project delivery. We created methodologies that were easy to follow from the client participation perspective, but also as PM leaders, provided us with the metrics, planning, and proactive tools to meet and anticipate client project demand. The response from our clients was extremely positive, encouraging, and appreciative."

    Step 1.2: Translate PPM strategic expectations to process goals

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.11.22.12.23.13.2
    Choose the right PPM strategyTranslate strategy into process goalsDefine intake & resource mgmt. processesDefine reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processesSelect a right-sized PPM solutionFinalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine process goals based upon your PPM strategy.
    • Set metrics and preliminary targets for your PPM processes.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • Steering Committee
    • Business Unit Leaders
    • PMO Director/Portfolio Manager

    Outcomes of this step

    • Stakeholder-prioritized PPM process goals
    • Metrics and targets for high-priority process goals

    Use the PPM strategy to set the direction for PPM processes that make up the infrastructure around projects

    PPM strategy enables you to answer any and all of these questions in a way that is consistent, cohesive, and aligned with one another.

    Info-Tech's PPM Process Model from earlier with notes overlaid asking a series of questions. The questions for '1. Intake, Approval, and Prioritization' are 'Who can request a project? How do you request a project? Who decides what to fund? What is the target investment mix? How will they decide?' The questions for '2. Resource Management' are 'Who assigns the resources? Who feeds the data on resources? How do we make sure it’s valid? How do we handle contingencies when projects are late, or if availability changes?' The questions for '3. Status and Progress Reporting' are 'What project information that should be reported? Who reports on project status? When? How?' The questions between 'Project Management' and '4. Project Closure' are 'Who declares that a project is done? Who validates it? Who is this reported to? Who terminates low-value projects? How will they decide?' The questions for '5. Benefits Tracking' are 'How do we validate the project benefits from the original business case? How do we track the benefits? Who reports it? When?'

    Set process goals to address PPM strategic expectations and steer the PPM strategic plan

    Associated Activity icon 1.2.1 – 2 hours

    INPUT: PPM strategy & expectations, Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Prioritized list of strategy-aligned PPM process goals

    Materials: PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix

    Participants: CIO, Steering Committee, Business Unit Leaders, PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    This activity is designed for key departmental stakeholders to articulate how PPM processes should be developed or refined to meet the PPM strategic expectations.

    Participation of the key departmental stakeholders in this exercise is critical, e.g. CIO, Steering Committee, business unit leaders.

    Strategic Expectations x Processes = Process goals aligned to strategy
    Throughput Project Intake, Approval, & Prioritization
    Visibility Resource Management
    Responsiveness Status & Progress Reporting
    Resource Utilization Project Closure
    Benefits Benefits Realization

    Download Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy-Process Goals Translation Matrix Template.

    Use Info-Tech’s Translation Matrix to systematically articulate strategy-aligned PPM process goals

    Supporting Tool icon 1.2.1 – PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix, tab 2

    Formula: To answer “[question]” in a way that we can [strategic expectation], it will be important to [process goal].

    Example 1:
    To answer the question “who can request a project, and how?” in a way that we can maximize the throughput of the best projects, it will be important to standardize the project request process.

    Example 2:
    To answer the question “how will they decide what to fund?” in a way that we can maximize the throughput of the best projects, it will be important to reach a consensus on project prioritization criteria.

    Example 3:
    To answer the question “how will we track the projected benefits?” in a way that we can maximize the throughput of the best projects, it will be important to double-check the validity of benefits before projects are approved.

    Screenshot of Tab 2 in Info-Tech's PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix tool. There is a table with notes overlaid 'Enter the process goals in the appropriate question–strategic expectation slot' and 'Assign a priority, from the most important (1) to the least important (5)'.

    Set metrics and preliminary targets for your high-priority PPM process goals

    Associated Activity icon 1.2.2 – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Prioritized list of strategy-aligned PPM process goals, Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Metrics and targets for high-priority PPM process goals

    Materials: PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix

    Participants: CIO, Steering Committee, Business Unit Leaders, PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Your highest-priority process goals and their corresponding strategy expectations are displayed in tab 3 of the PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix template (example below).

    Through a group discussion, document what will be measured to decide the achievement of each process goal, as well as your current estimate and the long-term target. If necessary, adjust the approximate target duration.

    Screenshot of Tab 3 in Info-Tech's PPM Strategy-Process Translation Matrix tool. There is a table with 6 columns 'PPM Process', 'High-priority Process Goals', 'Strategy Expectation', 'How will you measure success?', 'Current Estimate', and 'Long-Term Target'; they are referred to in notes as columns B through G respectively. Overlaid notes are 'Columns C and D will auto-populate based upon your inputs from tab 2. The five PPM process areas are arranged vertically in column B and your top-five process goals from each area appear in column C.' 'Use column E to brainstorm how you might measure the success of each process goal at your organization. These can be tentative for now and refined over time.' 'Determine current metrics for each process goals and long-term target metrics in columns F and G.'

    Project-client-centered approach to PPM process design improves client satisfaction and team confidence

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Public Administration
    Source: IAG / Info-Tech Interview

    Challenge

    Reactive instead of proactive

    "We had no effective means of tracking project intake requests vs. capacity. We struggled using ad hoc processes and methods which worked to meet immediate needs, but we quickly realized that they were ineffective in tracking critical project metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), or performance measures...In short, we were being reactive, instead of proactive."

    The result was a disorganized portfolio that led to low client satisfaction and team morale.

    Solution

    Examine processes “through the eyes of the client”

    With the guiding principle of “through the eyes of the client,” PPM processes and tools were developed to formalize project intake, prioritization, and capacity planning. All touchpoints between client and PPM processes were identified, and practices for managing client expectations were put in place. A client satisfaction survey was formulated as part of the post-project assessment and review.

    Results

    Client-centered processes improved client satisfaction and team confidence

    People, processes, and tools are now aligned to support client demand, manage client expectations, measure project KPIs, and perform post-project analysis. A standard for client satisfaction metrics was put in place. The overwhelmingly positive feedback has increased team confidence in their ability to deliver quality efforts.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of Barry Cousins.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    Sample of activity 1.1.2 'Determine your actual resource capacity for projects'. Determine your actual resource capacity for projects

    Work with Info-Tech analysts to define your project vs. non-project ratio to help define how much of your overall resource capacity is actual available for projects.

    Sample of activity 1.2.1 'Set realistic PPM process goals'. Set realistic PPM process goals

    Leverage Info-Tech facilitators to help walk you through our PPM framework and define achievable process goals that are rooted in your current PPM maturity levels and organizational culture.

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

    PHASE 2

    Align PPM Processes to Your Strategic Goals

    Phase 2 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 2: Align PPM processes to your strategic goals

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2-4 weeks
    Step 2.1: Develop intake & resource mgmt. processes Step 2.2: Define reporting, closure, & benefits processes
    Work with an analyst to:
    • Assess your current intake, prioritization, and resource management processes and wireframe a sustainable target state for each capability.
    Work with an analyst to:
    • Analyze your current portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization processes and wireframe a sustainable target state for each capability.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Set near-term and long-term goals.
    • Draft high-level steps within your target-state processes.
    • Document your process steps and roles and responsibilities.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Set near-term and long-term goals.
    • Draft high-level steps within your target-state processes.
    • Document your process steps and roles and responsibilities.
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Phase 2 Results & Insights

    • The means of project and portfolio management (i.e. processes) shouldn’t eclipse the ends – strategic goals. Root your process in your PPM strategic goals to realize PPM benefits (e.g. optimized portfolio value, improved project throughput, increased stakeholder satisfaction).

    Read first: Overview of the methodology for articulating new strategy-aligned PPM processes

    In the previous step of the blueprint, key department stakeholders established the PPM process goals, metrics, and targets in a way that aligns with the overall PPM strategy. In this phase, we draft a high-level description of the five PPM processes that reflect those goals using the following methodology:

    Methodology at a glance

    1. Articulate the current state of the process.
    2. Examine the process against the strategy-aligned goals.
    3. Create short- and long-term action items to refine the current process and meet the strategy-aligned targets.
    4. Develop a high-level target-state description of the PPM process.
    5. Estimate costs-in-use of the target-state process.

    Out-of-scope topics

    • Draft a detailed target-state description of the PPM process. Avoid falling into the “analysis paralysis” trap and keep the discussion focused on the overall PPM strategy.
    • PPM tools to support the process. This discussion will take place in the next phase of the blueprint.

    INPUT

    –›

    PROCESS

    –›

    OUTPUT

    • Strategy-aligned process goals, metrics, and targets (Activity 1.2.1)
    • Knowledge of current process
    • Knowledge of organizational culture and structure
    • Capability level assessment
    • Table-top design planning activity
    • Start-stop-continue retrospective
    • High-level description of the target state
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool
    • High-level descriptions of current and target states
    • Short- and long-term action items for improving the process
    • Cost-in-use of the current- and target-state processes

    Download Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Build a sound business case for implementing the new PPM strategy with realistic costs and benefits of managing your project portfolio.

    Time spent on managing the project portfolio is an investment. Like any other business endeavors, the benefits must outweigh the costs to be worth doing.

    As you draft a high-level description of the PPM processes in this phase of the blueprint, use Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy Development Tool to track the estimate the cost-in-use of the process. In the next phase, this information will be inform a cost-benefit analysis, which will be used to support your plan to implement the PPM strategy.

    Download Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Screenshots of Info-Tech's PPM Strategy Development Tool including a Cost-Benefit Analysis with tables and graphs.

    Step 2.1: Develop and refine project intake, prioritization, and resource management processes

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.11.22.12.23.13.2
    Choose the right PPM strategyTranslate strategy into process goalsDefine intake & resource mgmt. processesDefine reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processesSelect a right-sized PPM solutionFinalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine your process maturity.
    • Benchmark current processes against strategy-aligned goals.
    • Set near- and long-term action items.
    • Draft a high-level description of your target state.
    • Document your new processes.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • PMO Director/Portfolio Manager
    • Project Managers
    • Resource Managers
    • Business Analysts

    Outcomes of this step

    • A definition of current and target state maturity levels for intake, prioritization, and resource management
    • Near-term and long-term process goals for intake, prioritization, and resource management
    • A high-level wireframe for your intake, prioritization, and resource management process steps

    Project intake, prioritization, and approval: Get projects with the highest value done first

    Give your organization the voice to say “no” (or “not yet”) to new projects.

    Questions

    • Who can request a project?
    • How do you request a project?
    • Who decides what to fund?
    • What is the target investment mix?
    • How will they decide?

    Benefits

    • Maximize value of time spent on project work by aligning projects with priorities and stakeholder needs.
    • Finish the projects you start by improving alignment of intake and prioritization with resource capacity.
    • Improve stakeholder satisfaction by managing expectations with consistent, streamlined processes.

    Challenges

    • Stakeholders who benefit from political or ad hoc prioritization processes will resist or circumvent formal intake processes.
    • Many organizations lack sufficient awareness of resource capacity necessary to align intake with availability.

    A graph highlighting the sweet spot of project intake decision making. The vertical axis is 'Rigor and Effort' increasing upward, and the horizontal axis is 'Quality and Effectiveness of Decisions' increasing to the right. The trend line starts at 'Gut Feel' with low 'Rigor and Effort', and gradually curves upward to 'Analysis Paralysis' at the top. A note with an arrow pointing to a midway point in the line reads 'The sweet spot changes between situations and types of decisions'.

    Info-Tech Insight

    This process aims to control the project demand. A balance between rigor and flexibility is critical in order to avoid the “analysis paralysis” as much as the “gut feel” approach.

    Funnel project requests into a triage system for project intake

    Info-Tech recommends following a four-step process for managing project intake.

    1. Requestor fills out form and submits the request into the funnel.
    2. Requests are triaged into the proper queue.
      1. Divert non-project request.
      2. Quickly assess value and urgency.
      3. Assign specialist to follow up on request.
      4. Inform the requestor.
    3. Business analyst starts to gather preliminary requirements.
      1. Follow up with sponsors to validate and define scope.
      2. Estimate size and determine project management rigor required.
      3. Start to develop an initial business case.
    4. Requestor is given realistic expectations for approval process.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An excess number of intake channels is the tell-tale sign of a project portfolio in distress. The PMO needs to exercise and enforce discipline on stakeholders. PMO should demand proper documentation and diligence from stakeholders before proceeding with requests.

    Maintain reliable resourcing data with a recurrent project intake, prioritization, and approval practice

    Info-Tech recommends following a five-step process for managing project intake, prioritization, and approval.

    A diagram of Info-Tech's five-step process for managing project intake. There are four groups that may be involved in any one step, they are laid out on the side as row headers that each step's columns may fall into, 'Resources', 'Business Analysts', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer'. The first step is 'Collect project requests' which involves 'Resources'. Step 2 is 'Screen project requests' which involves 'Business Analysts' and 'PMO'. A part of the step that may be applicable to some organizations is 'Concept approval' involving 'Governance Layer'. Step 3 is 'Develop business case' which involves 'Business Analysts' and 'PMO'. A part of the step that may be applicable to some organizations is 'Get a project sponsor' involving 'Governance Layer'. Step 4 is 'Prioritize project' which involves 'Business Analysts' and 'PMO'. Step 5 is 'Approve (greenlight) project' which involves 'Business Analysts', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer', with an attached note that reads 'Ensure that up-to-date project portfolio information is available (project status, resource forecast, etc.)'. All of these steps lead to 'Initiate project, commit resources, etc.'

    Info-Tech Insight

    “Approval” can be a dangerous word in project and portfolio management. Use it carefully. Clarify precisely what is being “approved” at each step in the process, what is required to pass each gate, and how long the process will take.

    Determine your project intake, prioritization, and approval process maturity

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.1a – 10 minutes

    INPUT: Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Project intake, prioritization, and approval capability level

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Kick-off the discussion about the project intake, prioritization, and approval process by reading the capability level descriptions below and discussing which level currently applies to you the most.

    Capability Level Descriptions

    Capability Level 5: Optimized We have effective intake processes with right-sized administrative overhead. Work is continuously prioritized to keep up with emerging challenges and opportunities.
    Capability Level 4: Aligned We have very strong intake processes. Project approvals are based on business cases and aligned with future resource capacity.
    Capability Level 3: Engaged Processes are in place to track project requests and follow up on them. Priorities are periodically re-evaluated, based largely on the best judgment of one or several executives.
    Capability Level 2: Defined Some processes are in place, but there is no capacity to say no to new projects. There is a backlog, but little or no method for grooming it.
    Capability Level 1: Unmanaged Our organization has no formal intake processes in place. Most work is done reactively, with little ability to prioritize project work proactively.

    Benchmark the current project intake, prioritization, and approval process against strategy-aligned goals

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.1b – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Documentation describing the current process (e.g. standard operating procedures), Process goals from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Retrospective review of current process

    Materials: 4x6” recipe cards, Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out the process currently in place.

    1. Use white 4”x6” recipe cards to write unique steps of a process. Use the intake, prioritization, and approval process from the previous slides as a guide.
    2. Use green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from a step.
    3. Use pink cards to write issues, problems, or risks.
    4. Discuss how the process could better achieve the strategy-aligned goals from activity 1.2.1. Keep a list of possible changes in the form of a start-stop-continue retrospective (example below) on a whiteboard.
    Start Stop Continue
    • Simplify business cases
    • Send emails to requestor to manage expectations
    • Accept verbal project requests
    • Approve “pet projects”
    • Monthly prioritization meetings
    • Evaluate prioritization criteria

    Set near- and long-term action items for the project intake, prioritization, and approval process

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.1c – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: Outcome of the retrospective review, Process goals and metrics from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    Materials: Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Analyze each item in the start-stop-continue retrospective to compile a set of near-term and long-term action items.

    The near-term plan should include steps that are within the authority of the PMO and do not require approval or investment outside of that authority. The long-term plan should include steps that may require a longer approval process, buy-in of external stakeholders, and the investment of time and money.
    Near-Term Action Items Long-Term Action Items
    For example:
    • Limit the number of channels available to request new projects.
    • Revise the intake form.
    • Establish a regular triage process.
    For example:
    • Establish a comprehensive scorecard and business case scoring process at the steering committee level.
    • Limit the rate of approval to be aligned with resource capacity.

    Review and customize slide 23, “Project intake, prioritization, and approval: action items,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Draft a high-level description of the intake, prioritization, and approval process at a target state

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.1d – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    OUTPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    1. Break down the process into several tasks at a high level. Avoid getting into too much detail by limiting the number of steps.
    2. An example of high-level breakdown: project intake, prioritization, and approval
      Collect project requests –› Screen requests –› Develop business case –› Prioritize project –› Approve project

    3. Describe each task by answering the following questions. Document your response in the PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    4. Question

      Description

      Input What information do you need to perform the work?
      Output What artifacts/deliverables are produced as a result?
      Frequency/Timing How often, and when, will the work be performed?
      Responsibility Who will perform the work?
      Accountability Who will approve the work and assume the ownership of any decisions?

    5. Record the time cost of each process using the PPM Strategy Development Tool; see next slide for instructions.

    Use the PPM Strategy Development Tool to track the time cost of the process

    Supporting Tool icon 2.1.1 – PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 3: Costing Assumptions

    Record the time cost of each high-level process task from Activity 2.1.1d.

    Screenshot of tab 3 from Info-Tech's PPM Strategy Development Tool with notes overlaid. Columns are 'ID', 'Task Description', 'Who does the task?', a super-column titled 'Current State' which includes 'How many times per year?', 'How many people?', and 'For how long?', a super-column titled 'Near-Term Target State' with the same three sub columns, and a super-column titled 'Long-Term Target State' with the same three sub columns. Notes for 'Who does the task?' read 'Choose executive, management or resource' and 'If task is done by more than one party, duplicate the task'. Notes for the 3 recurring sub columns are 'Estimate how many times in a year the task is performed (e.g. 120 project requests per year)', 'Indicate the number of people needed to perform the task each time', 'Estimate the average work-hours for the task… either in minutes or in hours', 'If a task is not applicable to a state (e.g. currently PMO does not screen project requests), leave the row blank', and 'For meetings, remember to indicate the number of people'.

    Document the high-level description for the new intake, prioritization, and approval process

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.1e – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    OUTPUT: Updated PPM strategic plan

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Update your PPM strategic plan with the new high-level description for the new project intake, prioritization, and approval process. Depending on your current process capability level, you may wish to include additional information on your strategic document, for example:

    • Updated prioritization scorecard.
    • Roles and responsibility matrix, identifying consulted and informed parties.

    Info-Tech has a dedicated blueprint to help you develop the high-level process description into a fully operationalized process. Upon completion of this PPM strategy blueprint, speak to an Info-Tech account manager or analyst to get started.

    Read Info-Tech’s Optimize Project Intake, Prioritization, and Approval blueprint.

    Review and customize slide 24, “Project intake, prioritization, and approval: target state,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Clarity in project prioritization process leads to enterprise-wide buy-in

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Public Administration
    Source: IAG / Info-Tech Interview

    Challenge

    "Our challenge from the start was to better understand the strategic perspective and priorities of our client departments.

    In addition, much of the work requested was not aligned to corporate goals and efforts, and seemed to be contradictory, redundant, and lacking strategic focus."

    Complicating this challenge was the fact that work requests were being received via all means of communication, which made the monitoring and controlling of requests more difficult.

    Solution

    Client departments were consulted to improve the understanding of their strategic goals and priorities. Based on the consultation:

    • A new, enterprise-wide project prioritization criteria was developed.
    • Priority of project requests from all business areas are evaluated on a quarterly basis.
    • A prioritized list of projects are made available to the senior leadership team.

    Results

    "By creating and implementing a tool for departments to prioritize strategic efforts, we helped them consider the important overall project criteria and measure them uniformly, across all anticipated projects. This set a standard of assessment, prioritization, and ranking, which helped departments clearly see which efforts were supportive and matched their strategic goals."

    Resource management process ensures that projects get the resources they need

    Reclaim project capacity: properly allocate project work and establish more stable project timelines.

    Questions

    • Who assigns the resources?
    • Who feeds the data on resources?
    • How do we make sure it’s valid?
    • How do we handle contingencies when projects are late, or if availability changes?

    Benefits

    • Ensure that approved projects can be completed by aligning intake with real project capacity.
    • Reduce over-allocation of resources by allocating based on their proportion of project vs. non-project work.
    • Forecast future resource requirements by maintaining accurate resource capacity data.

    Challenges

    • Time tracking can be difficult when project workers balance project work with “keep the lights on” activities and other administrative work.
    • Continuous partial attention, interruptions, and distractions are a part of today’s reality that makes it very difficult to maximize productivity.
    A see-saw balancing 'Resource availability' on one side and 'Ongoing projects, Operational work, Administrative work, and Resource absence' on the other side.

    Maintain reliable resourcing data with a recurrent resource management practice

    Info-Tech recommends following a five-step process for resource management.

    A diagram of Info-Tech's five-step process for resource management. There are five groups that may be involved in any one step, they are laid out on the side as row headers that each step's columns may fall into, 'Resources', 'Resource Managers', 'Project Managers', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer'. The first step is 'Collect resource availability' which involves 'Resources' and 'Resource Managers'. Step 2 is 'Collect resource demand' which involves 'Resource Managers', 'Project Managers' and 'PMO'. Step 3 is 'Identify need for reconciliation' which involves 'PMO'. Step 4 is 'Resolve conflicts and smoothen resource allocations' which involves 'Resource Managers', 'Project Managers' and 'PMO'. Step 5 is 'Report resource allocations and forecast' which involves all groups, with an attached note that reads 'Ensure that up-to-date information is available for project approval, portfolio reporting, closure, etc.'

    Info-Tech Insight

    This process aims to control the resource supply to meet the demand – project and non-project alike. Coordinate this process with the intake, approval, and prioritization process.

    Determine your resource management process capability level

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2a – 10 minutes

    INPUT: Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Resource management capability level

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Kick-off the discussion about the resource management process by reading the capability level descriptions below and discussing which level currently applies to you the most.

    Capability Level Descriptions

    Capability Level 5: OptimizedOur organization has an accurate picture of project versus non-project work loads and allocates resources accordingly. We periodically reclaim lost capacity through organizational and behavioral change.
    Capability Level 4: AlignedWe have an accurate picture of how much time is spent on project versus non-project work. We allocate resources to these projects accordingly. We are checking in on project progress bi-weekly.
    Capability Level 3: PixelatedWe are allocating resources to projects and tracking progress monthly. We have a rough estimate of how much time is spent on project versus non-project work.
    Capability Level 2: OpaqueWe match resources teams to projects and check in annually, but we do not forecast future resource needs or track project versus non-project work.
    Capability Level 1: UnmanagedOur organization expects projects to be finished, but there is no process in place for allocating resources or tracking project progress.

    Benchmark the current resource management process against strategy-aligned goals

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2b – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Documentation describing the current process (e.g. standard operating procedures), Process goals from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Retrospective review of current process

    Materials: 4x6” recipe cards, Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out the process currently in place.

    1. Use white 4”x6” recipe cards to write unique steps of a process. Use the resource management process from the previous slides as a guide.
    2. Use green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from a step.
    3. Use pink cards to write issues, problems, or risks.
    4. Discuss how the process could better achieve the strategy-aligned goals from activity 1.2.1. Keep a list of possible changes in the form of a start-stop-continue retrospective (example below) on a whiteboard.
    Start Stop Continue
    • Collect project actuals
    • Make enhancements to the PPM tool in use
    • Over allocating resources
    • “Around the room” reporting at monthly meeting
    • Send project updates before resource management meetings

    Set near- and long-term action items for the resource management process

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2c – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: Outcome of the retrospective review, Process goals and metrics from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    Materials: Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Analyze each item in the start-stop-continue retrospective to compile a set of near-term and long-term action items.

    The near-term plan should include steps that are within the authority of the PMO and do not require approval or investment outside of that authority. The long-term plan should include steps that may require a longer approval process, buy-in of external stakeholders, and the investment of time and money.
    Near-Term Action Items Long-Term Action Items
    For example:
    • Determine the percentage of project vs. non-project work through implementation of a weekly survey.
    For example:
    • Reduce resource waste to 6%.
    • Forecast resource requirements monthly.
    • Implement a mid-market PPM tool.

    Review and customize slide 26, “Resource management: action items,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Draft a high-level description of the resource management process at a target state

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2d – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    OUTPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    1. Break down the process into several tasks at a high level. Avoid getting into too much detail by limiting the number of steps.
    2. An example of high-level breakdown: resource management
      Collect resource availability –› Collect resource demand –› Identify need for reconciliation –› Resolve conflicts and over-allocation –› Update resource forecast


    3. Describe each task by answering the following questions. Document your response in the PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    4. Question

      Description

      Input What information do you need to perform the work?
      Output What artifacts/deliverables are produced as a result?
      Frequency/Timing How often, and when, will the work be performed?
      Responsibility Who will perform the work?
      Accountability Who will approve the work and assume the ownership of any decisions?


    5. Record the time cost of each process using the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Document the high-level description for the new resource management process

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2e – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    OUTPUT: Updated PPM strategic plan

    Materials: PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Update your PPM strategic plan with the new high-level description for the new resource management process. Depending on your current process capability level, you may wish to include additional information on your strategic plan, for example:

    • Resource management meeting agenda template
    • Roles and responsibility matrix, identifying consulted and informed parties

    Info-Tech has a dedicated blueprint to help you develop the high-level process description into a fully operationalized process. Upon completion of this PPM strategy blueprint, speak to an Info-Tech account manager or analyst to get started.

    Read Info-Tech’s Develop a Resource Management for the New Reality blueprint.

    Review and customize slide 27, “Resource management: target state,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Step 2.2: Develop and refine portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization processes

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.11.22.12.23.13.2
    Choose the right PPM strategyTranslate strategy into process goalsDefine intake & resource mgmt. processesDefine reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processesSelect a right-sized PPM solutionFinalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine your process maturity.
    • Benchmark current processes against strategy-aligned goals.
    • Set near- and long-term action items.
    • Draft a high-level description of your target state.
    • Document your new processes.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • PMO Director/Portfolio Manager
    • Project Managers
    • Business Analysts

    Outcomes of this step

    • A definition of current and target state maturity levels for portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization
    • Near-term and long-term process goals for portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization
    • A high-level wireframe for your portfolio reporting, project closure, and benefits realization process steps

    Portfolio reporting process makes trustworthy data accessible for informing decisions

    Giving stakeholders the ability to make informed decisions is the most important function of managing the project portfolio.

    Questions

    • What project information should be reported?
    • Who reports on project status?
    • When and how do we report on the status of the project portfolio?

    Benefits

    • Reporting is the linchpin of any successful PPM strategy.
    • Timely and accurate status reports enable decision makers to address issues risks and issues before they create bigger problems.
    • Executive visibility can be achieved with or without a commercial tool using spreadsheets, a content management system such as SharePoint, or a combination of tools you already have.

    Challenges

    • Trying to increase detailed visibility too fast leads to difficulty gathering and maintaining data. As a result, reporting is rarely accurate and people quickly lose trust in the portfolio.
    • If you are planning to adopt a commercial tool, Info-Tech strongly recommends validating your organization’s ability to maintain a consistent reporting process using simple tools before investing in a more sophisticated system.

    Info-Tech Insight

    If you can only do one thing, establish frequently current reporting on project status. Reporting doesn’t have to be detailed or precise, as long as it’s accurate.

    Maintain reliable portfolio status data with a recurrent status and progress reporting practice

    Info-Tech recommends following a four-step process for portfolio status and progress reporting.

    A diagram of Info-Tech's four-step process for portfolio status and progress reporting. There are four groups that may be involved in any one step, they are laid out on the side as row headers that each step's columns may fall into, 'Resources', 'Project Managers', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer'. The first step is 'Create project status reports' which involves 'Resources' and 'Project Managers'. Step 2 is 'Create a project portfolio status report' which involves 'Project Managers' and 'PMO', with a note that reads 'Ensure that up-to-date information is available for project approval, resource management, closure, etc.' Step 3 is 'Report on project portfolio status' which involves 'PMO' and 'Governance layer'. Step 4 is 'Act on portfolio steering decisions' which involves 'Resources', 'Project Managers' and 'PMO'.

    Start by establishing a regular reporting cadence with lightweight project status KPIs:

    Red Issue or risk that requires intervention For projects that are red or yellow, high-level status reports should be elaborated on with additional comments on budget, estimated hours/days until completion, etc.
    Yellow Issue or risk that stakeholders should be aware of
    Green No significant risks or issues

    Determine your resource management process capability level

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1a – 10 minutes

    INPUT: Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Portfolio reporting capability level

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers

    Kick-off the discussion about the portfolio reporting process by reading the capability level descriptions below and discussing which level currently applies to you the most.

    Capability Level Descriptions

    Capability Level 5: OptimizedWith the right tools, we can ensure that all projects are planned and maintained at a detailed task level with high-quality estimates, and that actual task progress is updated at least weekly.
    Capability Level 4: AlignedWe have the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to prepare a detailed cost-benefit analysis for all proposed projects. We track the progress throughout project execution.
    Capability Level 3: InterventionWith the right tools, we can ensure that project issues and risks are identified and addressed on a regular basis (e.g. at least monthly) for all projects.
    Capability Level 2: OversightWith the right tools, we can ensure that project status updates are revised on a regular basis (e.g. at least monthly) for all ongoing projects.
    Capability Level 1: ReactiveProject managers escalate issues directly with their direct supervisor or project sponsor because there is no formal PPM practice.

    Benchmark the current portfolio reporting process against strategy-aligned goals

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1b – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Documentation describing the current process (e.g. standard operating procedures), Process goals from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Retrospective review of current process

    Materials: 4x6” recipe cards, Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers

    Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out the process currently in place.

    1. Use white 4”x6” recipe cards to write unique steps of a process. Use the portfolio reporting process from the previous slides as a guide.
    2. Use green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from a step.
    3. Use pink cards to write issues, problems, or risks.
    4. Discuss how the process could better achieve the strategy-aligned goals from activity 1.2.1. Keep a list of possible changes in the form of a start-stop-continue retrospective (example below) on a whiteboard.
    Start Stop Continue
    • Report on lightweight KPIs
    • Standardize the status reports
    • Project managers waiting too long before declaring a red status
    • Produce weekly project portfolio-wide report for senior leadership

    Set near- and long-term action items for the portfolio reporting process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1c – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: Outcome of the retrospective review, Process goals and metrics from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    Materials: Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers

    Analyze each item in the start-stop-continue retrospective to compile a set of near-term and long-term action items.

    The near-term plan should include steps that are within the authority of the PMO and do not require approval or investment outside of that authority. The long-term plan should include steps that may require a longer approval process, buy-in of external stakeholders, and the investment of time and money.
    Near-Term Action Items Long-Term Action Items
    For example:
    • Establish a reporting process that can be consistently maintained using lightweight KPIs.
    • Provide a simple dashboard that stakeholders can use to see their project status reports at a high level.
    For example:
    • Adopt a commercial tool for maintaining consistent status reports.
    • Support the tool with training and a mandate of adoption among all users.

    Review and customize slide 29, “Portfolio reporting: action items,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Draft a high-level description of the portfolio reporting process at a target state

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1d – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    OUTPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers

    1. Break down the process into several tasks at a high level. Avoid getting into too much detail by limiting the number of steps.
    2. An example of high-level breakdown: portfolio reporting
      Create project status reports –› Create a project portfolio status report –› Report on project portfolio status –› Act on portfolio steering decisions


    3. Describe each task by answering the following questions. Document your response in the PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    4. Question

      Description

      InputWhat information do you need to perform the work?
      OutputWhat artifacts/deliverables are produced as a result?
      Frequency/TimingHow often, and when, will the work be performed?
      ResponsibilityWho will perform the work?
      AccountabilityWho will approve the work and assume the ownership of any decisions?

    5. Record the time cost of each process using the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Document the high-level description for the new portfolio reporting process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1e – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    OUTPUT: Updated PPM strategic plan

    Materials: PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Update your PPM strategic plan with the new high-level description for the new portfolio reporting process. Depending on your current process capability level, you may wish to include additional information on your strategic plan, for example:

    • Updated project status report template with new KPIs.
    • Documentation of requirements for improved PPM dashboards and reports.

    Info-Tech has a dedicated blueprint to help you develop the high-level process description into a fully operationalized process. Upon completion of this PPM strategy blueprint, speak to an Info-Tech account manager or analyst to get started.

    Read Info-Tech’s Enhance PPM Dashboards and Reports blueprint.

    Review and customize slide 30, “Portfolio reporting: target state,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Streamlined status reporting improves portfolio visibility for executives, enabling data-driven steering of the portfolio

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Public Administration
    Source: IAG / Info-Tech Interview

    Challenge

    The client had no effective real-time reporting in place to summarize their work efforts. In addition, the client struggled with managing existing resources against the ability to deliver on the requested project workload.

    Existing project reporting processes were manually intensive and lacked mature reporting capabilities.

    Solution

    Through a short and effective engagement, IAG conducted surveys and facilitated interviews to identify the information needed by each stakeholder. From this analysis and industry best practices, IAG developed scorecards, dashboards, and project summary reports tailored to the needs of each stakeholder group. This integrated reporting tool was then made available on a central portal for PPM stakeholders.

    Results

    Stakeholders can access project scorecard and dashboard reports that are available at any given time.

    Resource reporting enabled the PMO to better balance client demand with available project capacity and forecast any upcoming deficiencies in resourcing that affect project delivery.

    Project closure at the portfolio level controls throughput and responsiveness of the portfolio

    Take control over projects that linger on, projects that don’t provide value, and projects that do not align with changing organizational priority.

    Questions

    • Who declares that a project is done?
    • Who validates it?
    • Who is this reported to?
    • Who terminates low-value projects?
    • How will they decide that a project is too low value to continue?

    Benefits

    • Minimize post-implementation problems by ensuring clean handoffs, with clear responsibilities for ongoing support and maintenance.
    • Drive continuous improvement by capturing and applying lessons learned.
    • Increase the project portfolio’s responsiveness to change by responding to emerging opportunities and challenges.

    Challenges

    • Completion criteria and “definition of done” need to be well defined and done so at project initiation.
    • Scope changes need to be managed and documented throughout the project.
    • Portfolio responsiveness requires deep cultural changes that will be met with confusion and resistance from some stakeholders.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Although “change in organizational priority” is the most frequently cited cause of project failure (PMI Pulse of Profession, 2017), closing projects that don’t align with organizational priority ought to be a key PPM goal. Therefore, don’t think of it as project failure; instead, think of it as PPM success.

    Maintain the health of the project portfolio with a repeatable project closure process

    Info-Tech recommends following a four-step process for project closure.

    A diagram of Info-Tech's four-step process for project closure. There are five groups that may be involved in any one step, they are laid out on the side as row headers that each step's columns may fall into, 'Resources', 'Resource Managers', 'Project Managers', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer'. The first steps are 'Complete project' which involves 'Project Managers', and 'Terminate low value projects' which involves 'PMO' and 'Governance layer'. Step 2 is 'Validate project closure' which involves 'Project Managers' and 'PMO', with a note that reads 'This includes facilitating the project sponsor sign-off, accepting and archiving lessons learned documents, etc.' The third steps are 'Conduct post-project work' which involves 'Project Managers' and 'PMO', and 'Update resource availability' which includes 'Resource Managers'. Step 4 is 'Conduct post-implementation review' which involves all groups.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    Post-implementation review checks which benefits (including those set out in the business case) have been achieved and identifies opportunities for further improvement. Without it, it can be difficult to demonstrate that investment in a project was worthwhile.

    Determine your project closure process capability level

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2a – 10 minutes

    INPUT: Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: Project closure capability level

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Business Analysts

    Kick-off the discussion about the project closure process by reading the capability level descriptions below and discussing which level currently applies to you the most.

    Capability Level Descriptions

    Capability Level 5: OptimizedProject closure is centrally managed and supports post-project benefits tracking.
    Capability Level 4: AlignedProject closure is centrally managed at the portfolio level to ensure completion/acceptance criteria are satisfied.
    Capability Level 3: EngagedProject closure is confirmed at the portfolio level, but with minimal enforcement of satisfaction of completion/acceptance criteria.
    Capability Level 2: EncouragedProject managers often follow handoff and closure procedures, but project closure is not confirmed or governed at the portfolio level.
    Capability Level 1: UnmanagedProject closure is not governed at either the project or portfolio level.

    Benchmark the current project closure process against strategy-aligned goals

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2b – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Documentation describing the current process (e.g. standard operating procedures), Process goals from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Retrospective review of current process

    Materials: 4x6” recipe cards, Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Business Analysts

    Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out the process currently in place.

    1. Use white 4”x6” recipe cards to write unique steps of a process. Use the project closure process from the previous slides as a guide.
    2. Use green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from a step.
    3. Use pink cards to write issues, problems, or risks.
    4. Discuss how the process could better achieve the strategy-aligned goals from activity 1.2.1. Keep a list of possible changes in the form of a start-stop-continue retrospective (example below) on a whiteboard.
    Start Stop Continue
    • Conduct reprioritization of projects at a regular cadence
    • Prune projects every year
    • Waive post-implementation review for time-constrained projects
    • Collect project post-mortem reports and curate in PMO SharePoint

    Set near- and long-term action items for the project closure process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2c – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: Outcome of the retrospective review, Process goals and metrics from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    Materials: Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Analyze each item in the start-stop-continue retrospective to compile a set of near-term and long-term action items.

    The near-term plan should include steps that are within the authority of the PMO and do not require approval or investment outside of that authority. The long-term plan should include steps that may require a longer approval process, buy-in of external stakeholders, and the investment of time and money.
    Near-Term Action Items Long-Term Action Items
    For example:
    • Begin establishing project closure criteria in the project initiation process.
    • Manage and document scope changes throughout the project.
    For example:
    • Institute a formal process to ensure that all projects are closed at the portfolio level and properly handed off to support and maintenance teams.

    Review and customize slide 32, “Project closure: action items,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Draft a high-level description of the project closure process at a target state

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2d – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    OUTPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    1. Break down the process into several tasks at a high level. Avoid getting into too much detail by limiting the number of steps.
    2. An example of high-level breakdown: project closure
      Complete or terminate projects –› Validate project closure –› Conduct post-project work –› Conduct post-implementation review


    3. Describe each task by answering the following questions. Document your response in the PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    4. Question

      Description

      Input What information do you need to perform the work?
      Output What artifacts/deliverables are produced as a result?
      Frequency/Timing How often, and when, will the work be performed?
      Responsibility Who will perform the work?
      Accountability Who will approve the work and assume the ownership of any decisions?


    5. Record the time cost of each process using the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Document the high-level description for the new project closure process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2e – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    OUTPUT: Updated PPM strategic plan

    Materials: PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Update your PPM strategic plan with the new high-level description for the new project closure process. Depending on your current process capability level, you may wish to include additional information on your strategic plan, for example:

    • Updated project closure checklist.
    • Project value review meeting process document.
    • Post-implementation review process document.

    Info-Tech has several research notes that elaborate on aspects of project closure. Upon completion of this PPM strategy blueprint, speak to an Info-Tech account manager or analyst to get started.

    Read Info-Tech’s research notes on project closure:

    • The Importance of Conducting a Post Implementation Review
    • Five Key Steps to Mastering Project Closure
    • ‘Governance’ Will Kill Your Projects

    Review and customize slide 33, “Project closure: target state,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Validate the time and effort spent on projects with a benefits realization process

    Maximizing benefits from projects is the primary goal of PPM. Tracking and reporting on benefits post-project closes the loop on benefits.

    Questions

    • How do validate the project benefits from the original business case?
    • How do we track the benefits?
    • Who reports it? When?

    Benefits

    • Maximize benefits realization by identifying and addressing unforeseen issues or limitations to success.
    • Improve project approval and prioritization by improving validity of the business case definition process.

    Challenges

    • Project sponsors need to be willing to invest time – months and years post-project completion – to validate benefits realization.
    • Portfolio management needs to proactively work with sponsors to facilitate benefits tracking.
    • Business cases need to be well developed and documented to reflect real anticipated benefits.

    Too many projects fail to achieve the originally proposed benefits, and too few organizations are able to identify and address the root causes of those shortfalls.

    Info-Tech Insight

    In reality, benefits realization process extends across the entire project life cycle: during intake, during the execution of the project, and after project completion. Be mindful of this extended scope when you discuss benefits realization in the following activity.

    Keep project benefits front and center with a repeatable benefits realization process

    Info-Tech recommends following a four-step process for benefits realization.

    A diagram of Info-Tech's four-step process for benefits realization. There are four groups that may be involved in any one step, they are laid out on the side as row headers that each step's columns may fall into, 'Business Analysts', 'Project Managers', 'PMO', and 'Governance Layer'. The first step is 'Quantify and validate benefits in business case' which happens 'Before Project' and involves 'Business Analysts' and 'Project Managers'. Step 2 is 'Update projected project benefits' which happens 'During Project' and involves 'Project Managers' and 'PMO'. Step 3 is 'Hand-off benefits realization ownership' which happens at the end of project and involves 'Project Managers', 'PMO' and 'Governance layer'. Step 4 is 'Monitor and report on benefits' which happens 'After Project' and involves 'PMO' and 'Governance layer'.

    Info-Tech Insight

    At the heart of benefits realization is accountability: who is held accountable for projects that don’t realize the benefits and how? Without the buy-in from the entire executive layer team, addressing this issue is very difficult.

    Determine your benefits realization process capability level

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3a – 10 minutes

    INPUT: Organizational strategy and culture

    OUTPUT: benefits realization capability level

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Kick-off the discussion about the benefits realization process by reading the capability level descriptions below and discussing which level currently applies to you the most.

    Capability Level Descriptions

    Capability Level 5: OptimizedProject sponsors and key stakeholders are accountable for stated project benefits before, during and after the project. There is a process to maximize the realization of project benefits.
    Capability Level 4: AlignedProject benefits are forecasted and taken into account for approval, updated when changes are made to the project, and monitored/reported after projects are completed.
    Capability Level 3: EngagedProject benefits are forecasted and taken into account for approval, and there is a loosely defined process to report on benefits realization.
    Capability Level 2: DefinedProject benefits are forecasted and taken into account for approval, but there is no process to monitor whether the said benefits are realized.
    Capability Level 1: UnmanagedProjects are approved and initiated without discussing benefits.

    Benchmark the current benefits realization process against strategy-aligned goals

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3b – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Documentation describing the current process (e.g. standard operating procedures), Process goals from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Retrospective review of current process

    Materials: 4x6” recipe cards, Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out the process currently in place.

    1. Use white 4”x6” recipe cards to write unique steps of a process. Use the benefits realization process from the previous slides as a guide.
    2. Use green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from a step.
    3. Use pink cards to write issues, problems, or risks.
    4. Discuss how the process could better achieve the strategy-aligned goals from activity 1.2.1. Keep a list of possible changes in the form of a start-stop-continue retrospective (example below) on a whiteboard.
    StartStopContinue
    • Require “hard monetary value” in business benefits
    • Send project updates before resource management meetings

    Set near- and long-term action items for the benefits realization process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3c – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: Outcome of the retrospective review, Process goals and metrics from activity 1.2.1

    OUTPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    Materials: Whiteboard

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Analyze each item in the start-stop-continue retrospective to compile a set of near-term and long-term action items.

    The near-term plan should include steps that are within the authority of the PMO and do not require approval or investment outside of that authority. The long-term plan should include steps that may require a longer approval process, buy-in of external stakeholders, and the investment of time and money.
    Near-Term Action Items Long-Term Action Items
    For example:
    • Create an “orientation for project sponsors” document.
    • Encourage project managers to re-validate project benefits on an ongoing basis and report any deviation.
    For example:
    • Recruit the finance department’s help in benefits tracking.
    • Require Finance’s sign-off on project benefits in business cases during intake.

    Review and customize slide 35, “Benefits realization: action items,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Draft a high-level description of the benefits realization process at a target state

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3d – 1-2 hours

    INPUT: Action items for evolving the process to a target state

    OUTPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    Materials: Whiteboard, PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    1. Break down the process into several tasks at a high level. Avoid getting into too much detail by limiting the number of steps.
    2. An example of high-level breakdown: benefits realization
      Validate benefits in business case –› Update project benefits during execution –› Hand-off benefits ownership –› Monitor and report on benefits


    3. Describe each task by answering the following questions. Document your response in the PPM Strategic Plan Template.
    4. Question

      Description

      InputWhat information do you need to perform the work?
      OutputWhat artifacts/deliverables are produced as a result?
      Frequency/TimingHow often, and when, will the work be performed?
      ResponsibilityWho will perform the work?
      AccountabilityWho will approve the work and assume the ownership of any decisions?

    5. Record the time cost of each process using the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Document the high-level description for the new benefits realization process

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3e – 30 minutes - 1 hour

    INPUT: High-level description of the process at the target state

    OUTPUT: Updated PPM strategic plan

    Materials: PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

    Update your PPM strategic plan with the new high-level description for the new benefits realization process. Depending on your current process capability level, you may wish to include additional information on your strategic plan, for example:

    • Updated business plan templates.
    • Communication plan for project sponsors.

    Info-Tech has a dedicated blueprint to help you develop the high-level process description into a fully operationalized process. Upon completion of this PPM strategy blueprint, speak to an Info-Tech account manager or analyst to get started.

    Read Info-Tech’s Establish the Benefits Realization Process blueprint.

    Review and customize slide 36, “Benefits realization: target state,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of Barry Cousins.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    Sample of activity 2.1.1 'Align your project intake, prioritization, and approval process to the PPM strategy'. Align your project intake, prioritization, and approval process to the PPM strategy

    Examine the process at the current state and develop an action plan to improve it, with a high-level description of the process at a target state and its overhead costs. The outcome of this activity feeds into the overall PPM strategic plan.

    Sample of activity 2.1.2 'Align your resource management process to the PPM strategy'. Align your resource management process to the PPM strategy

    Examine the process at the current state and develop an action plan to improve it, with a high-level description of the process at a target state and its overhead costs. The outcome of this activity feeds into the overall PPM strategic plan.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Sample of activity 2.2.1 'Align your portfolio reporting process to the PPM strategy'.Align your portfolio reporting process to the PPM strategy

    Examine the process at the current state and develop an action plan to improve it, with a high-level description of the process at a target state and its overhead costs. The outcome of this activity feeds into the overall PPM strategic plan.

    Sample of activity 2.2.2 'Align your project closure process to the PPM strategy'.Align your project closure process to the PPM strategy

    Examine the process at the current state and develop an action plan to improve it, with a high-level description of the process at a target state and its overhead costs. The outcome of this activity feeds into the overall PPM strategic plan.

    Sample of activity 2.2.3 'Align your benefits realization process to the PPM strategy'.Align your benefits realization process to the PPM strategy

    Examine the process at the current state and develop an action plan to improve it, with a high-level description of the process at a target state and its overhead costs. The outcome of this activity feeds into the overall PPM strategic plan.

    Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

    PHASE 3

    Complete Your PPM Strategic Plan

    Phase 2 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 3: Complete your PPM strategic plan

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 3.1: Select a right-sized PPM solutionStep 3.2: Finalize your PPM Strategic Plan Template
    Work with an analyst to:
    • Assess your PPM tool requirements to help support your processes.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Determine the costs and potential benefits of your PPM strategy.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Determine the functionality requirements of the PPM solution.
    • Estimate your PPM tool budget.
    • Review the tool assessment.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Estimate the total cost-in-use of managing the project portfolio.
    • Estimate the benefits of the PPM strategy.
    • Refine and consolidate the near-term action items into a cohesive implementation plan.
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • PPM Strategy Development Tool
    • PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Phase 3 Insight:

    • Approach PPM as an evolving discipline that requires adaptability and long-term organizational change. Near-term process improvements should create stakeholder desire for better portfolio visibility and agility over the long term.

    Step 3.1: Select a right-sized PPM solution for supporting your new processes

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.11.22.12.23.13.2
    Choose the right PPM strategyTranslate strategy into process goalsDefine intake & resource mgmt. processesDefine reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processesSelect a right-sized PPM solutionFinalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine the functionality requirements of a PPM solution in the near and long terms.
    • Estimate your PPM tool budget.
    • Review tool assessment.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
    • Project Managers
    • IT Managers

    Outcomes of this step

    • List of functional requirements for a PPM solution
    • An estimate budget and cost for supporting a PPM tool in the near and long terms
    • PPM tool requirements for the near and long terms

    Right-size your PPM solution/tool to fit your PPM processes

    Avoid a common pitfall: the disconnect between PPM processes and PPM tools.

    PPM tools act as both a receptacle for portfolio data generated by your processes and a source of portfolio data to drive your processes forward. Therefore, choosing a suitable PPM tool is critical to the success of your PPM strategy:

    • PPM tool inputs must match the type, level of detail, and amount of portfolio data generated by your PPM processes.
    • PPM tool outputs must be useful, insightful, easy to access, and easy to understand for people who engage in your PPM processes.

    User adoption is an often cited cause of failed PPM tool implementation:

    "The biggest problem is getting the team to work with the tool. We need to make sure that we’re not wasting time delving too far down into the tool, yet putting enough information to get useful information back." (IT Director, Financial Services)

    This final step of the blueprint will discuss the choice of PPM tools to ensure the success of PPM strategy by avoiding the process-tool disconnect.

    Common pitfalls for PPM tools

    • Purchasing and implementing a PPM tool before the process is defined and accepted.
    • Poor expectation setting: inability of tools to perform the necessary analysis.
    • Underleveraged: low user/process adoption.
    • Poor integration with the corporate finance function.
    • (WGroup, 2017)

    Leverage PPM tools to get the information you need

    An optimized PPM solution is the vehicle that provides decision makers with four key pieces of information they require when making decisions for your project portfolio:

    • Historical Insight – inform decision makers about how much time and resources have been spent to date, and benchmark the accuracy of prior project estimates and resource allocations.
    • Forecasting – provide a trustworthy estimate of demand on resources and current projects.
    • Portfolio Analytics – analyze portfolio data and generate easy-to-consume reports that provide answers to questions such as:
      • How big is our overall portfolio?
      • How much money/resource time is available?
      • How efficiently are we using our resources?
    • Project Visibility – provide a trustworthy report on the status of current projects and the resources working on them.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Without the proper information, decision makers are driving blind and are forced to make gut feel decisions as opposed to data-informed decisions. Implement a PPM solution to allocate projects properly and ensure time and money don’t vanish without being accounted for.

    Commercial PPM tools have more functionality but are more costly, complex, and difficult to adopt

    • Granular timesheet management
    • Workflow and team collaboration
    • Robust data and application integration
    • Advanced what-if planning
    • Mobile usability
    A map comparing commercial PPM tools by 'Functionality', 'Cost', and 'Difficulty to implement/adopt'. 'Functionality' and 'Difficulty to implement/adopt' share an axis and can be assumed to have a linear relationship. 'Spreadsheets' are low functionality and low cost. 'Google Sites' are low to middling functionality and low cost. 'SharePoint' is middling functionality with a slightly higher cost. The next three start at middling cost and above-average functionality and trend higher in both categories: 'Commercial Entry-Level PPM', 'Commercial Mid-Market PPM', and 'Commercial Enterprise PPM'.
    • Business case scoring and prioritization
    • Multi-user reporting and request portal
    • High-level resource management
    • Project status, cost, and risk tracking

    "Price tags [for PPM tools] vary considerably. Expensive products don't always provide more capability. Inexpensive products are generally low cost for good reason." (Merkhofer)

    Your PPM tool options are not limited to commercial offerings

    Despite the rapid growth in the commercial PPM tool market today, homegrown approaches like spreadsheets and intranet sites continue to be used as PPM tools.

    Kinds of PPM solutions used by Info-Tech clients

    A pie chart visualizing the kinds of PPM solutions that are used by Info-Tech clients. There are three sections, the largest of which is 'Spreadsheet-based, 46%', then 'Commercial, 33%', then 'No solution, 21%'. (Source: Info-Tech Research Group (2016), N=433)

    Category

    Characteristics

    PPM maturity

    Enterprise tool
    • Higher professional services requirements for enterprise deployment
    • Larger reference customers
    High
    Mid-market tool
    • Lower expectation of professional services engaged in initial deployment contract
    • Fewer globally recognizable reference clients
    • Faster deployments
    High
    Entry-level tool
    • Lower cost than mid-market & enterprise PPM tools
    • Limited configurability, reporting, and resource management functionalities
    • Compelling solutions to the organizations that wants to get a fast start to a trial deployment
    Intermediate
    Spreadsheet based
    • Little/no up-front cost, highly customizable to suit your organization’s needs
    • Varying degrees of sophistication
    • Few people in the organization may understand the logic behind the tool; knowledge may not be easily transferrable
    Intermediate Low

    Determine the functional requirements of the PPM solution

    Associated Activity icon 3.1.1 – 20 minutes

    INPUT: PPM strategic plan

    OUTPUT: Modified PPM strategic plan with a proposed choice of PPM tool

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, IT Managers

    Use the Tool Assessment tab (tab 4) of Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy Development Tool to rate and analyze functional requirements of your PPM solution.

    • Review the list of PPM features provided on column B of tab 4. You can add any desired features not listed.
    • Rate your near-term and long-term feature requirements using the drop-down menus in columns C and D. Your selections here will inform the tool selection bubble chart to the right of the features list.

    Screenshot showing the features list on tab 4 of the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    Estimate your PPM tool budget

    Associated Activity icon 3.1.2 – 20 minutes

    INPUT: PPM strategic plan

    OUTPUT: Modified PPM strategic plan with a proposed choice of PPM tool

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: CIO, PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, IT Managers

    Enter the PPM tool budget information on the Tool Assessment tab of Info-Tech’s PPM Strategy Development Tool.

    • As a starting point, it can help to know that low-priced PPM tools cost around $1,000 per user per year. High-priced PPM tools cost around $3,000 per user per year.
    • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based pricing for PPM solutions is increasingly popular. If you plan to purchase perpetual licensing, divide the total implementation and licensing cost by three years to be comparable with a three-year SaaS total cost of ownership analysis.

    Screenshot showing the tool assessment from the PPM Strategy Development Tool with 'Near-Term' and 'Long-Term' budget columns. Notes include 'Enter the number of fully licensed PPM users you expect to provision for and your estimated annual budget for a PPM tool', 'The tool assessment automatically calculates your annual budget per user, which is reflected in the bubble chart analysis (see next slide)'.

    Review the tool assessment graphic

    Associated Activity icon 3.1.3 – 20 minutes

    The map comparing commercial PPM tools from before, this time overlaid with 'Near-Term' and 'Long-Term' budgets as coloured circles. The vertical axis is 'Functionality Rating' and the horizontal axis is now 'Annual Cost/Budget per User'. 'Spreadsheets' are low functionality and low cost. 'Google Sites' are low to middling functionality and low cost. 'SharePoint' is middling functionality with a slightly higher cost. The 'Near-Term' budget circle covers those three tools. The next three start at middling cost and above-average functionality and trend higher in both categories: 'Commercial Entry-Level PPM', 'Commercial Mid-Market PPM', and 'Commercial Enterprise PPM'. The 'Long-Term' budget circle covers 'Commercial Mid-Market PPM'.

    If you are in one of the non-covered areas, consider revisiting your functional requirements and PPM strategy. You may need to lessen your expectations to be able to stay within your budget, or find a way to get more money.

    Keep in mind that the long-term goal can be to work towards a commercial tool, while the short-term goal would be to be able to maintain your portfolio in a simple spreadsheet first.

    Info-Tech Insight

    If you choose a commercial solution, you will need to gain executive buy-in in order to implement the tool; proceed to near-term and long-term plans to get the ball rolling on this decision.

    Review and customize slide 37, “Tools for PPM: proposed near- and long-term solutions,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Grow your own, or select and implement, a PPM solution with Info-Tech

    Whether you choose spreadsheet-based or commercially available PPM solutions, use Info-Tech’s research for scoping, designing, and implementing them.

    Info-Tech’s Grow Your Own PPM Solution blueprint will help you implement a highly evolved spreadsheet-based PPM solution. It features the Portfolio Manager 2017, a Microsoft Excel-based workbook that leverages its business intelligence features to provide a basis for implementing a scalable, highly customizable PPM tool with useful and easy-to-manipulate analytics.

    Read Info-Tech’s Grow Your Own PPM Solution blueprint.

    Info-Tech’s Select and Implement a PPM Solution blueprint is part of our Vendor Landscape research. Make sense of the diversity of PPM solutions available in today’s market, and choose the most appropriate solutions for your organization’s size and level of PPM maturity.

    Read Info-Tech’s Select and Implement a PPM Solution blueprint.

    A right-sized PPM strategy leads to a right-sized portfolio management tool based on Info-Tech’s template

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Energy
    Source: Info-Tech Client

    “The approach makes it easy to run the portfolio without taking time away from the project themselves.” (IT Manager, Energy Resources Firm)

    Situation

    • A small IT department struggled with balancing project work with ongoing operational management and support work.
    • The department includes experienced and successful project managers and a mature, skilled team.
    • However, the nature of the department’s role has evolved to the point where the project and operational work demands have exceeded the available time.
    • Prioritization needed to become more centralized and formalized while management control of the work assignments became increasingly decentralized.

    Complication

    • Agile projects offer clear advantages by lightening the requirement for proactive planning. However, getting the staff to adapt would be challenging because of the overall workload and competing priorities.
    • Some of the team’s time needed to be carefully tracked and reported for time & materials-based billing, but the time sheet system was unsuited to their portfolio management needs.
    • Commercial PPM systems were ruled out because strict task management seemed unlikely to gain adoption.

    Resolution

    • The team deployed Info-Tech’s Project Portfolio Workbook, based on a Microsoft Excel template, and the Grow Your Own PPM Solution blueprint.
    • For the first time, executive leadership was given a 12-month forecast of resource capacity based on existing and pending project commitments. The data behind the capacity forecast was based on allocating people to projects with a percentage of their time for each calendar month.
    • The data behind the forecast is high level but easily maintainable.

    Step 3.2: Finalize customizing your PPM Strategic Plan Template

    PHASE 1

    PHASE 2

    PHASE 3

    1.11.22.12.23.13.2
    Choose the right PPM strategyTranslate strategy into process goalsDefine intake & resource mgmt. processesDefine reporting, closure, & benefits mgmt. processesSelect a right-sized PPM solutionFinalize your PPM strategic plan

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine the costs of support your PPM strategic plan.
    • Estimate some of the benefits of your PPM strategic plan.
    • Perform a cost-benefit analysis.
    • Refine and consolidate the near-term action items into a cohesive plan.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • CIO
    • PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
    • Project Managers
    • IT Managers

    Outcomes of this step

    • A cost/benefit analyst
    • An implementation action plan
    • A finalized PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Estimate the total cost-in-use of managing the project portfolio

    Supporting Tool icon 3.2.1 – PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 5: Costing Summary

    The time cost of PPM processes (tab 3) and PPM tool costs (tab 4) are summarized in this tab. Enter additional data to estimate the total PPM cost-in-use: the setup information and the current cost of PPM software tools.

    Screenshot of the PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 5: Costing Summary. Notes include 'If unknown, the overall HR budget of your project portfolio can be estimated as: (# FTEs) * (fully-loaded FTE cost per hour) * 1800', 'This is your total PPM cost-in-use'.

    Estimate the benefits of managing the project portfolio

    Supporting Tool icon 3.2.2 – PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 6: Benefits Assumptions

    The benefits of PPM processes are estimated by projecting the sources of waste on your resource capacity.

    1. Estimate the current extent of waste on your resource capacity. If you have completed Info-Tech’s PPM Current Score Scorecard, enter the data from the report.
    2. Screenshot of a Waste Assessment pie chart from the PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 6: Benefits Assumptions.
    3. Given your near- and long-term action items for improving PPM processes, estimate how each source of waste on your resource capacity will change.
    4. Screenshot of a Waste Assessment table titled 'These inputs represent the percentage of your overall portfolio budget that is wasted in each scenario' from the PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 6: Benefits Assumptions.

    Review the cost-benefit analysis results and update the PPM Strategic Plan Template

    Supporting Tool icon 3.2.3 – PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 7: Conclusion Screenshot of a 'PPM Strategy Cost-Benefit Analysis' from the PPM Strategy Development Tool, Tab 7: Conclusion. It has tables on top and bar charts underneath.

    This tab summarizes the costs and benefits of your PPM strategic plan.

    • Costs are estimated from wasted project capacity and time spent on PPM process work.
    • Benefits are estimated from the project capacity to be reclaimed as a result of improvements in PPM.
    • Return on investment is calculated by dividing the value of project capacity to be reclaimed by investment in PPM in addition to the current-state cost.

    Capture this summary in your PPM strategic plan.

    Customize slides 40 and 41, “Return on PPM investment,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Determine who will be responsible for coordinating the flow, collection, and reporting of portfolio data

    Supporting Tool icon 3.2.3 – Project Portfolio/PMO Analyst Job Description

    You will need to determine responsibilities and accountabilities for portfolio management functions within your team.

    If you do not have a clearly identifiable portfolio manager at this time, you will need to clarify who will wear which hats in terms of facilitating intake and prioritization, high-level capacity awareness, and portfolio reporting.

    • Use Info-Tech’s Project Portfolio Analyst Job Description Template to help clarify some of the required responsibilities to support your PPM strategy.
      • If you need to bring in an additional staff member to help support the strategy, you can customize the job description template to help advertise the position. Simply edit the text in grey within the template.
    • If you have other PPM tasks that you need to define responsibilities for, you can use the RASCI chart on the final tab of the PPM Strategy Develop Tool.

    Download Info-Tech’s Project Portfolio Analyst Job Description Template.

    Sample of Info-Tech's Project Portfolio Analyst Job Description Template.

    Refine and consolidate the near-term action items into a cohesive plan

    Associated Activity icon 3.2.4 – 30 minutes

    INPUT: Near-term action items

    OUTPUT: Near-term action plan

    Materials: PPM Strategy Development Tool

    Participants: PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Business Analysts

    Collect the near-term action items for each of the five PPM processes and arrange them into a table that outlines the near-term action plan. Once it is compiled, adjust the timeline and responsibility so that the plan is coherent and realistic as a whole.

    Example:

    Outcome

    Action required

    Timeline

    Responsibility

    Determine the percentage distribution of project vs. non-project work Run a time audit survey with all project resources 2 weeks Resource managers
    Test a simple dashboard for project status Pilot Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager 2017 workbook 2 weeks PMO Director

    "There is a huge risk of taking on too much too soon, especially with the introduction of specific tools and tool sets. There is also an element of risk involved that can lead to failure and disappointment with PPM if these tools are not properly introduced and supported." (Jim Carse, Director of the Portfolio Office, Queen’s University)

    Review and customize slide 43, “Summary of near-term action plan,” in Info-Tech’s PPM Strategic Plan Template.

    Finalize and publish your PPM strategic plan

    Table of Contents

    Read over the document to ensure its completeness and consistency.

    At this point, you have a PPM strategic plan that is actionable and realistic, which addresses the goals set by the senior leadership.

    The executive brief establishes the need for PPM strategy, the goals and metrics are set by members of the senior leadership that gave the initial buy-in, and the target states of PPM processes that meet those goals are described. Finally, the costs and benefits of the improved PPM practice are laid out in a way that can be validated.

    The next step for your PPM strategy is to use this document as a foundation for implementing and operationalizing the target-state PPM processes.

    Review and publish the document for your executive layer and key project stakeholders. Solicit their feedback.

    Info-Tech has a library of blueprints that will guide you through each of the five processes. Contact your Info-Tech account manager or Info-Tech analyst to get started.

    • Project Portfolio Management Strategy
      • Strategic Expectations
      • Overview
    • Leadership Mandate
    • Project Demand and Resource Supply
    • The Current State of Resource Utilization
    • PPM Processes
      • Project intake, prioritization, and approval
      • Resource management
      • Portfolio reporting
      • Project closure
      • Benefits realization
      • Tools for PPM
    • The Economic Impact of PPM
    • PPM Strategy Next Steps

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of Barry Cousins.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    Sample of activity 3.1 'Scope the right-sized PPM solution for your PPM strategy'. Scope the right-sized PPM solution for your PPM strategy

    Use the PPM Strategy Development Tool to quickly determine our near- and long-term recommendation for your PPM solution.

    Sample of activity 3.2 'Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of your PPM strategic plan'. Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of your PPM strategic plan

    Using the time cost estimates of each process and the requirement for a PPM tool, Info-Tech helps you quantify the overhead costs of PPM and estimate the monetary benefits of reclaimed project capacity for your project portfolio.

    Insight breakdown

    Insight 1

    • Executive layer buy-in is a critical prerequisite for the success of a top-down PPM strategy. Ensure your executives are on board before preceding to implement your PPM strategy.

    Insight 2

    • The means of project and portfolio management (i.e. processes) shouldn’t eclipse the ends – strategic goals. Root your process in your PPM strategic goals to realize PPM benefits (e.g. optimized portfolio value, improved project throughput, increased stakeholder satisfaction).

    Insight 3

    • Without the proper information, decision makers are driving blind and are forced to make gut-feel decisions as opposed to data-informed decisions. Implement a PPM solution to allocate projects properly and ensure time and money don’t vanish without being accounted for.

    Summary of accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • Info-Tech’s thought model on PPM processes that create an infrastructure around projects
    • Your current state of project portfolio: project capacity vs. project demand
    • Importance of gaining executive buy-in for installing the PPM practice

    Processes Optimized

    • Project intake, prioritization, and approval process
    • Resource management process
    • Portfolio reporting process
    • Project closure process
    • Benefits realization process

    Deliverables Completed

    • Choice of PPM strategy and the leadership mandate
    • Analysis of current project capacity and demand
    • PPM process goals and metrics, aligned to meet PPM strategic expectations
    • PPM process capability levels
    • Retrospective examination of current state, near/long-term action items for improvement, and high-level descriptions of the five PPM processes
    • Recommendation of PPM tools to support the processes
    • Estimate of PPM overhead costs
    • Cost-benefit analysis of PPM practice
    • PPM strategic plan

    Related Info-Tech Research

    • Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy
    • Grow Your Own PPM Solution
    • Optimize Project Intake, Approval, and Prioritization
    • Develop a Resource Management Strategy for the New Reality
    • Manage a Minimum-Viable PMO
    • Establish the Benefits Realization Process
    • Manage an Agile Portfolio
    • Establish the Benefits Realization Process
    • Project Portfolio Management Diagnostic Program
      The Project Portfolio Management Diagnostic Program is a low-effort, high-impact program designed to help project owners assess and improve their PPM practices. Gather and report on all aspects of your PPM environment in order to understand where you stand and how you can improve.

    Research contributors and experts

    Photo of Kiron D. Bondale PMP, PMI-RMP, CDAP, CDAI, Senior Project Portfolio Management Professional Kiron D. Bondale PMP, PMI-RMP, CDAP, CDAI
    Senior Project Portfolio Management Professional

    Kiron has worked in the project management domain for more than fifteen years managing multiple projects, leading Project Management Offices (PMO) and providing project portfolio management consulting services to over a hundred clients across multiple industries. He has been an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) since 1999 and served as a volunteer director on the Board of the PMI Lakeshore Chapter for six years. Kiron has published articles on project and project portfolio management in multiple journals and has delivered over a hundred webinar presentations on a variety of PPM and PM topics and has presented at multiple industry conferences. Since 2009, Kiron has been blogging on a weekly basis on project management topics and responds to questions daily in the LinkedIn PMI Project, Program and Portfolio Management discussion group.

    Photo of Shaun Cahill, Project Manager, Queen’s University Shaun Cahill, Project Manager &
    Jim Carse, Director of the Project Portfolio Office
    Queen’s University

    Research contributors and experts

    Photo of Amy Fowler Stadler, Managing Partner, Lewis Fowler Amy Fowler Stadler, Managing Partner
    Lewis Fowler

    Amy has more than 20 years of experience in business and technology, most recently owning her own management consulting firm since 2002, focused on business transformation, technology enablement, and operational improvement. Prior to that, she was at CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) as an IT Director, Perot Systems in various roles, and Information Handling Services, Inc. as a Software Development Product Manager.

    Amy holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a minor in Business Communications and is also a 2015 Hall of Fame inductee to Illinois State University College of Applied Science and Technology.

    Photo of Rick Morris, President, R2 Consulting LLC Rick Morris, President
    R2 Consulting LLC

    Rick A. Morris, PMP, is a certified Scrum Agile Master, Human Behavior Consultant, best-selling author, mentor, and evangelist for project management. Rick is an accomplished project manager and public speaker. His appetite for knowledge and passion for the profession makes him an internationally sought after speaker delivering keynote presentations for large conferences and PMI events around the world. He holds the PMP (Project Management Professional), MPM (Masters of Project Management), Scrum Agile Master, OPM3, Six Sigma Green Belt, MCITP, MCTS, MCSE, TQM, ATM-S, ITIL, and ISO certifications, and is a John Maxwell Certified Speaker, Mentor, and Coach. Rick is the Owner of R2 Consulting, LLC and has worked for organizations such as GE, Xerox, and CA, and has consulted with numerous clients in a wide variety of industries including financial services, entertainment, construction, non-profit, hospitality, pharmaceutical, retail, and manufacturing.

    Research contributors and experts

    Photo of Terry Lee Ricci PgMP, PfMP, PMP, PPM Practice Lead, IAG Consulting Terry Lee Ricci PgMP, PfMP, PMP, PPM Practice Lead
    IAG Consulting

    Terry is passionate and highly skilled at PMO transformation, developing high-performing teams that sustain long-term business results. Terry has a reputation built upon integrity, resourcefulness, and respect. She has the vision to implement long and short-term strategies, meeting both current and evolving business needs.

    Change Management/Business transformation: Terry has extensive background in PMO strategy development aligned to corporate goals. Many years in the PMO organization integration/transformation building or overhauling programs and processes.

    Governance: Terry loves to monitor and measure performance and outcomes and uses her collaborative style to successfully bring simplicity to complexity (technology – people – process). Performance optimization results are easy to use and clearly define who is doing what across functions. End results consistently align to business strategy while mitigating risks effectively.

    Comprehensive: A “through the ranks” executive with a comprehensive understanding of PMO operations, high-performance teams, and the respective business units they support.

    Photo of Alana Ruckstuhl MSc, IT Project Officer, Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario Alana Ruckstuhl MSc, IT Project Officer
    Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario

    Research contributors and experts

    Photo of Jay Wardle, Director of the PMO, Red Wing Shoes Co. Jay Wardle, Director of the PMO
    Red Wing Shoes Co.
    Photo of Bob White, Vice President/Chief Information Officer, ALM Holding Company Bob White, Vice President/Chief Information Officer
    ALM Holding Company

    As vice president and chief information officer for ALM Holding Company, Bob White directs all technology activity and support for three main verticals: road construction, energy management, and delivery and transportation. He has been with ALM Holding Company for one and a half years, focusing on PPM process improvement, cybersecurity initiatives, and IT service management.

    Prior to joining ALM, Bob was executive vice president/chief information officer at Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. where he led the strategic direction, implementation, and management of information technology throughout the company’s global operations. Bob has also held VP/CIO positions at the Stride Rite Corporation and Timex Corporation.

    Bob holds a Master’s degree in Operations Management from the University of Arkansas and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Southern Illinois University.

    Bibliography

    Bersin, Josh. “Time to Scrap Performance Appraisals?” Forbes Magazine, 5 June 2013. Web. 30 Oct 2013.

    Cheese, Peter et al. “Creating an Agile Organization.” Accenture, Oct. 2009. Web. Nov. 2013.

    Croxon, Bruce et al. “Dinner Series: Performance Management with Bruce Croxon from CBC's 'Dragon's Den'” HRPA Toronto Chapter. Sheraton Hotel, Toronto, ON. 12 Nov. 2013. Panel discussion.

    Culbert, Samuel. “10 Reasons to Get Rid of Performance Reviews.” Huffington Post Business, 18 Dec. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

    Denning, Steve. “The Case Against Agile: Ten Perennial Management Objections.” Forbes Magazine, 17 Apr. 2012. Web. Nov. 2013.

    Estis, Ryan. “Blowing up the Performance Review: Interview with Adobe’s Donna Morris.” Ryan Estis & Associates, 17 June 2013. Web. Oct. 2013.

    Gallup, Inc. “Gallup Study: Engaged Employees Inspire Company Innovation.” Gallup Management Journal, 12 Oct. 2006. Web. 12 Jan 2012.

    Gartside, David et al. “Trends Reshaping the Future of HR.” Accenture, 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

    KeyedIn Solutions. “Why PPM and PMOs Fail.” KeyedIn Projects, 2013. Ebook.

    Lessing, Lawrence. Free Culture. Lulu Press Inc.: 30 July 2016.

    Merkhofer, Lee. “Keys to Implementing Project Portfolio Management.” Lee Merkhofer Consulting, 2017.

    Perry, Mark Price. Business Driven Project Portfolio Management. J Ross Pub: 17 May 2011.

    Project Management Institute. “Pulse of the Profession 2015: Capturing the Value of Project Management.” PMI, Feb. 2015. Web.

    Project Management Institute. “Pulse of the Profession 2016: The High Cost of Low Performance.” PMI, 2016. Web.

    Project Management Institute. “Pulse of the Profession 2017: Success Rates Rise.” PMI, 2017. Web.

    Project Management Institute. The Standard for Portfolio Management – Third Edition. PMI: 1 Dec. 2012.

    WGroup. “Common Pitfalls in Project Portfolio Management – Part 2.” WGroup, 24 Jan. 2017. Web.

    Security Priorities 2023

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}254|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $909 Average $ Saved
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    • Parent Category Name: Security Strategy & Budgeting
    • Parent Category Link: /security-strategy-and-budgeting
    • Most people still want a hybrid work model but there is a shortage in security workforce to maintain secure remote work, which impacts confidence in the security practice.
    • Pressure of operational excellence drives organizational modernization with the consequence of higher risks of security attacks that impact not only cyber but also physical systems.
    • The number of regulations with stricter requirements and reporting is increasing, along with high sanctions for violations.
    • Accurate assessment of readiness and benefits to adopt next-gen cybersecurity technologies can be difficult. Additionally, regulation often faces challenges to keep up with next-gen cybersecurity technologies implications and risks of adoption, which may not always be explicit.
    • Software is usually produced as part of a supply chain instead in a silo. Thus, a vulnerability in any part of the supply chain can become a threat surface.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Secure remote work still needs to be maintained to facilitate the hybrid work model post pandemic.
    • Despite all the cybersecurity risks, organizations continue modernization plans due to the long-term overall benefits. Hence, we need to secure organization modernization.
    • Organizations should use regulatory changes to improve security practices, instead of treating them as a compliance burden.
    • Next-gen cybersecurity technologies alone are not the silver bullet. A combination of technologies with skilled talent, useful data, and best practices will give a competitive advantage.

    Impact and Result

    • Use this report to help decide your 2023 security priorities by:
      • Collecting and analyzing your own related data, such as your organization 2022 incident reports. Use Info-Tech’s Security Priorities 2023 material for guidance.
      • Identifying your needs and analyzing your capabilities. Use Info-Tech's template to explain the priorities you need to your stakeholders.
      • Determining the next steps. Refer to Info-Tech's recommendations and related research.

    Security Priorities 2023 Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Security Priorities 2023 Report – A report to help decide your 2023 security priorities.

    Each organization is different, so a generic list of security priorities will not be applicable to every organization. Thus, you need to:

  • Collect and analyze your own related data such as your organization 2022 incident reports. Use Info-Tech’s Security Priorities 2023 material for guidance.
  • Identify your needs and analyze your capabilities. Use Info-Tech's template to explain the priorities you need to your stakeholders.
  • Refer to Info-Tech's recommendations and related research for guidance on the next steps.
    • Security Priorities 2023 Report

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Security Priorities 2023

    How we live post pandemic

    Each organization is different, so a generic list of priorities will not be applicable to every organization.

    During 2022, ransomware campaigns declined from quarter to quarter due to the collapse of experienced groups. Several smaller groups are developing to recapture the lost ransomware market. However, ransomware is still the most worrying cyber threat.

    Also in 2022, people returned to normal activities such as traveling and attending sports or music events but not yet to the office. The reasons behind this trend can be many fold, such as employees perceive that work from home (WFH) has positive productivity effects and time flexibility for employees, especially for those with families with younger children. On the other side of the spectrum, some employers perceive that WFH has negative productivity effects and thus are urging employees to return to the office. However, employers also understand the competition to retain skilled workers is harder. Thus, the trend is to have hybrid work where eligible employees can WFH for a certain portion of their work week.

    Besides ransomware and the hybrid work model, in 2022, we saw an evolving threat landscape, regulatory changes, and the potential for a recession by the end of 2023, which can impact how we prioritize cybersecurity this year. Furthermore, organizations are still facing the ongoing issues of insufficient cybersecurity resources and organization modernization.

    This report will explore important security trends, the security priorities that stem from these trends, and how to customize these priorities for your organization.

    In Q2 2022, the median ransom payment was $36,360 (-51% from Q1 2022), a continuation of a downward trend since Q4 2021 when the ransom payment median was $117,116.
    Source: Coveware, 2022

    From January until October 2022, hybrid work grew in almost all industries in Canada especially finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing (+14.7%), public administration and professional services (+11.8%), and scientific and technical services (+10.8%).
    Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, October 2022; N=3,701

    Hybrid work changes processes and infrastructure

    Investment on remote work due to changes in processes and infrastructure

    As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we used the results from our State of Hybrid Work in IT Survey, which collected responses between July 10 and July 29, 2022 (total N=745, with n=518 completed surveys). This survey details what changes in processes and IT infrastructure are likely due to hybrid work.

    Process changes to support hybrid work

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: None of the above - 12%; Change management - 29%; Asset management - 34%; Service request support - 41%; Incident management - 42%

    Survey respondents (n=518) were asked what processes had the highest degree of change in response to supporting hybrid work. Incident management is the #1 result and service request support is #2. This is unsurprising considering that remote work changed how people communicate, how they access company assets, and how they connect to the company network and infrastructure.

    Infrastructure changes to support hybrid work

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Changed queue management and ticketing system(s) - 11%; Changed incident and service request processes - 23%; Addition of chatbots as part of the Service Desk intake process - 29%; Reduced the need for recovery office spaces and alternative work mitigations - 40%; Structure & day-to-day operation of Service Desk - 41%; Updated network architecture - 44%

    For 2023, we believe that hybrid work will remain. The first driver is that employees still prefer to work remotely for certain days of the week. The second driver is the investment from employers on enabling WFH during the pandemic, such as updated network architecture (44%) and the infrastructure and day-to-day operations (41%) as shown on our survey.

    Top cybersecurity concerns and organizational preparedness for them

    Concerns may correspond to readiness.

    In the Info-Tech Research Group 2023 Trends and Priorities Survey of IT professionals, we asked about cybersecurity concerns and the perception about readiness to meet current and future government legislation regarding cybersecurity requirements.

    Cybersecurity issues

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Cyber risks are not on the radar of the executive leaders or board of directors - 3.19; Organization is not prepared to respond to a cyber attack - 3.08; Supply chain risks related to cyber threats - 3.18; Talent shortages leading to capacity constraints in cyber security - 3.51; New government or industry-imposed regulations - 3.15

    Survey respondents were asked how concerned they are about certain cybersecurity issues from 1 (not concerned at all) to 5 (very concerned). The #1 concern was talent shortages. Other issues with similar concerns included cyber risks not on leadership's radar, supply chain risks, and new regulations (n=507).

    Cybersecurity legislation readiness

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: 1 (Not confident at all) - 2.4%; 2 - 11.2%; 3 - 39.7%; 4 - 33.3%; 5 (Very confident) - 13.4%

    When asked about how confident organizations are about being prepared to meet current and future government legislation regarding cybersecurity requirements, from 1 (not confident at all) to 5 (very confident), the #1 response was 3 (n=499).

    Unsurprisingly, the ever-changing government legislation environment in a world emerging from a pandemic and ongoing wars may not give us the highest confidence.

    We know the concerns and readiness…

    But what is the overall security maturity?

    As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we reviewed results of completed Info-Tech Research Group Security Governance and Management Benchmark diagnostics (N=912). This report details what we see in our clients' security governance maturity. Setting aside the perception on readiness – what are their actual security maturity levels?

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Security Culture - 47%; Policy and Process Governance - 47%; Event and Incident Management - 58%; Vulnerability - 57%; Auditing - 52%; Compliance Management - 58%; Risk Analysis - 52%

    Overall, assessed organizations are still scoring low (47%) on Security Culture and Policy and Process Governance. This justifies why most security incidents are still due to gaps in foundational security and security awareness, not lack of advanced controls such as event and incident management (58%).

    And how will the potential recession impact security?

    Organizations are preparing for recession, but opportunities for growth during recession should be well planned too.

    As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we reviewed the results of the Info-Tech Research Group 2023 Trends and Priorities Survey of IT professionals, which collected responses between August 9 and September 9, 2022 (total N=813 with n=521 completed surveys).

    Expected organizational spending on cybersecurity compared to the previous fiscal year

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: A decrease of more than 10% - 2.2%; A decrease of between 1-10% - 2.6%; About the same - 41.4%; An increase of between 1-10% - 39.6%; An increase of more than 10% - 14.3%

    Keeping the same spending is the #1 result and #2 is increasing spending up to 10%. This is a surprising finding considering the survey was conducted after the middle of 2022 and a recession has been predicted since early 2022 (n=489).

    An infographic titled Cloudy with a Chance of Recession

    Source: Statista, 2022, CC BY-ND

    US recession forecast

    Contingency planning for recessions normally includes tight budgeting; however, it can also include opportunities for growth such as hiring talent who have been laid off by competitors and are difficult to acquire in normal conditions. This can support our previous findings on increasing cybersecurity spending.

    Five Security Priorities for 2023

    This image describes the Five Security Priorities for 2023.

    Maintain Secure Hybrid Work

    PRIORITY 01

    • HOW TO STRATEGICALLY ACQUIRE, RETAIN, OR UPSKILL TALENT TO MAINTAIN SECURE SYSTEMS.

    Executive summary

    Background

    If anything can be learned from COVID-19 pandemic, it is that humans are resilient. We swiftly changed to remote workplaces and adjusted people, processes, and technologies accordingly. We had some hiccups along the way, but overall, we demonstrated that our ability to adjust is amazing.

    The pandemic changed how people work and how and where they choose to work, and most people still want a hybrid work model. However, the number of days for hybrid work itself varies. For example, from our survey in July 2022 (n=516), 55.8% of employees have the option of 2-3 days per week to work offsite, 21.0% for 1 day per week, and 17.8% for 4 days per week.

    Furthermore, the investment (e.g. on infrastructure and networks) to initiate remote work was huge, and the cost doesn't end there, as we need to maintain the secure remote work infrastructure to facilitate the hybrid work model.

    Current situation

    Remote work: A 2022 survey by WFH Research (N=16,451) reports that ~14% of full-time employees are fully remote and ~29% are in a hybrid arrangement as of Summer-Fall 2022.

    Security workforce shortage: A 2022 survey by Bridewell (N=521) reports that 68% of leaders say it has become harder to recruit the right people, impacting organizational ability to secure and monitor systems.

    Confidence in the security practice: A 2022 diagnostic survey by Info-Tech Research Group (N=55) reports that importance may not correspond to confidence; for example, the most important selected cybersecurity area, namely Data Access/Integrity (93.7%), surprisingly has the lowest confidence of the practice (80.5%).

    "WFH doubled every 15 years pre-pandemic. The increase in WFH during the pandemic was equal to 30 years of pre-pandemic growth."

    Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021

    Leaders must do more to increase confidence in the security practice

    Importance may not correspond to confidence

    As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we analyzed results from the Info-Tech Research Group diagnostics. This report details what we see in our clients' perceived importance of security and their confidence in existing security practices.

    Cybersecurity importance

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Importance to the Organization - 94.3%; Importance to My Department	92.2%

    Cybersecurity importance areas

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Mobility (Remote & Mobile Access) - 90.2%; Regulatory Compliance - 90.1%; Desktop Computing - 90.9%; Data Access / Integrity - 93.7%

    Confidence in cybersecurity practice

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Confidence in the Organization's Overall Security - 79.4%; Confidence in Security for My Department - 79.8%

    Confidence in cybersecurity practice areas

    A bar graph is depicted with the following dataset: Mobility (Remote & Mobile Access) - 75.8%; Regulatory Compliance - 81.5%; Desktop Computing - 80.9%; Data Access / Integrity - 80.5%

    Diagnostics respondents (N=55) were asked about how important security is to their organization or department. Importance to the overall organization is 2.1 percentage points (pp) higher, but confidence in the organization's overall security is slightly lower (-0.4 pp).

    If we break down to security areas, we can see that the most important area, Data Access/Integrity (93.7%), surprisingly has the lowest confidence of the practice: 80.5%. From this data we can conclude that leaders must build a strong cybersecurity workforce to increase confidence in the security practice.

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Maintain secure hybrid work plan

    Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

    Build a strong cybersecurity workforce to increase confidence in the security practice to facilitate hybrid work.

    Initiative Description:

    • Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.
    • Review your security strategy for hybrid work.
    • Identify skills gaps that hinder the successful execution of the hybrid work security strategy.
    • Use the identified skill gaps to define the technical skill requirements for current and future work roles.
    • Conduct a skills assessment on your current workforce to identify employee skill gaps.
    • Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource each skill gap.

    Drivers:

    List initiative drivers.

    • Employees still prefer to WFH for certain days of the week.
    • The investment on WFH during pandemic such as updated network architecture and infrastructure and day-to-day operations.
    • Tech companies' huge layoffs, e.g. Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees.

    Risks:

    List initiative risks and impacts.

    • Unskilled workers lacking certificates or years of experience who are trained and become skilled workers then quit or are hijacked by competitors.
    • Organizational and cultural changes cause friction with work-life balance.
    • Increased attack surface of remote/hybrid workforce.

    Benefits:

    List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

    • Increase perceived productivity by employees and increase retention.
    • Increase job satisfaction and work-life balance.
    • Hiring talent that has been laid off who are difficult to acquire in normal conditions.

    Related Info-Tech Research:

    Recommended Actions

    1. Identify skill requirements to maintain secure hybrid work

    Review your security strategy for hybrid work.

    Determine the skill needs of your security strategy.

    2. Identify skill gaps

    Identify skills gaps that hinder the successful execution of the hybrid work security strategy.

    Use the identified skill gaps to define the technical skill requirements for work roles.

    3. Decide whether to build or buy skills

    Conduct a skills assessment on your current workforce to identify employee skill gaps.

    Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource each skill gap.

    Source: Close the InfoSec Skills Gap: Develop a Technical Skills Sourcing Plan, Info-Tech

    Secure Organization Modernization

    PRIORITY 02

    • TRENDS SUGGEST MODERNIZATION SUCH AS DIGITAL
      TRANSFORMATION TO THE CLOUD, OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (OT),
      AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) IS RISING; ADDRESSING THE RISK
      OF CONVERGING ENVIRONMENTS CAN NO LONGER BE DEFERRED.

    Executive summary

    From computerized milk-handling systems in Wisconsin farms, to automated railway systems in Europe, to Ausgrid's Distribution Network Management System (DNMS) in Australia, to smart cities and beyond; system modernization poses unique challenges to cybersecurity.

    The threats can be safety, such as the trains stopped in Denmark during the last weekend of October 2022 for several hours due to an attack on a third-party IT service provider; economics, such as a cream cheese production shutdown that occurred at the peak of cream cheese demand in October 2021 due to hackers compromising a large cheese manufacturer's plants and distribution centers; and reliability, such as the significant loss of communication for the Ukrainian military, which relied on Viasat's services.

    Despite all the cybersecurity risks, organizations continue modernization plans due to the long-term overall benefits.

    Current situation

    • Pressure of operational excellence: Competitive markets cannot keep pace with demand without modernization. For example, in automated milking systems, the labor time saved from milking can be used to focus on other essential tasks such as the decision-making process.
    • Technology offerings: Technologies are available and affordable such as automated equipment, versatile communication systems, high-performance human machine interaction (HMI), IIoT/Edge integration, and big data analytics.
    • Higher risks of cyberattacks: Modernization enlarges attack surfaces, which are not only cyber but also physical systems. Most incidents indicate that attackers gained access through the IT network, which was followed by infiltration into OT networks.

    IIoT market size is USD 323.62 billion in 2022 and projected to be around USD 1 trillion in 2028.

    Source: Statista,
    March 2022

    Modernization brings new opportunities and new threats

    Higher risks of cyberattacks on Industrial Control System (ICS)

    Target: Australian sewage plant.

    Method: Insider attack. Impact: 265,000 gallons of untreated sewage released.

    Target: Middle East energy companies.

    Method: Shamoon.

    Impact: Overwritten Windows-based systems files.

    Target: German Steel Mill

    Method: Spear-phishing

    Impact: Blast furnace control shutdown failure.

    Target: Middle East Safety Instrumented System (SIS).

    Method: TRISIS/TRITON.

    Impact: Modified safety system ladder logic.

    Target: Viasat's KA-SAT Network.

    Method: AcidRain.

    Impact: Significant loss of communication for the Ukrainian military, which relied on Viasat's services.

    A timeline displaying the years 1903; 2000; 2010; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2018; 2019; 2021; 2022 is displayed.

    Target: Marconi wireless telegraphs presentation. Method: Morse code.

    Impact: Fake message sent "Rats, rats, rats, rats. There was a young fellow of Italy, Who diddled the public quite prettily."

    Target: Iranian uranium enrichment plant.

    Method: Stuxnet.

    Impact: Compromised programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

    Target: ICS supply chain.

    Method: Havex.

    Impact: Remote Access Trojan (RAT) collected information and uploaded data to command-and-control (C&C) servers.

    Target: Ukraine power grid.

    Method: BlackEnergy.

    Impact: Manipulation of HMI View causing 1-6 hour power outages for 230,000 consumers.

    Target: Colonial Pipeline.

    Method: DarkSide ransomware.

    Impact: Compromised billing infrastructure halted the pipeline operation.

    Sources:

    • DOE, 2018
    • CSIS, 2022
    • MIT Technology Review, 2022

    Info-Tech Insight

    Most OT incidents start with attacks against IT networks and then move laterally into the OT environment. Therefore, converging IT and OT security will help protect the entire organization.

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Secure organization modernization

    Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

    The systems (OT, IT, IIoT) are evolving now – ensure your security plan has you covered.

    Initiative Description:

    • Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.
    • Identify the drivers to align with your organization's business objectives.
    • Build your case by leveraging a cost-benefit analysis and update your security strategy.
    • Identify people, process, and technology gaps that hinder the modernization security strategy.
    • Use the identified skill gaps to update risks, policies and procedures, IR, DR, and BCP.
    • Evaluate and enable modernization technology top focus areas and refine security processes.
    • Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to fill the security workforce gap.

    Drivers:

    List initiative drivers.

    • Pressure of operational excellence
    • Technology offerings
    • Higher risks of cyberattacks

    Risks:

    List initiative risks and impacts.

    • Complex systems with many components to implement and manage require diligent change management.
    • Organizational and cultural changes cause friction between humans and machines.
    • Increased attack surface of cyber and physical systems.

    Benefits:

    List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

    • Improve service reliability through continuous and real-time operation.
    • Enhance efficiency through operations visibility and transparency.
    • Gain cost savings and efficiency to automate operations of complex and large equipment and instrumentations.

    Related Info-Tech Research:

    Recommended Actions

    1. Identify modernization business cases to secure

    Identify the drivers to align with your organization's business objectives.

    Build your case by leveraging a cost-benefit analysis, and update your security strategy.

    2. Identify gaps

    Identify people, process, and technology gaps that hinder the modernization
    security strategy.

    Use the identified skill gaps to update risks, policies and procedures, IR, DR, and BCP.

    3. Decide whether to build or buy capabilities

    Evaluate and enable modernization technology top focus areas and refine
    security processes.

    Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to fill the security workforce gap.

    Sources:

    Industrial Control System (ICS) Modernization: Unlock the Value of Automation in Utilities, Info-Tech

    Secure IT-OT Convergence, Info-Tech

    Develop a cost-benefit analysis

    Identify a modernization business case for security.

    Benefits

    Metrics

    Operational Efficiency and Cost Savings

    • Reduction in truck rolls and staff time of manual operations of equipment or instrumentation.
    • Cost reduction in energy usage such as substation power voltage level or water treatment chemical level.

    Improve Reliability and Resilience

    • Reduction in field crew time to identify the outage locations by remotely accessing field equipment to narrow down the
      fault areas.
    • Reduction in outage time impacting customers and avoiding financial penalty in service quality metrics.
    • Improve operating reliability through continuous and real-time trend analysis of equipment performance.

    Energy & Capacity Savings

    • Optimize energy usage of operation to reduce overall operating cost and contribution to organizational net-zero targets.

    Customers & Society Benefits

    • Improve customer safety for essential services such as drinkable water consumption.
    • Improve reliability of services and address service equity issues based on data.

    Cost

    Metrics

    Equipment and Infrastructure

    Upgrade existing security equipment or instrumentation or deploy new, e.g. IPS on Enterprise DMZ and Operations DMZ.

    Implement communication network equipment and labor to install and configure.

    Upgrade or construct server room including cooling/heating, power backup, and server and rack hardware.

    Software and Commission

    The SCADA/HMI software and maintenance fee as well as lifecycle upgrade implementation project cost.

    Labor cost of field commissioning and troubleshooting.

    Integration with security systems, e.g. log management and continuous monitoring.

    Support and Resources

    Cost to hire/outsource security FTEs for ongoing managing and operating security devices, e.g. SOC.

    Cost to hire/outsource IT/OT FTEs to support and troubleshoot systems and its integrations with security systems, e.g. MSSP.

    An example of a cost-benefit analysis for ICS modernization

    Sources:

    Industrial Control System (ICS) Modernization: Unlock the Value of Automation in Utilities, Info-Tech

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2021

    IT-OT convergence demands new security approach and solutions

    Identify gaps

    Attack Vectors

    IT

    • User's compromised credentials
    • User's access device, e.g. laptop, smartphone
    • Access method, e.g. denial-of-service to modem, session hijacking, bad data injection

    OT

    • Site operations, e.g. SCADA server, engineering workstation, historian
    • Controls, e.g. SCADA Client, HMI, PLCs, RTUs
    • Process devices, e.g. sensors, actuators, field devices

    Defense Strategies

    • Limit exposure of system information
    • Identify and secure remote access points
    • Restrict tools and scripts
    • Conduct regular security audits
    • Implement a dynamic network environment

    (Control System Defense: Know the Opponent, CISA)

    An example of a high-level architecture of an electric utility's control system and its interaction with IT systems.

    An example of a high-level architecture of an electric utility's control system and its interaction with IT systems.

    Source: ISA-99, 2007

    RESPOND TO REGULATORY CHANGES

    PRIORITY 03

    • GOVERNMENT-ENACTED POLICY CHANGES AND INDUSTRY REGULATORY CHANGES COULD BE A COMPLIANCE BURDEN … OR PREVENT YOUR NEXT SECURITY INCIDENT.

    Executive summary

    Background

    Government-enacted regulatory changes are occurring at an ever-increasing rate these days. As one example, on November 10, 2022, the EU Parliament introduced two EU cybersecurity laws: the Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive (applicable to organizations located within the EU and organizations outside the EU that are essential within an EU country) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). There are also industry regulatory changes such as PCI DSS v4.0 for the payment sector and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) for Bulk Electric Systems (BES).

    Organizations should use regulatory changes as a means to improve security practices, instead of treating them as a compliance burden. As said by lead member of EU Parliament Bart Groothuis on NIS2, "This European directive is going to help around 160,000 entities tighten their grip on security […] It will also enable information sharing with the private sector and partners around the world. If we are being attacked on an industrial scale, we need to respond on an industrial scale."

    Current situation

    Stricter requirements and reporting: Regulations such as NIS2 include provisions for incident response, supply chain security, and encryption and vulnerability disclosure and set tighter cybersecurity obligations for risk management reporting obligations.

    Broader sectors: For example, the original NIS directive covers 19 sectors such as Healthcare, Digital Infrastructure, Transport, and Energy. Meanwhile, the new NIS2 directive increases to 35 sectors by adding other sectors such as providers of public electronic communications networks or services, manufacturing of certain critical products (e.g. pharmaceuticals), food, and digital services.

    High sanctions for violations: For example, Digital Services Act (DSA) includes fines of up to 6% of global turnover and a ban on operating in the EU single market in case of repeated serious breaches.

    Approximately 100 cross-border data flow regulations exist in 2022.

    Source: McKinsey, 2022

    Stricter requirements for payments

    Obligation changes to keep up with emerging threats and technologies

    64 New requirements were added
    A total of 64 requirements have been added to version 4.0 of the PCI DSS.

    13 New requirements become effective March 31, 2024
    The other 51 new requirements are considered best practice until March 31, 2025, at which point they will become effective.

    11 New requirements only for service providers
    11 of the new requirements are applicable only to entities that provide third-party services to merchants.

    Defined roles must be assigned for requirements.

    Focus on periodically assessing and documenting scope.

    Entities may choose a defined approach or a customized approach to requirements.

    An example of new requirements for PCI DSS v4.0

    Source: Prepare for PCI DSS v4.0, Info-Tech

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Respond to regulatory changes

    Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

    The compliance obligations are evolving – ensure your security plan has you covered.

    Initiative Description:

    Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.

    • Identify relevant security and privacy compliance and conformance levels.
    • Identify gaps for updated obligations, and map obligations into control framework.
    • Review, update, and implement policies and strategy.
    • Develop compliance exception process and forms.
    • Develop test scripts.
    • Track status and exceptions

    Drivers:

    List initiative drivers.

    • Pressure of new regulations
    • Governance, risk & compliance (GRC) tool offerings
    • High administrative or criminal penalties of non-compliance

    Risks:

    List initiative risks and impacts.

    • Complex structures and a great number of compliance requirements
    • Restricted budget and lack of skilled workforce for organizations such as local municipalities and small or medium organizations compared to private counterparts
    • Personal liability for some regulations for non-compliance

    Benefits:

    List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

    • Reduces compliance risk.
    • Reduces complexity within the control environment by using a single framework to align multiple compliance regimes.
    • Reduces costs and efforts related to managing IT audits through planning and preparation.

    Related Info-Tech Research:

    Recommended Actions

    1. Identify compliance obligations

    Identify relevant security and privacy obligations and conformance levels.

    Identify gaps for updated obligations, and map obligations into control framework.

    2. Implement compliance strategy

    Review, update, and implement policies and strategy.

    Develop compliance exception process.

    3. Track and report

    Develop test scripts to check your remediations to ensure they are effective.

    Track and report status and exceptions.

    Sources: Build a Security Compliance Program and Prepare for PCI DSS v4.0, Info-Tech

    Identify relevant security and privacy compliance obligations

    Identify obligations

    # Security Jurisdiction
    1 Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive European Union (EU) and organizations outside the EU that are essential within an EU country
    2 North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) North American electrical utilities
    3 Executive Order (EO) 14028: Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity, The White House, 2021 United States

    #

    Privacy Jurisdiction
    1 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) EU and EU citizens
    2 Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) Canada
    3 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) California, USA
    4 Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (PIPL) China

    An example of security and privacy compliance obligations

    How much does it cost to become compliant?

    • It is important to understand the various frameworks and to adhere to the appropriate compliance obligations.
    • Many factors influence the cost of compliance, such as the size of organization, the size of network, and current security readiness.
    • To manage compliance obligations, it is important to use a platform that not only performs internal and external monitoring but also provides third-party vendors (if applicable) with visibility into potential threats in their organization.

    Adopt Next-Generation Cybersecurity Technologies

    PRIORITY 04

    • GOVERNMENTS AND HACKERS ARE RECOGNIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE AND AI-BASED CYBERSECURITY. SO SHOULD YOUR ORGANIZATION.

    Executive summary

    Background

    The cat and mouse game between threat actors and defenders is continuing. The looming question "can defenders do better?" has been answered with rapid development of technology. This includes the automation of threat analysis (signature-based, specification-based, anomaly-based, flow-based, content-based, sandboxing) not only on IT but also on other relevant environments, e.g. IoT, IIoT, and OT based on AI/ML.

    More fundamental approaches such as post-quantum cryptography and zero trust (ZT) are also emerging.
    ZT is a principle, a model, and also an architecture focused on resource protection by always verifying transactions using the least privilege principle. Hopefully in 2023, ZT will be more practical and not just a vendor marketing buzzword.

    Next-gen cybersecurity technologies alone are not a silver bullet. A combination of skilled talent, useful data, and best practices will give a competitive advantage. The key concepts are explainable, transparent, and trustworthy. Furthermore, regulation often faces challenges to keep up with next-gen cybersecurity technologies, especially with the implications and risks of adoption, which may not always be explicit.

    Current situation

    ZT: Performing an accurate assessment of readiness and benefits to adopt ZT can be difficult due to ZT's many components. Thus, an organization needs to develop a ZT roadmap that aligns with organizational goals and focuses on access to data, assets, applications, and services; don't select solutions or vendors too early.

    Post-quantum cryptography: Current cryptographic applications, such as RSA for PKI, rely on factorization. However, algorithms such as Shor's show quantum speedup for factorization, which can break current crypto when sufficient quantum computing devices are available. Thus, threat actors can intercept current encrypted information and store it to decrypt in the future.

    AI-based threat management: AI helps in analyzing and correlating data extremely fast compared to humans. Millions of telemetries, malware samples, raw events, and vulnerability data feed into the AI system, which humans cannot process manually. Furthermore, AI does not get tired in processing this big data, thus avoiding human error and negligence.

    Data breach mitigation cost without AI: USD 6.20 million; and with AI: USD 3.15 million

    Source: IBM, 2022

    Traditional security is not working

    Alert Fatigue

    Too many false alarms and too many events to process. Evolving threat landscapes waste your analysts' valuable time on mundane tasks, such as evidence collection. Meanwhile, only limited time is spared for decisions and conclusions, which results in the fear of missing an incident and alert fatigue.

    Lack of Insight

    To report progress, clear metrics are needed. However, cybersecurity still lacks in this area as the system itself is complex and some systems work in silos. Furthermore, lessons learned are not yet distilled into insights for improving future accuracy.

    Lack of Visibility

    System integration is required to create consistent workflows across the organization and to ensure complete visibility of the threat landscape, risks, and assets. Also, the convergence of OT, IoT, and IT enhances this challenge.

    Source: IBM Security Intelligence, 2020

    A business case for AI-based cybersecurity

    Threat management

    Prevention

    Risk scores are generated by machine learning based on variables such as behavioral patterns and geolocation. Zero trust architecture is combined with machine learning. Asset management leverages visibility using machine learning. Comply with regulations by improving discovery, classification, and protection of data using machine learning. Data security and data privacy services use machine learning for data discovery.

    Detection

    AI, advanced machine learning, and static approaches, such as code file analysis, combine to automatically detect and analyze threats and prevent threats from spreading, assisted by threat intelligence.

    Response

    AI helps in orchestrating security technologies for organizations to reduce the number of security agents installed, which may not talk to each other or, worse, may conflict with each other.

    Recovery

    AI continuously tunes based on lessons learned, such as creating security policies for improving future accuracy. AI also does not get fatigue, and it assists humans in a faster recovery.

    Prevention; Detection; Response; Recovery

    AI has been around since the 1940s, but why is it only gaining traction now? Because supporting technologies are only now available, including faster GPUs for complex computations and cheaper storage for massive volumes of data.

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Adopt next-gen cybersecurity technologies

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Develop a practical roadmap that shows the business value of next-gen cybersecurity technologies investment.

    Initiative Description:

    Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.

    • Identify the stakeholders who will be affected by the next-gen cybersecurity technologies implementation and define responsibilities based on skillsets and the degree of support.
    • Adopt well-established data governance practices for cross-functional teams.
    • Conduct a maturity assessment of key processes and highlight interdependencies.
    • Develop a baseline and periodically review risks, policies and procedures, and business plan.
    • Develop a roadmap and deploy next-gen cybersecurity architecture and controls step by step, working with trusted technology partners.
    • Monitor metrics on effectiveness and efficiency.

    Drivers:

    List initiative drivers.

    • Pressure of attacks by sophisticated threat actors
    • Next-gen cybersecurity technologies tool offerings
    • High cost of traditional security, e.g. longer breach lifecycle

    Risks:

    List initiative risks and impacts.

    • Lack of transparency of the model or bias, leading to non-compliance with policies/regulations
    • Risks related with data quality and inadequate data for model training
    • Adversarial attacks, including, but not limited to, adversarial input and model extraction

    Benefits:

    List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

    • Reduces the number of alerts, thus reduces alert fatigue.
    • Increases the identification of unknown threats.
    • Leads to faster detection and response.
    • Closes skills gap and increases productivity.

    Related Info-Tech Research:

    Recommended Actions

    1. People

    Identify the stakeholders who will be affected by the next-gen cybersecurity technologies implementation and define responsibilities based on skillsets and the degree of support.

    Adopt well-established data governance practices for cross-functional teams.

    2. Process

    Conduct a maturity assessment of key processes and highlight interdependencies.

    Develop a baseline and periodically review risks, policies and procedures, and business plan.

    3. Technology

    Develop a roadmap and deploy next-gen cybersecurity architecture and controls step by step, working with trusted technology partners.

    Monitor metrics on effectiveness and efficiency.

    Source: Leverage AI in Threat Management (keynote presentation), Info-Tech

    Secure Services and Applications

    PRIORITY 05

    • APIS ARE STILL THE #1 THREAT TO APPLICATION SECURITY.

    Executive summary

    Background

    Software is usually produced as part of a supply chain instead of in silos. A vulnerability in any part of the supply chain can become a threat surface. We have learned this from recent incidents such as Log4j, SolarWinds, and Kaseya where attackers compromised a Virtual System Administrator tool used by managed service providers to attack around 1,500 organizations.

    DevSecOps is a culture and philosophy that unifies development, security, and operations to answer this challenge. DevSecOps shifts security left by automating, as much as possible, development and testing. DevSecOps provides many benefits such as rapid development of secure software and assurance that, prior to formal release and delivery, tests are reliably performed and passed.

    DevSecOps practices can apply to IT, OT, IoT, and other technology environments, for example, by integrating a Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF).

    Current situation

    Secure Software Supply Chain: Logging is a fundamental feature of most software, and recently the use of software components, especially open source, are based on trust. From the Log4j incident we learned that more could be done to improve the supply chain by adopting ZT to identify related components and data flows between systems and to apply the least privilege principle.

    DevSecOps: A software error wiped out wireless services for thousands of Rogers customers across Canada in 2021. Emergency services were also impacted, even though outgoing 911 calls were always accessible. Losing such services could have been avoided, if tests were reliably performed and passed prior to release.

    OT insecure-by-design: In OT, insecurity-by-design is still a norm, which causes many vulnerabilities such as insecure protocols implementation, weak authentication schemes, or insecure firmware updates. Additional challenges are the lack of CVEs or CVE duplication, the lack of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), and product supply chains issues such as vulnerable products that are certified because of the scoping limitation and emphasis on functional testing.

    Technical causes of cybersecurity incidents in EU critical service providers in 2019-2021 shows: software bug (12%) and faulty software changes/update (9%).

    Source: CIRAS Incident reporting, ENISA (N=1,239)

    Software development keeps evolving

    DOD Maturation of Software Development Best Practices

    Best Practices 30 Years Ago 15 Years Ago Present Day
    Lifecycle Years or Months Months or Weeks Weeks or Days
    Development Process Waterfall Agile DevSecOps
    Architecture Monolithic N-Tier Microservices
    Deployment & Packaging Physical Virtual Container
    Hosting Infrastructure Server Data Center Cloud
    Cybersecurity Posture Firewall + SIEM + Zero Trust

    Best practices in software development are evolving as shown on the diagram to the left. For example, 30 years ago the lifecycle was "Years or Months," while in the present day it is "Weeks or Days."

    These changes also impact security such as the software architecture, which is no longer "Monolithic" but "Microservices" normally built within the supply chain.

    The software supply chain has known integrity attacks that can happen on each part of it. Starting from bad code submitted by a developer, to compromised source control platform (e.g. PHP git server compromised), to compromised build platform (e.g. malicious behavior injected on SolarWinds build), to a compromised package repository where users are deceived into using the bad package by the similarity between the malicious and the original package name.

    Therefore, we must secure each part of the link to avoid attacks on the weakest link.

    Software supply chain guidance

    Secure each part of the link to avoid attacks on the weakest link.

    Guide for Developers

    Guide for Suppliers

    Guide for Customers

    Secure product criteria and management, develop secure code, verify third-party components, harden build environment, and deliver code.

    Define criteria for software security checks, protect software, produce well-secured software, and respond to vulnerabilities.

    Secure procurement and acquisition, secure deployment, and secure software operations.

    Source: "Securing the Software Supply Chain" series, Enduring Security Framework (ESF), 2022

    "Most software today relies on one or more third-party components, yet organizations often have little or no visibility into and understanding of how these software components are developed, integrated, and deployed, as well as the practices used to ensure the components' security."

    Source: NIST – NCCoE, 2022

    Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

    Secure services and applications

    Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

    Adopt recommended practices for securing the software supply chain.

    Initiative Description:

    Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.

    • Define and keep security requirements and risk assessments up to date.
    • Require visibility into provenance of product, and require suppliers' self-attestation of security hygiene.
    • Verify distribution infrastructure, product and individual components integrity, and SBOM.
    • Use multi-layered defenses, e.g. ZT for integration and control configuration.
    • Train users on how to detect and report anomalies and when to apply updates to a system.
    • Ensure updates from authorized and authenticated sources and verify the integrity of the updated SBOM.

    Drivers:

    List initiative drivers.

    • Cyberattacks exploit the vulnerabilities of weak software supply chain
    • Increased need to enhance software supply chain security, e.g. under the White House Executive Order (EO) 14028
    • OT insecure-by-design hinders OT modernization

    Risks:

    List initiative risks and impacts.

    Only a few developers and suppliers explicitly address software security in detail.

    Time pressure to deliver functionality over security.

    Lack of security awareness and lack of trained workforce.

    Benefits:

    List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

    Customers (acquiring organizations) achieve secure acquisition, deployment, and operation of software.

    Developers and suppliers provide software security with minimal vulnerabilities in its releases.

    Automated processes such as automated testing avoid error-prone and labor-intensive manual test cases.

    Related Info-Tech Research:

    Recommended Actions

    1. Procurement and Acquisition

    Define and keep security requirements and risk assessments up to date.

    Perform analysis on current market and supplier solutions and acquire security evaluation.

    Require visibility into provenance of product, and require suppliers' self-attestation of security hygiene

    2. Deployment

    Verify distribution infrastructure, product and individual components integrity, and SBOM.

    Save and store the tests and test environment and review and verify the
    self-attestation mechanism.

    Use multi-layered defenses, e.g. ZT for integration and control configuration.

    3. Software Operations

    Train users on how to detect and report anomalies and when to apply updates to a system.

    Ensure updates from authorized and authenticated sources and verify the integrity of the updated SBOM.

    Apply supply chain risk management (SCRM) operations.

    Source: "Securing the Software Supply Chain" series, Enduring Security Framework (ESF), 2022

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    Research Contributors and Experts

    Andrew Reese
    Cybersecurity Practice Lead
    Zones

    Ashok Rutthan
    Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
    Massmart

    Chris Weedall
    Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
    Cheshire East Council

    Jeff Kramer
    EVP Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity
    Aprio

    Kris Arthur
    Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
    SEKO Logistics

    Mike Toland
    Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
    Mutual Benefit Group

    Enterprise Storage Solution Considerations

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    • Enterprise storage technology and options are challenging to understand.
    • There are so many options. How do you decide what the best solution is for your storage challenge??
    • Where do you start when trying to solve your enterprise storage challenge?

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Take the time to understand the various data storage formats, disk types, and associated technology, as well as the cloud-based and on-premises options. This will help you select the right tool for your needs.

    Impact and Result

    Look to existing use cases based on actual Info-Tech analyst calls to help in your decision-making process.

    Enterprise Storage Solution Considerations Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Enterprise Storage Solution Considerations – Narrow your focus with the right product type and realize efficiencies.

    Explore the building blocks of enterprise storage so you can select the best solution, narrow your focus with the correct product type, explore the features that should be considered when evaluating enterprise storage offerings, and examine use cases based on actual Info-Tech analyst calls to find a storage solution for your situation.

    • Enterprise Storage Solution Considerations Storyboard

    2. Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook – Understand your data requirements.

    The first step in solving your enterprise storage challenge is identifying your data sources, data volumes, and growth rates. This information will give you insight into what data sources could be stored on premises or in the cloud, how much storage you will require for the coming five to ten years, and what to consider when exploring enterprise storage solutions. This tool can be a valuable asset for determining your current storage drivers and future storage needs, structuring a plan for future storage purchases, and determining timelines and total cost of ownership.

    • Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Enterprise Storage Solution Considerations

    Narrow your focus with the right product type and realize efficiencies.

    Analyst Perspective

    The vendor landscape is continually evolving, as are the solutions they offer. The options and features are increasing and appealing.

    The image contains a picture of P.J. Ryan.

    To say that the current enterprise storage landscape looks interesting would be an understatement. The solutions offered by vendors continue to grow and evolve. Flash and NVMe are increasing the speed of storage media and reducing latency. Software-defined storage is finding the most efficient use of media to store data where it is best served while managing a variety of vendor storage and older storage area networks and network-attached storage devices.

    Storage as a service is taking on a new meaning with creative solutions that let you keep the storage appliance on premises or in a colocated data center while administration, management, and support are performed by the vendor for a nominal monthly fee.

    We cannot discuss enterprise storage without mentioning the cloud. Bring a thermometer because you must understand the difference between hot, warm, and cold storage when discussing the cloud options. Very hot and very cold may also come into play.

    Storage hardware can assume a higher total cost of ownership with support options that replace the controllers on a regular basis. The options with this type of service are also varied, but the concept of not having to replace all disks and chassis nor go through a data migration is very appealing to many companies.

    The cloud is growing in popularity when it comes to enterprise storage, but on-premises solutions are still in demand, and whether you choose cloud or on premises, you can be guaranteed an array of features and options to add stability, security, and efficiency to your enterprise storage.

    P.J. Ryan
    Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Info-Tech Insight

    The vendor landscape is continually evolving, as are the solutions they offer.

    Storage providers are getting acquired by bigger players, “outside the box” thinking is disrupting the storage support marketplace, “as a service” storage offerings are evolving, and what is a data lake and do I need one? The traditional storage vendors are not alone in the market, and the solutions they offer are no longer traditional either. Explore the landscape and understand your options before you make any enterprise storage solution purchases.

    Understand the building blocks of storage so you can select the best solution.

    There are multiple storage formats for data, along with multiple hardware form factors and disk types to hold those various data formats. Software plays a significant role in many of these storage solutions, and cloud offerings take advantage of all the various formats, form factors, and disks. The challenge is matching your data type with the correct storage format and solution.

    Look to existing use cases to help in your decision-making process.

    Explore previous experiences from others by reading use cases to determine what the best solution is for your challenge. You’re probably not the first to encounter the challenge you’re facing. Another organization may have previously reached out for assistance and found a viable solution that may be just what you also need.

    Enterprise storage has evolved, with more options than ever

    Data is growing, data security will always be a concern, and vendors are providing more and more options for enterprise storage.

    “By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!” (Visual Capitalist)

    “Modern criminal groups target not only endpoints and servers, but also central storage systems and their backup infrastructure.” (Continuity Software)

    Cloud or on premises? Maybe a hybrid approach with both cloud and on premises is best for you. Do you want to remove the headaches of storage administration, management, and support with a fully managed storage-as-a-service solution? Would you like to upgrade your controllers every three or four years without a major service interruption? The options are increasing and appealing.

    High-Level Considerations

    1. Understand Your Data

    Understand how much data you have and where it is located. This will be crucial when evaluating enterprise storage solutions.

    2. Plan for Growth

    Your enterprise storage considerations should include your data needs now and in the future.

    3. Understand the Mechanics

    Take the time to understand the various data storage formats, disk types, and associated technology, as well as the cloud-based and on-premises options. This will help you select the right tool for your needs.

    Storage formats, disk drives, and technology

    Common data storage formats, technology, and drive types are outlined below. Understanding how data is stored as well as the core building blocks for larger systems will help you decide which solution is best for your storage needs.

    Format

    What it is

    Disk Drives and Technology

    File Storage

    File storage is hierarchical storage that uses files, folders, subfolders, and directories. You enter a specific filename and path to access the file, such as P:\users\johndoe\strategy\cloud.doc. If you ever saved a file on a server, you used file storage. File storage is usually managed by some type of file manager, such as File Explorer in Windows. Network-attached storage (NAS) devices use file storage.

    Hard Disk Drives (HDD)

    HDD use a platter of spinning disks to magnetically store data. The disks are thick enough to make them rigid and are referred to as hard disks.

    HDD is older technology but is still in demand and offered by vendors.

    Object Storage

    Object storage is when data is broken into distinct units, called objects. These objects are stored in a flat, non-hierarchical structure in a single location or repository. Each object is identified by its associated ID and metadata. Objects are accessed by an application programming interface (API).

    Flash

    Flash storage uses flash memory chips to store data. The flash memory chips are written with electricity and contain no moving parts. Flash storage is very fast, which is how the technology got its name (“Flash vs. SSD Storage,” Enterprise Storage Forum, 2018).

    Block Storage

    Block storage is when data is divided up into fixed-size blocks and stored with a unique identifier. Blocks can be stored in different environments, such as Windows or Linux. Storage area networks (SANs) use block storage.

    Solid-State Drive (SSD)

    SSD is a storage mechanism that also does not use any moving parts. Most SSD drives use flash storage, but other options are available for SSD.

    Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe)

    NVMe is a communications standard developed specially for SSDs by a consortium of vendors including Intel, Samsung, SanDisk, Dell, and Seagate. It operates across the PCIe bus (hence the “Express” in the name), which allows the drives to act more like the fast memory that they are rather than the hard disks they imitate (PCWorld).

    Narrow your focus with the right product type

    On-premises enterprise storage solutions fit into a few distinct product types.

    Network-Attached Storage

    Storage Area Network

    Software-Defined Storage

    Hyperconverged Infrastructure

    NAS refers to a storage device that is connected directly to your network. Any user or device with access to your network can access the available storage provided by the NAS. NAS storage is easily scalable and can add data redundancy through RAID technology. NAS uses the file storage format.

    NAS storage may or may not be the first choice in terms of enterprise storage, but it does have a solid market appeal as an on-premises primary backup storage solution.

    A SAN is a dedicated network of pooled storage devices. The dedicated network, separate from the regular network, provides high speed and scalability without concern for the regular network traffic. SANs use block storage format and can be divided into logical units that can be shared between servers or segregated from other servers. SANs can be accessed by multiple servers and systems at the same time. SANs are scalable and offer high availability and redundancy through RAID technology.

    SANs can use a variety of disk types and sizes and are quite common among on-premises storage solutions.

    “Software-defined storage (SDS) is a storage architecture that separates storage software from its hardware. Unlike traditional network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) systems, SDS is generally designed to perform on any industry-standard or x86 system, removing the software’s dependence on proprietary hardware.” (RedHat)

    SDS uses software-based policies and rules to grow and protect storage attached to applications.

    SDS allows you to use server-based storage products to add management, protection, and better usage.

    Hyperconverged storage uses virtualization and software-defined storage to combine the storage, compute, and network resources along with a hypervisor into one appliance.

    Hyperconverged storage can scale out by adding more nodes or appliances, but scaling up, or adding more resources to each appliance, can have limitations. There is flexibility as hyperconverged storage can work with most network and compute manufacturers.

    Cloud storage

    • Cloud storage is online storage offered by a cloud provider. Cloud storage is available almost anywhere and is set up with high availability features such as data duplication, redundancy, backup, and power failure protection.
    • Cloud storage is very scalable and typically is offered as object storage, block storage, or file storage. Cloud storage vendors may have their own naming scheme for object, block, or file storage.
    • Cloud-hosted data is marketed according to the frequency of access and length of time in storage. There are typically three main levels of storage: hot, warm, or cold. Vendors may have their own naming convention for hot, warm, and cold storage. Some may also add more layers such as very hot or very cold.
      • Hot storage is for data that is frequently accessed and modified. It is available on demand and is the most costly of the storage levels.
      • Cold storage is for data that will sit for a long period of time and not need to be accessed. Cold storage is usually only available after several hours or days. Cold storage is very low cost and, in some cases, even free, but retrieval or restoration for the free services can be costly.
      • Warm storage sits in between hot and cold storage. It is for data that is infrequently needed. The cost of warm storage is also in between hot and cold storage costs, and access times are measured in terms of minutes or hours.
      • It is not uncommon for data to start in hot storage and, as it ages, move to warm and eventually cold storage.

    “Enterprise cloud storage offers nearly unlimited scalability. Enterprises can add storage quickly and easily as it is needed, eliminating the risk and cost of over-provisioning.”

    – Spectrum Enterprise

    “Hot data will operate on fresh data. Cold data will operate on less frequent data and [is] used mainly for reporting and planning. Warm data is a balance between the two.”

    – TechBlost

    Enterprise storage features

    The features listed below, while not intended to cover all features offered by all vendors, should be considered and could act as a baseline for discussions with storage providers when evaluating enterprise storage offerings.

    • Scalability
      • What are the options to expand, and how easy or difficult it is to expand capacity in the future?
    • Security
      • Does the solution offer data encryption options as well as ransomware protections?
    • Integration options
      • Can the solution support seamless connectivity with other solutions and applications, such as cloud-based storage or backup software?
    • Storage reduction
      • Does the solution offer space-reduction options such as deduplication or data compression?
    • Replication
      • Does the solution offer replication options such as device to device on premises, device to device when geographically separated, device to cloud, or a combination of these scenarios?
    • Performance
      • “Enterprise storage systems have two main ‘speed’ measurements: throughput and IOPS. Throughput is the data transfer rate to and from storage media, measured in bytes per second; IOPS measures the number of reads and writes – input/output (I/O) operations – per second.” (Computer Weekly)
    • Protocol support
      • Does the solution support object-based, block-based, and file-based storage protocols?
    • Storage Efficiency
      • How efficient is the solution? Can they prove it?
      • Storage efficiencies must be available and baselined.
    • Management platform
      • A management/reporting platform should be a component included in the system.
    • Multi-parity
      • Does the solution offer multi-level block “parity” for RAID 6 protection equivalency, which would allow for the simultaneous failure of two disks?
    • Proactive support
      • Features such as call home, dial in, or remote support must be available on the system.
    • Financial considerations
      • The cost is always a concern, but are there subscription-based or “as-a-service” options?
      • Internally, is it better for this expenditure to be a capital expenditure or an ongoing operating expense?

    What’s new in enterprise storage

    • Data warehouses are not a new concept, but the data storage evolution and growth of data means that data lakes and data lakehouses are growing in popularity.
      • “A data lake is a centralized repository that allows you to store all your structured and unstructured data at any scale. You can store your data as-is, without having to first structure the data” (Amazon Web Services).
      • Analytics with a data lake is possible, but manipulation of the data is hindered due to the nature of the data. A data lakehouse adds data management and analytics to a data lake, similar to the data warehouse functionality added to databases.
    • Options for on-premises hardware support is changing.
      • Pure Storage was the first to shake up the SAN support model with its Evergreen support option. Evergreen//Forever support allows for storage controller upgrades without having to migrate data or replace your disks or chassis (Pure Storage).
      • In response to the Pure Storage Evergreen offering, Dell, HPE, NetApp, and others have come out with similar programs that offer controller upgrades while maintaining the data, disks, and chassis.
    • “As a service” is available as a hybrid solution.
      • Storage as a service (STaaS) originally referred to hosted, fully cloud-based offerings without the need for any on-premises hardware.
      • The latest STaaS offerings provide on-premises or colocated hardware with pay-as-you-go subscription pricing for data consumption. Administration, management, and support are included. The vendor will supply support and manage everything on your behalf.
      • Most of the major storage vendors offer a variation of storage as a service.

    “Because data lakes mostly consist of raw unprocessed data, a data scientist with specialized expertise is typically needed to manipulate and translate the data.”

    – DevIQ

    “A Lakehouse is also a type of centralized data repository, integrated from heterogeneous sources. As can be expected from its name, It shares features with both datawarehouses and data lakes.”

    – Cesare

    “Storage as a service (STaaS) eliminates Capex, simplifies management and offers extensive flexibility.”

    – TechTarget

    Major vendors

    The current vendor landscape for enterprise storage solutions represents a range of industry veterans and the brands they’ve aggregated along the way, as well as some relative newcomers who have come to the forefront within the past ten years.

    Vendors like Dell EMC and HPE are longstanding veterans of storage appliances with established offerings and a back catalogue of acquisitions fueling their growth. Others such as Pure Storage offer creative solutions like all-flash arrays, which are becoming more and more appealing as flash storage becomes more commoditized.

    Cloud-based vendors have become popular options in recent years. Cloud storage provides many options and has attracted many other vendors to provide a cloud option in addition to their on-premises solutions. Some software and hardware vendors also partner with cloud vendors to offer a complete solution that includes storage.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Explore your current vendor’s solutions as a starting point, then use that understanding as a reference point to dive into other players in the market

    Key Players

    • Amazon
    • Cisco
    • Dell EMC
    • Google
    • Hewlett Packard Enterprise
    • Hitachi Vantara
    • IBM
    • Microsoft
    • NetApp
    • Nutanix
    • Pure Storage

    Enterprise Storage Use Cases

    Block, object, or file storage? NAS, SAN, SDS, or HCI? Cloud or on prem? Hot, warm, or cold?
    Which one do you choose?
    The following use cases based on actual Info-Tech analyst calls may help you decide.

    1. Offsite backup solution
    2. Infrastructure consolidation
    3. DR/BCP datacenter duplication
    4. Expansion of existing storage
    5. Complete backup solution
    6. Existing storage solution going out of support soon
    7. Video storage
    8. Classify and offload storage

    Offsite backup solution

    “Offsite” may make you think of geographical separation or even cloud-based storage, but what is the best option and why?

    Use Case: How a manufacturing company dealt with retired applications

    • A leading manufacturing company had to preserve older applications no longer in use.
    • The company had completed several acquisitions and ended up with multiple legacy applications that had been merged or migrated into replacement solutions. These legacy applications were very important to the original companies, and although the data they held had been migrated to a replacement solution, executives felt they should hold on to these applications for a period of time, just in case.
    • A modern archiving solution was considered, but a research advisor from Info-Tech Research joined a call with the manufacturing company and helped the client realize that the solution was a modified backup. The application data had already been preserved through the migration, so data could be accessed in the production environment.
    • The data could be exported from the legacy application into a nonsequential database, compressed, and stored in cloud-based cold storage for less than $5 per terabyte per month. The manufacturing company staff realized that they could apply this same approach to several of their legacy applications and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
    • Cold storage is inexpensive until you start retrieving that data frequently. The manufacturing company knew they did not have a requirement to retrieve the application and data for a very long time, so cloud-based cold storage was ideal.

    “Data retrieval from cold storage is harder and slower than it is from hot storage. … Because of the longer retrieval time, online cold storage plans are often much cheaper. … The downside is that you’d incur additional costs when retrieving the data.”

    – Ben Stockton, Cloudwards

    Infrastructure consolidation

    Hyperconverged infrastructure combines storage, virtual infrastructure, and associated management into one piece of equipment.

    Use Case: How one company dealt with equipment and storage needs

    • One Info-Tech client had recently started in the role of IT director and realized he had inherited aging infrastructure along with a serious data challenge. The storage appliances were old and out of support. The appliances were performing inadequately, and the client was in need of more data due to ongoing growth, but he also realized that the virtual environment was running on very old servers that were no longer supported. The IT director reached out to Info-Tech to find solutions to the virtualization challenge, but the storage problem also came up throughout the course of the conversation with an analyst.
    • The analyst quickly realized that the IT director was an ideal candidate for a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) storage solution, which would also provide the necessary virtual environment.
    • The analyst explained the benefits of having a single appliance that would provide virtualization needs as well as storage needs. The built-in management features would ease the burden of administration, and the software-defined nature of the HCI would allow for the migration of data as well as future expansion options.
    • Hyperconverged infrastructure is offered by many vendors under a variety of names. Most are similar but some may have a better interface or other features. The expansion process is simple, and HCI is a good fit for many organizations looking to consolidate virtual infrastructure and storage.

    “HCI environments use a hypervisor, usually running on a server that uses direct-attached storage (DAS), to create a data center pool of systems and resources.”

    – Samuel Greengard, Datamation

    Datacenter duplication

    SAN providers offer a varied range of options for their products, and those options are constantly evolving.

    Use Case: Independent school district provides better data access using SAN technology

    • An independent school district was expanding by adding a second data center in a new school. This new data center would be approximately 20 miles away from the original data center used by the district. The intent was not to replace the original data center but to use both centers to store data and provide services concurrently. The district’s ideal scenario would be that users would not know or care which data center they were reaching, and there would be no difference in the service received from each data center. The school district reached out to Info-Tech when planning discussions reached the topic of data duplication and replication software.
    • An Info-Tech analyst joined a call with the school district and guided the conversation toward the existing environment to understand what options might be available. The analyst quickly discovered that all the district’s servers were virtual, and all associated data was stored on a single SAN.
    • The analyst informed the school district staff about SAN options, including SAN-to-SAN replication. If the school district had a sufficient link between the two data centers, SAN-to-SAN replication would work for them and provide the two identical copies of data at two locations.
    • The analyst continued to offer explanations of other features that some vendors offer with their SANs, such as the ability to turn on or off deduplication and compression, as well as disk options such as flash or NVMe.
    • The school district was moving to the request for proposal (RFP) stage but hoped to have SAN-to-SAN replication implemented before the next academic year started.

    “SAN-to-SAN replication is a low-cost, highly efficient way to manage mounting quantities of stored data.”

    – Secure Infrastructure & Services

    Expansion of existing storage

    That old storage area network may still have some useful life left in it.

    Use Case: Municipality solves data storage aging and growth challenge

    • A municipality in the United States reached out to Info-Tech for guidance on its storage challenge. The municipality had accumulated multiple SANs from different vendors over the years. These SANs were running out of storage, and more data storage was needed. The municipality’s data was growing at a rapid pace, thanks to municipal growth and expansion of services. The IT team was also concerned with modernizing their storage and not hindering their long-term growth by making the wrong purchase decision for their current storage needs.
    • An analyst from Info-Tech discussed several options with the municipality but in the end advised that software-defined storage may be the best solution.
    • Software-defined storage (SDS) would allow the municipality to gain better visibility into existing storage while making more efficient use of existing and new storage. SDS could take over the management of the existing storage from multiple vendors and add additional storage as required. SDS would also be able to integrate cloud-based storage if that was the direction taken by the municipality in the future.
    • The municipality moved forward with an SDS solution and added some additional storage capacity. They used some of their existing SANs but retired the more troublesome ones. The SDS system managed all the storage instances and data management. The administration of the storage environment was easier for the storage admins, and long-term savings were achieved through better storage management.

    “Often enterprises have added storage on an ad hoc basis as they needed it for various applications. That can result in a mishmash of heterogenous storage hardware from a wide variety of vendors. SDS offers the ability to unify management of these different storage devices, allowing IT to be more efficient.”

    – Cynthia Harvey, Enterprise Storage Forum (“What Is Software Defined Storage?”, 2018)

    Complete backup solution

    Many backup software solutions can provide backups to multiple locations, making two-location backups simple.

    Use Case: How an oil refinery modernized its backup solution

    • A large oil refinery needed a better solution for the storage of backups. The refinery was replacing its backup software solution but also wanted to improve the backup storage situation and move away from tape-based storage. All other infrastructure was reasonably modern and not in need of replacement at this time.
    • A research analyst from Info-Tech helped the client realize that the solution was a modified backup. The general guidance for backups is have a least one copy offsite, so the cloud was the obvious focal point. The analyst also explained that it would be beneficial to have a recent copy of the backup available on site for common restoration requests in addition to having the offsite copy for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.
    • The refinery staff conducted a data analysis to determine how much data was being backed up on a daily basis. The solution proposed by the analyst included network-attached storage (NAS) with adequate storage to hold 30 days' worth of on-premises data. The backup software would also simultaneously copy each backup to a cloud-based storage repository. The backup software was smart enough to only back up and transfer data that had changed since the previous backup, so transfer time and capacity was not a factor.
    • The NAS would allow for the restoration of any local, on-premises data while the cloud storage would provide a safe location offsite for backup data. It could also serve as the backup location for other cloud-based services that required a backup.

    “Data protection demands that enterprises have multiple methods of keeping data safe and replicating it in case of disaster or loss.”

    – Drew Robb, Enterprise Storage Forum, 2021

    Storage going out of support

    SAN solutions have come a long way with improvements in how data is stored and what is used to store the data.

    Use Case: How one organization replaced its old storage with a similar solution

    • A government organization was looking for a solution for its aging storage area network appliances. The SANs were old and would be no longer supported by the manufacturer within four months. The SANs had slower spinning disks and their individual capacity was at its limit through the addition of extra shelves and disks over the years.
    • The organization reached out to Info-Tech for guidance. An analyst arranged a call with them, and they discussed the storage situation in detail, including desired benefits from a storage solution and growth requirements. They also discussed cloud storage, but the government organization was not in a position to move its data to the cloud for a variety of reasons.
    • Although the individual SANs were at their storage capacity limit, the total amount of data was well within the limits of many modern on-premises storage solutions. SSD and flash or NVMe storage can store large amounts of data in small footprints and form factors.
    • The analyst reviewed several vendors with the client and discussed some advantages and disadvantages of each. They explored the features offered as well as scalability options.
    • SANs have been around for a long time but the features and capabilities that come with them has evolved. They are still a very viable solution for many organizations in a variety of scenarios.

    “A rapidly growing portion of SAN deployments leverages all-flash storage to gain its high performance, consistent low latency, and lower total cost when compared to spinning disk.”

    – NetApp

    Video storage

    Cloud storage would not be sufficient if you were using a dial up connection, just as on-premises storage solutions would not suffice if they were using floppy disks.

    Use Case: Body cams and public cameras in municipalities are driving storage growth

    • Municipal law enforcement agencies are wearing body cameras more frequently, for their own protection as well as for the protection of the public. Camera footage can be useful in legal situations as well. Municipalities are also installing more and more public cameras for the purposes of public safety. The recorded video footage from these cameras can result in large data files, which in turn drive data storage requirements.
    • Info-Tech analysts are joining calls about video data storage with increasing frequency. The concerns are repetitive, and the guidance is similar on most of these calls.
    • The “object” storage format is ideal for video and media data. Most cloud-based storage solutions use object storage, but it is also available with on-premises solutions such as NAS or SAN. The challenges clients are expressing are typically related to inadequate bandwidth for cloud-based storage or other storage formats instead of “object” storage. Cloud-based storage can also grow beyond the budgeted numbers, causing an increase in the monthly cloud cost. Older, slower on-premises hardware sometimes reveals itself as the latency culprit.
    • Object storage is well suited for the unstructured data that is video footage. It uses metadata to tag the video file for future retrieval and is easily expandable, which also makes it cost effective.
    • Video data stored in a cloud-based repository will work fine as long as the bandwidth is adequate. On-premises storage of video data is also quite adequate on the right storage format, with fast disks and a reasonably up-to-date network infrastructure.

    “The captured video is stored for days, weeks, months and sometimes years and consumes a lot of space. Data storage plays a new and important role in these systems. Object storage is ideal to store the video data.”

    – Object-Storage.Info

    Classify and offload primary storage

    Some software products have storage options available as a result of agreements with other storage vendors. Several backup and archive software products fall into this category.

    Use Case: Enterprise storage can help reduce data sprawl

    • A large engineering firm was trying to manage its data sprawl. The team sampled a small percentage of their data and quickly realized that when they applied their findings on the 1% of data to their entire data estate, the sheer volume of personal files, older files, and unclassified data was going to be a challenge.
    • They found a solution in archiving software. The archiving software would tag data based on several factors. The software would move older files away from primary storage to an alternate storage platform but still leave a stub of the moved file in place and maintain limited access to those files. This would reduce primary storage requirements and allow the firm to eliminate multiple file servers
    • The engineering firm reached out to Info-Tech and participated in an analyst call. During that call, they laid out their plans, and the analyst made them aware of cloud storage. The positive and negative aspects of cloud storage were discussed, and the firm fully understood that the colder the storage tier, the slower the recovery. The firm's stance was if the files had not been accessed in the past six months, waiting a day or two for retrieval would not be a concern, and the firm was content with cold storage in the cloud.
    • The firm had not purchased the archiving software at the time of the analyst call, and the analyst also explained to them that the archiving software may have an existing agreement with a cloud provider for storage options, which could be more cost effective than purchasing cloud storage separately.
    • Cold cloud-based storage was the preferred solution for this firm, but this use case also highlights the option that some software products carry regarding storage. Several backup and archive products have a cloud storage option that should be investigated, as they may be cost-effective options.

    “Cold storage is perfect for archiving your data. Online backup providers offer low-cost, off-site data backups at the expense of fast speeds and easy access, even though data retrieval often comes at an added cost. If you need to keep your data long-term, but don’t need to access it often, this is the kind of storage you need.”

    – Ben Stockton, Cloudwards

    Understand your data requirements

    Activity

    The first step in solving your enterprise storage challenge is identifying your data sources or drivers, data volume size, and growth rates. This information will give you insight into what data sources could be stored on premises or in the cloud, how much storage you will require for the coming five to ten years, and what to consider when exploring enterprise storage solutions.

    • Info-Tech’s Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook can be a valuable asset for determining your current storage drivers and future storage needs, structuring a plan for future storage purchases, and determining timelines and total cost of ownership.
    • An example of the Storage Capacity Calculator tab from that workbook is displayed on the right. Using the Storage Capacity Requirements Calculator requires minimal steps.
    1. Enter the current date and planning timeline (horizon) in months
    2. Identify the top sources of data within the business – the current data drivers. Areas of focus could include business applications, file shares, backup, and archives.
    3. For each of these data drivers, include your best estimate of:
    • Current data volume
    • Growth rate
  • Identify the top future data drivers, such as new applications or initiatives that will result from current business plans and priorities, and record the following details:
    • Initial data volumes
    • Projected growth rates
    • Planned implementation date
  • The spreadsheet will automatically calculate the data volume at the planning horizon based on the growth rate.
  • Download the Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook and take the first step toward understanding your data requirements.

    The image contains a screenshot of the Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook.

    Download the Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Modernize Enterprise Storage

    Current and emerging storage technologies are disrupting the status quo – prepare your infrastructure for the exponential rise in data and its storage requirements.

    Modernize Enterprise Storage Workbook

    This workbook will complement the discussions and activities found in the Modernize Enterprise Storage blueprint. Use this workbook in conjunction with the blueprint to develop a strategy for storage modernization.

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    “What is enterprise cloud storage?” Spectrum Enterprise, n.d. Accessed 28 July 2022.
    “What is SAN (Storage Area Network).” NetApp, n.d. Accessed 25 July 2022.
    “What is software-defined storage?” RedHat, 08 March 2018. Accessed 16 July 2022.

    The State of Black Professionals in Tech

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    • The experience of Black professionals in IT differs from their colleagues.
    • Job satisfaction is also lower for Black IT professionals.
    • For organizations to gain from the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion, they need to ensure they understand the landscape for many Black professionals.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • As an IT leader, you can make a positive difference in the working lives of your team; this is not just the domain of HR.
    • Employee goals can vary depending on the barriers that they encounter. IT leaders must ensure they have an understanding of unique employee needs to better support them, increasing their ability to recruit and retain.
    • Improve the experience of Black IT professionals by ensuring your organization has diversity in leadership and supports mentorship and sponsorship.

    Impact and Result

    • Use the data from Info-Tech’s analysis to inform your DEI strategy.
    • Learn about actions that IT leaders can take to improve the satisfaction and career advancement of their Black employees.

    The State of Black Professionals in Tech Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. The State of Black Professionals in Tech Report – A report providing you with advice on barriers and solutions for leaders of Black employees.

    IT leaders often realize that there are barriers impacting their employees but don’t know how to address them. This report provides insights on the barriers and actions that can help improve the lives of Black professionals in technology.

    • The State of Black Professionals in Tech Report

    Infographic

    Further reading

    The State of Black Professionals in Tech

    Keep inclusion at the forefront to gain the benefits from diversity.

    Analysts' Perspective

    The experience of Black professionals in technology is unique.

    Diversity in tech is not a new topic, and it's not a secret that technology organizations struggle to attract and retain Black employees. Ever since the early '90s, large tech organizations have been dealing with public critique of their lack of diversity. This topic is close to our hearts, but unfortunately while improvements have been made, progress is quite slow.

    In recent years, current events have once again brought diversity to the forefront for many organizations. In addition, the pandemic along with talent trends such as "the great resignation" and "quiet quitting" and preparations for a recession have not only impacted diversity at large but also Black professionals in technology. Our previous research has focused on the wider topic of Recruiting and Retaining People of Color in Tech, but we've found that the experiences of persons of color are not all the same.

    This study focuses on the unique experience of Black professionals in technology. Over 600 people were surveyed using an online tool; interviews provided additional insights. We're excited to share our findings with you.

    This is a picture of Allison Straker This is an image of Ugbad Farah

    Allison Straker
    Research Director
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Ugbad Farah
    Research Director
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Demographics

    In October 2021, we launched a survey to understand what the Black experience is like for people in technology. We wanted and received a variety of responses which would help us to understand how Black technology professionals experienced their working world. We received responses from 633 professionals, providing us with the data for this report.

    For more information on our survey demographics please see the appendix at this end of this report.

    A pie chart showing 26% black and 74% All Other

    26% of our respondents either identified as Black or felt the world sees them as Black.

    Professionals from various countries responded to the survey:

    • Most respondents were born in the US (52%), Canada (14%), India (14%), or Nigeria (4%).
    • Most respondents live in the US (56%), Canada (25%), Nigeria (2%), or the United Kingdom (2%).

    Companies with more diversity achieve more revenue from innovation

    Organizations do better and are more innovative when they have more diversity, a key ingredient in an organization's secret sauce.
    Organizations also benefit from engaged employees, yet we've seen that organizations struggle with both. Just having a certain number of diverse individuals is not enough. When it comes to reaping the benefits of diversity, organizations can flourish when employees feel safe bringing their whole selves to work.

    45% Innovation Revenue by Companies With Above-Average Diversity Scores
    26%

    Innovation Revenue by Companies With Below-Average Diversity Scores

    (Chart source: McKinsey, 2020)


    Companies with higher employee engagement experience 19.2% higher earnings.

    However, those with lower employee engagement experience 32.7% lower earnings.
    (DecisionWise, 2020)

    If your workforce doesn't reflect the community it serves, your business may be missing out on the chance to find great employees and break into new and growing markets, both locally and globally.
    Diversity makes good business sense.
    (Business Development Canada, 2023)

    A study about Black professionals

    Why is this about Black professionals and not other diverse groups?

    While there are a variety of diversity dimensions, it's important to understand what makes up a "multicultural workforce." There is more to diversity than gender, race, and ethnicity. Organizations need to understand that there is diversity within these groups and Black professionals have their own unique experience when it comes to entering and navigating tech that needs to be addressed.

    This image contains two bar graphs from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. They show the answers to two questions, sorted by the following categories: Black; Non-White; Asian; White. The questions are as follows: I feel comfortable to voice my opinion, even when it differs from the group opinion; I am part of the decision-making process at work.

    (Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2019)

    The solutions that apply to Black professionals are not only beneficial for Black employees but for all. While all demographics are unique, the solutions in this report can support many.

    Unsatisfied and underrepresented

    Less Black professionals responded as "satisfied" in their IT careers. The question is: How do we mend the Gap?

    Percentage of IT Professionals Who Reported Being Very Satisfied in Their Current Role

    • All Other Professionals: 34%
    • Black Professionals: 23%

    Black workers are underrepresented in most professional roles, especially computer and math Occupations

    A bar graph showing representation of black workers in the total workforce compared to computer and mathematical science occupations.

    The gap in satisfaction

    What's Important?

    Our research suggests that the differences in satisfaction among ethnic groups are related to differences in value systems. We asked respondents to rank what's important, and we explored why.

    Non-Black professionals rated autonomy and their manager working relationships as most important.

    For Black professionals, while those were important, #1 was promotion and growth opportunities, ranked #7 by all other professionals. This is a significant discrepancy.

    Recognition of my work/accomplishments also was viewed significantly differently, with Black professionals ranking it low on the list at #7 and all other professionals considering it very important at #3.

    All Other Professionals

    Black Professionals

    Two columns, containing metrics of satisfaction rated by Black Professionals, and All Other Professionals.

    Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applies to job satisfaction

    In Maslow's hierarchy, it is necessary for people to achieve items lower on the hierarchy before they can successfully pursue the higher tiers.

    An image of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs modified to apply to Job Satisfaction

    Too many Black professionals in tech are busy trying to achieve some of the lower parts of the hierarchy; it is stopping them from achieving elements higher up that can lead to job satisfaction.

    This can stop them from gaining esteem, importance, and ultimately, self-actualization. The barriers that impact safety and social belonging happen on a day-to-day basis, and so the day-to-day lives of Black professionals in tech can look very different from their counterparts.

    There are barriers that hinder and solutions that support employees

    An image showing barriers to success An image showing Actions for Success.
    There are various barriers that increase the likelihood for Black professionals to focus on the lower end of the needs hierarchy:

    These are among some of the solutions that, when layered, can support Black professionals in tech in moving up the needs hierarchy.

    Focusing on these actions can support Black professionals in achieving much needed job satisfaction.

    What does this mean?

    The minority experience is not a monolith

    The barriers that Black professionals encounter aren't limited to the same barriers as their colleagues, and too often this means that they aren't in a position to grow their careers in a way that leads to job satisfaction.

    There is a 11% gap between the satisfaction of Black professionals and their peers.

    Early Steps:
    Take time to understand the Black experience.

    As leaders, it's important to be aware that employee goals vary depending on the barriers they're battling with.

    Intermediate:
    If Black employees don't have strong relationships, networks, and mentorships it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate the path to upward mobility.

    As a leader, you can look for opportunities to bridge the gap on these types of conversations.

    Advanced:
    Black professionals in tech are not advancing like their counterparts.

    Creating clear career paths will not only benefit Black employees but also support your entire organization.

    Key metrics:

    • Engagement
    • Committed Executive Leadership
    • Development Opportunities
    • Organizational Programs

    Black respondents are significantly more likely to report barriers to their career advancement

    Common barriers

    Black professionals, like their colleagues, encounter barriers as they try to advance their careers. The barriers both groups encounter include microaggressions, racism, ageism, accessibility issues, sexual orientation, bias due to religion, lack of a career-supported network, gender bias, family status bias, and discrimination due to language/accents.

    What tops the list

    Microaggressions and racism are at the top of these barriers, but Black professionals also deal with other barriers that their colleagues may experience, such as gender-based bias, accessibility issues, religion, and more.

    One of these barriers alone can be difficult to deal with but when they are compounded it can be very difficult to navigate through the working environment in tech.

    A graph charting the impact of the common barriers

    What are microaggressions?

    Microaggression

    A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.

    (Oxford Languages, 2023)

    Why are they significant?

    These things may seem innocent enough but the messaging that is received and the lasting impression is often far from it.

    Our research shows that racism and discrimination contribute to poor mental health among Black professionals.

    Examples

    • You're so articulate!
    • How do you always have different hair, can I touch it?
    • Where are you really from?
    • I don't see color.
    • I believe the most qualified person should get the job; everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.

    "The experience of having to question whether something happened to you because of your race or constantly being on edge because your environment is hostile can often leave people feeling invisible, silenced, angry, and resentful."
    Dr. Joy Bradford,
    clinical Psychologist, qtd. In Pfizer

    It takes some time to get in the door

    For too many Black respondents, It took Longer than their peers to Find Technology Jobs.

    Both groups had some success finding jobs in "no time" – however, there was a difference. Thirty-four percent of "all others" found their jobs quickly, while the numbers were less for Black professionals, at 26%. There was also a difference at the opposite end of the spectrum. For 29% of Black professionals, it took seven months or longer to find their IT job, while that number is only 19% for their peers.

    .a graph showing time taken for respondents sorted by black; and all other.

    This points to the need for improvements in recruitment and career advancement.

    29% of Black respondents said that it took them 7 months or longer to find their technology job.

    Compared to 19% of all other professionals that selected the same response.

    And once they're in, it's difficult to advance

    Black Professionals are not Advancing as Quickly as their Colleagues. Especially when you look at their Experience.

    Our research shows that compared to all other ethnicities; Black participants were 55% more likely to report that they had no career advancement/promotion in their career. There is a bigger percentage of Black professionals who have never received a promotion; there's also a large number of Black professionals who have been working a significant amount time in the same role without a promotion.

    .Career Advancement

    A graph showing career advancement for the categories: Black and All Other.

    Black participants were 55% more likely to report that they had had no career advancement/promotion in their career.

    No advancement

    A graph showing the number of respondents who reported no career advancement over time, for the categories: Black; and All Other.

    There's a high cost to lack of engagement

    When employees feel disillusioned with things like career advancement and microaggressions, they often become disengaged. When you continuously have to steel yourself against microaggressions, racism, and other barriers, it prevents you from bringing your whole self to the office. The barriers can lead to what's been coined as "emotional tax." An emotional tax is the experience of feeling different from colleagues because of your inherent diversity and the associated negative effects on health, wellbeing, and the ability to thrive at work.

    Earnings of companies with higher employee engagement

    19.2%

    Earnings of companies with lower employee engagement

    -32.7%

    (DecisionWise, 2020)

    "I've conditioned myself for the corporate world, I don't bring my authentic self to work."
    Anonymous Interview Subject

    Lack of engagement also costs the organization in terms of turnover, something many organizations today are struggling with how to address. Organizations want to increase the ability of the workforce to remain in the organization. For Black employees, this gets harder when they're not engaged and they're the only one. When the emotional tax gets to be too much, this can lead to turnover. Turnover not only costs companies billions in profits, it also negatively impacts leadership diversity. It's difficult to imagine career growth when you don't see anyone that looks like you at the top. It is a challenge to see your future when there aren't others that you can relate to at top levels in the organization, leading to one of our interview subjects to muse, "How long can I last?"

    "Being Black in tech can be hard on your mental health. Your mind is constantly wondering, 'how long can I last?' "
    Anonymous Interview Subject

    Fewer Black professionals feel like they can be their authentic selves at work

    Authentic vs. Successes

    For many Black professionals, "code-switching," or altering the way one speaks and acts depending on context, becomes the norm to make others more comfortable. Many feel that being authentic and succeeding in the workplace are mutually exclusive.

    Programs and Resources

    We asked respondents "What's in place to build an inclusive culture at your company?" Most respondents (51% and 45%) reported that there were employee resource groups at their organizations.

    Do you feel you can be your authentic self at work?

    A bar graph showing 86% for All Other Professions, and 75% for Black Professionals

    A bar graph showing responses to the question What’s in place to build an inclusive culture at your company.

    What can be done?

    An image showing actions for success.

    There are various actions that organizations can take to help address barriers.

    It's important to ensure these are not put in as band-aid solutions but that they are carefully thought out and layered.

    Our findings demonstrate that remote work, career development, and DEI programs along with mentorship and diverse leadership are strong enablers of professional satisfaction. An unfortunate consequence, if professionals are not nurtured, is that we risk losing much needed talent to self-employment or to other organizations.

    There are several solutions

    Respondents were asked to distribute points across potential solutions that could lead to job satisfaction. The ratings showed that there were common solutions that could be leveraged across all groups.

    Respondents were asked what solutions were valuable for their career development.

    All groups were mostly aligned on the order of the solutions that would lead to career satisfaction; however, Black professionals rated the importance of employee resource groups as higher than their colleagues did.

    An image showing how respondents rate a number of categories, sorted into Ratings by Black Professionals, and Ratings by Other Professionals

    Mentorship and sponsorship are seen as key for all employees, as is of course training.

    However, employee resource groups (ERGs) were rated significantly higher for Black professionals and discussions around diversity were higher for their colleagues. This may be because other groups feel a need to learn more about diversity, whereas Black professionals live this experience on a day-to day basis, so it's not as critical for them.

    Double the number of satisfied Black professionals through mentorship and sponsorship

    a bar graph showing the number of very satisfied people with and without mentors/sponsors.

    Mentorship and sponsorship help to close the job satisfaction gap for Black IT professionals. The percentage of satisfied Black employees almost doubles when they have a mentor or sponsorship, moving the satisfaction rate to closer to all other colleagues.

    As leaders, you likely benefit from a few different advisors, and your staff should be able to benefit in the same way.

    They can have their own personal board of advisors, both inside and outside of your organization, helping them to navigate the working world in IT.

    To support your staff, provide guidance and coaching to internal mentors so that they can best support employees, and ensure that your organizational culture supports relationship building and trust.

    While all are critical, coaching, mentoring, and sponsorship are not the same

    Coaching

    Performance-driven guidance geared to support the employee with on-the-job performance. This could be a short-term relationship.

    Mentorship

    A relationship where the mentor provides guidance, information, and expertise to support the long-term career development of the mentee.

    Sponsorship

    The act of advocating on the behalf of another for a position, promotion, development opportunity, etc. over a longer period.

    For more information on setting up a mentorship program, see Optimize the Mentoring Program to Build a High Performing Learning Organization.

    On why mentorship and sponsorship are important:

    "With some degree of mentorship or sponsorship, it means that your ability to thrive or to have a positive experience in organizations increases substantially.

    Mentorship and sponsorship are very often the lynchpin of someone being successful and sticking with an organization.

    Sponsorship is an endorsement to other high-level stakeholders who very often are the gatekeepers of opportunity. Sponsors help to shepherd you through the gate."

    An Image of Carlos Thomas

    Carlos Thomas
    Executive Councilor, Info-Tech Research Group

    What is an employee resource group?

    IT Professionals rated ERGs as the third top driver of success at work

    Employee resource groups enable employees to connect in their workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences.

    ERGs generally focus on providing support, enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment. Some ERGs provide advice to the organization on how they can support their diverse employees.

    As leaders, you should support and encourage the formation of ERGs in your organization.

    What each ERG does will vary according to the needs of employees in your organization. Your role is to enable the ERGs as they are created and maintained.

    On setting up and leveraging employee resource groups:

    "Employee resource groups, when leveraged in an authentically intentional way, can be the some of the most impactful stakeholders in the development and implementation of the organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy.

    ERGs are essential to the development of policies, programs, and initiatives that address the needs of equity-seeking groups and are key to driving organizational culture and employee wellbeing, in addition to hiring and recruitment.

    ERGs must be set up for success by having adequate resources to do the work, which includes adequate budgets, executive sponsorship, training, support, and capacity to do the work. According to a Great Place To Work survey (2021), 50% of ERGs identified the need for adequate resources as a challenge for carrying out the work.:"

    An image of Cinnamon Clark

    CINNAMON CLARK
    PRACTICE LEAD, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION services, MCLEAN & CO

    There is a gap when it comes to diversity in leadership

    Representation at leadership levels is especially stagnant.

    Black Americans comprise 13.6% of the US population
    (2022 data from the US Census Bureau)

    And yet only 5.9% of the country's CEOs are Black, with only 6 (1%) at the top of Fortune 500 companies.
    (2021 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Fortune.com)

    I've never worked for a company that has Black executives. It's difficult to envision long-term growth with an organization when you don't see yourself represented in leadership.
    – Anonymous Interview Subject

    Having diversity in your leadership team doubles satisfaction

    An image of a bar graph showing satisfaction for those who do, and do not see diversity in their company's leadership.

    Our research shows that Black professionals are more satisfied in their role when they see leaders that look like them.

    Satisfaction of other professionals is not as impacted by diversity in leadership as for Black professionals. Satisfaction doubles in organizations that have a diverse leadership team.

    To reap the benefits from diversity, we need to ensure diversity is not just in entry or mid-level positions and provide employees an opportunity to see diversity in their company's leadership.

    On the need for diversity in leadership:

    "As a Black professional leader, it's not lost on me that I have a responsibility. I have to demonstrate authenticity, professionalism, and exemplary behavior that others can mimic. And I must also showcase that there are possibilities for those coming up in their career. I feel very grateful that I can bestow onto others my knowledge, my experience, my journey, and the tips that I've used to help bring me to be where I am.
    (Having Black leaders in an organization) demonstrates that there is talent across the board, that there are all types of women and people with proficiencies. What it brings to the table is a difference in thoughts and experience.
    A person like myself, sitting at the table, can bring a unique perspective on employee behavior and employee impact. CCL is an organization focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion; for sure having me at the table and others that look like me at the table demonstrates to the public an organization that's practicing what it preaches."

    An image of C. Fara Francis

    C. Fara Francis
    CIO, Center for creative leadership

    Work from home

    While all groups have embraced the work-from-home movement, many Black professionals find it reduces the impact of racial incidents in the workplace.

    Percentage of employees who experienced positive changes in motivation after working remotely.

    Black: 43%; All Other: 43%

    I have to guard and protect myself from experiencing and witnessing racism every day. I am currently working remotely, and I can say for certain my mood and demeanor have improved. Not having to decide if I should address a racist comment or action has made my day easier.
    Source: Slate, 2022

    Remote work significantly led to feelings of better chances for career advancement

    Survey respondents were asked about the positive and negative changes they saw in their interactions and experiences with remote work. Black employees and their colleagues replied similarly, with mostly positive experiences.

    While both groups enjoyed better chances for career advancement, the difference was significantly higher for Black professionals.

    An image of a series of bar graphs showing the effects of remote work on a number of factors.

    Reasons for Self-Employment:

    More Black professionals have chosen self-employment than their colleagues.

    All Other: 26%; Black: 30%.

    A bar graph showing rankings for reasons for self employment, sorted by Black and All Other.

    The biggest reasons for both groups in choosing self-employment were for better pay, career growth, and work/life balance.

    While the desire for better pay was the highest reason for both groups, for engaged employees salary is a lower priority than other concerns (Adecco Group's Global Workforce of the Future report). Consider salary in conjunction with career growth, work/life balance, and the variety in the work that your employees have.

    A bar graph showing rankings for reasons for self employment, sorted by Black and All Other.

    If we don't consider our Black employees, not only do we risk them leaving the organization, but they may decide to just work for themselves.

    Most professionals believe their organizations are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion

    38% of all respondents believe their organizations are very committed to DEI
    49% believe they are somewhat committed
    9% feel they are not committed
    4% are unsure

    Make sure supports are in place to help your employees grow in their careers:

    Leadership
    IT Leadership Career Planning Research Center

    Diversity and Inclusion Tactics
    IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics

    Employee Development Planning
    Implement an IT Employee Development Plan

    Belief in your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts isn't consistent across groups: Make sure actions are seen as genuine

    While organization's efforts are acknowledged, Black professionals aren't as optimistic about the commitment as their peers. Make sure that your programs are reaching the various groups you want to impact, to increase the likelihood of satisfaction in their roles.

    SATISFACTION INCREASES IN BOTH BLACK AND NON-BLACK PROFESSIONALS

    When they believe in their company's commitment to diversity, equity. and inclusion.

    Of those who believe in their organization's commitment, 61% of Black professionals and 67% of non-Black professionals are very satisfied in their roles.

    BELIEVE THEIR ORGANIZATION IS NOT COMMITTED TO DEI

    BELIEVE THEIR ORGANIZATION IS VERY COMMITTED TO DEI

    NON-BLACK PROFESSIONALS

    8%

    41%

    BLACK PROFESSIONALS

    13%

    30%

    Recommendations

    It's important to understand the current landscape:

    • The barriers that Black employees often face.
    • The potential solutions that can help close the gap in employee satisfaction.

    We recognize that resolving this is not easy. Although senior executives are recognizing that a diverse set of experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds is crucial to fostering innovation and competing on the global stage, organizations often don't take the extra step to actively look for racialized talent, and many people still believe that race doesn't play an important part in an individual's ability to access opportunities.

    Look at a variety of solutions that you can implement within your organization; layering solutions is the key to driving business diversity. Always keep in mind that diversity is not a monolith, that the experiences of each demographic varies.

    Info-Tech resources

    Appendix

    About the research

    Diversity in tech survey

    As part of the research process for the State of Black Tech Report, Info-Tech Research Group conducted an open online survey among its membership and wider community of professionals. The survey was fielded from October 2021 to April 2022, collecting 633 responses.

    An image of Page 1 of the Appendix.

    Current Position

    An image of Page 2 of the Appendix.

    Education and Experience

    Education was fairly consistent across both groups, with a few exceptions: more Black professionals had secondary school (9% vs. 4%) and more Black professionals had Doctorate degrees (4% vs. 2%).

    We had more non-Black respondents with 20+ years of experience (31% vs. 19%) and more Black respondents with less than 1 year of experience (8% vs. 5%) – the rest of the years of experience were consistent across the two groups.

    An image of Page 3 of the Appendix.

    It is important to recognize that people are often seen by "the world" as belonging to a different race or set of races than what they personally identify as. Both aspects impact a professional's experience in the workplace.

    An image of Page 4 of the Appendix.

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    Shemla, Meir “Why Workplace Diversity Is So Important, And Why It’s So Hard To Achieve.” Forbes, 22 August 2018. Accessed 4 February 2023.

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    Vu, Viet, Creig Lamb, and Asher Zafar. “Who Are Canada’s Tech Workers?” Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, January 2019. Accessed on Canadian Electronic Library, 2021. Web.

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    Williams, Joan C., Rachel Korn, and Asma Ghani. “A New Report Outlines Some of the Barriers Facing Asian Women in Tech.” Fast Company, 13 April 2022.

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    Review Your Application Strategy

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    • Over 80% of CXOs experience frustration with IT’s failure to deliver business value.
    • Sixty percent of CEOs believe that improvement is required around IT’s understanding of business goals.
    • Sixty percent of IT professionals know there is an opportunity to run applications more efficiently, eliminating wasteful or low-value activities.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Organizations need to better align their application strategy with their business strategy as they proceed through tactical initiatives.
    • Application strategies provide guidance on how they will help the organization survive and thrive.

    Impact and Result

    Aligning your business with applications through your strategy will not only increase business satisfaction but also help to ensure you’re delivering applications that enable the organization’s goals.

    Review Your Application Strategy Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should have an application strategy and why you should use Info-Tech’s approach to review it. Learn how we can support you in completing this strategy and review.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Review your strategy

    This review guide provides organizations with a detailed assessment of their application strategy, ensuring that the applications enable the business strategy so that the organization can be more effective.The assessment provides criteria and exercises to provide actionable outcomes.

    • Application Strategy Assessment Tool
    • Application Strategy Action Plan Report Template
    • Application Strategy Sample Action Plan Report
    [infographic]

    Manage End-User Devices

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    • Parent Category Name: End-User Computing Devices
    • Parent Category Link: /end-user-computing-devices
    • Desktop and mobile device management teams use separate tools and different processes.
    • People at all levels of IT are involved in device management.
    • Vendors are pushing unified endpoint management (UEM) products, and teams struggling with device management are hoping that UEM is their savior.
    • The number and variety of devices will only increase with the continued advance of mobility and emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT).

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Many problems can be solved by fixing roles, responsibilities, and process. Standardize so you can optimize.
    • UEM is not a silver bullet. Your current solution can image computers in less than 4 hours if you use lean images.
    • Done with, not done to. Getting input from the business will improve adoption, avoid frustration, and save everyone time.

    Impact and Result

    • Define the benefits that you want to achieve and optimize based on those benefits.
    • Take an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, approach to merging end-user support teams. Process and tool unity comes first.
    • Define the roles and responsibilities involved in end-user device management, and create a training plan to ensure everyone can execute their responsibilities.
    • Stop using device management practices from the era of Windows XP. Create a plan for lean images and app packages.

    Manage End-User Devices Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize end-user device management, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Identify the business and IT benefits of optimizing endpoint management

    Get your desktop and mobile device support teams out of firefighting mode by identifying the real problem.

    • Manage End-User Devices – Phase 1: Identify the Business and IT Benefits
    • End-User Device Management Standard Operating Procedure
    • End-User Device Management Executive Presentation

    2. Improve supporting teams and processes

    Improve the day-to-day operations of your desktop and mobile device support teams through role definition, training, and process standardization.

    • Manage End-User Devices – Phase 2: Improve Supporting Teams and Processes
    • End-User Device Management Workflow Library (Visio)
    • End-User Device Management Workflow Library (PDF)

    3. Improve supporting technologies

    Stop using management tools and techniques from the Windows XP era. Save yourself, and your technicians, from needless pain.

    • Manage End-User Devices – Phase 3: Improve Supporting Technologies
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Manage End-User Devices

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Identify the Business and IT Benefits of Optimizing End-User Device Management

    The Purpose

    Identify how unified endpoint management (UEM) can improve the lives of the end user and of IT.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Cutting through the vendor hype and aligning with business needs.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify benefits you can provide to stakeholders.

    1.2 Identify business and IT goals in order to prioritize benefits.

    1.3 Identify how to achieve benefits.

    1.4 Define goals based on desired benefits.

    Outputs

    Executive presentation

    2 Improve the Teams and Processes That Support End-User Device Management

    The Purpose

    Ensure that your teams have a consistent approach to end-user device management.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Developed a standard approach to roles and responsibilities, to training, and to device management processes.

    Activities

    2.1 Align roles to your environment.

    2.2 Assign architect-, engineer-, and administrator-level responsibilities.

    2.3 Rationalize your responsibility matrix.

    2.4 Ensure you have the necessary skills.

    2.5 Define Tier 2 processes, including patch deployment, emergency patch deployment, device deployment, app deployment, and app packaging.

    Outputs

    List of roles involved in end-user device management

    Responsibility matrix for end-user device management

    End-user device management training plan

    End-user device management standard operating procedure

    Workflows and checklists of end-user device management processes

    3 Improve the Technologies That Support End-User Device Management

    The Purpose

    Modernize the toolset used by IT to manage end-user devices.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Saving time and resources for many standard device management processes.

    Activities

    3.1 Define the core image for each device/OS.

    3.2 Define app packages.

    3.3 Gather action items for improving the support technologies.

    3.4 Create a roadmap for improving end-user device management.

    3.5 Create a communication plan for improving end-user device management.

    Outputs

    Core image outline

    Application package outline

    End-user device management roadmap

    End-user device management communication plan

    Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures

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    • Parent Category Name: Manage & Coach
    • Parent Category Link: /manage-coach
    • Despite the importance of performance measures, most organizations struggle with choosing appropriate metrics and standards of performance for their employees.
    • Performance measures are often misaligned with the larger strategy, gamed by employees, or too narrow to provide an accurate picture of employee achievements.
    • Additionally, many organizations track too many metrics, resulting in a bureaucratic nightmare with little payoff.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Focus on what matters by aligning your departmental goals with the enterprise's mission and business goals. Break down departmental goals into specific goals for each employee group.
    • Employee engagement, which results in better performance, is directly correlated with employees’ understanding what is expected of them on the job and with their performance reviews reflecting their actual contributions.
    • Shed unnecessary metrics in favor of a lean, holistic approach to performance measurement. Include quantitative, qualitative, and behavioral dimensions in each goal and set appropriate measures for each dimension to meet simple targets. This encourages well-rounded behaviors and discourages rogue behavior.
    • Get rid of the stick-and-carrot approach to management. Use performance measurement to inspire and engage employees, not punish them.

    Impact and Result

    • Learn about and leverage the McLean & Company framework and process to effective employee performance measurement setting.
    • Plan effective communications and successfully manage departmental employee performance measurement by accurately recording goals, measures, and requirements.
    • Find your way through the maze of employee performance management with confidence.

    Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures Storyboard – This deck provides a comprehensive framework for setting, communicating, and reviewing employee performance measures that will drive business results

    This research will help you choose an appropriate measurement framework, set effective measures. and communicate and review your performance measures. Use Info-Tech's process to set meaningful measures that will inspire employees and drive performance.

    • Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures Storyboard

    2. Employee Performance Measures Goals Cascade – A tool to assist you in turning your organizational goals into meaningful individual employee performance measures.

    This tool will help you set departmental goals based on organizational mission and business goals and choose appropriate measures and weightings for each goal. Use this template to plan a comprehensive employee measurement system.

    • Employee Performance Measures Goals Cascade

    3. Employee Performance Measures Template – A template for planning and tracking your departmental goals, employee performance measures, and reporting requirements.

    This tool will help you set departmental goals based on your organizational mission and business goals, choose appropriate measures and weightings for each goal, and visualize you progress toward set goals. Use this template to plan and implement a comprehensive employee measurement system from setting goals to communicating results.

    • Employee Performance Measures Template

    4. Feedback and Coaching Guide for Managers – A tool to guide you on how to coach your team members.

    Feedback and coaching will improve performance, increase employee engagement, and build stronger employee manager relationships. Giving feedback is an essential part of a manger's job and if done timely can help employees to correct their behavior before it becomes a bigger problem.

    • Feedback and Coaching Guide for Managers

    Infographic

    Workshop: Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Source and Set Goals

    The Purpose

    Ensure that individual goals are informed by business ones.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Individuals understand how their goals contribute to organizational ones.

    Activities

    1.1 Understand how your department contributes to larger organizational goals.

    1.2 Determine the timelines you need to measure employees against.

    1.3 Set Business aligned department, team, and individual goals.

    Outputs

    Business-aligned department and team goals

    Business-aligned individual goals

    2 Design Measures

    The Purpose

    Create holistic performance measures.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Holistic performance measures are created.

    Activities

    2.1 Choose your employee measurement framework: generic or individual.

    2.2 Define appropriate employee measures for preestablished goals.

    2.3 Determine employee measurement weightings to drive essential behaviors.

    Outputs

    Determined measurement framework

    Define employee measures.

    Determined weightings

    3 Communicate to Implement and Review

    The Purpose

    Learn how to communicate measures to stakeholders and review measures.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Learn how to communicate to stakeholders and coach employees through blockers.

    Activities

    3.1 Learn how to communicate selected performance measures to stakeholders.

    3.2 How to coach employees though blockers.

    3.3 Reviewing and updating measures.

    Outputs

    Effective communication with stakeholders

    Coaching and feedback

    When to update

    4 Manager Training

    The Purpose

    Train managers in relevant areas.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Training delivered to managers.

    Activities

    4.1 Deliver Build a Better Manager training to managers.

    4.2

    Outputs

    Manager training delivered

    Further reading

    Set Meaningful Employee Performance Measures

    Set holistic measures to inspire employee performance.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Set employees up for success by implementing performance measures that inspire great performance, not irrelevant reporting.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    In today’s competitive environment, managers must assess and inspire employee performance in order to assess the achievement of business goals.

    Despite the importance of performance measures, many leaders struggle with choosing appropriate metrics.

    Performance measures are often misaligned with the larger strategy, gamed by employees, or are too narrow to provide an accurate picture of employee achievements.

    Common Obstacles

    Managers who invest time in creating more effective performance measures will be rewarded with increased employee engagement and better employee performance.

    Too little time setting holistic employee measures often results in unintended behaviors and gaming of the system.

    Conversely, too much time setting employee measures will result in overreporting and underperforming employees.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Info-Tech helps managers translate organizational goals to employee measures. Communicating these to employees and other stakeholders will help managers keep better track of workforce productivity, maintain alignment with the organization’s business strategy, and improve overall results.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Performance measures are not about punishing bad performance, but inspiring higher performance to achieve business goals.

    Meaningful performance measures drive employee engagement...

    Clearly defined performance measures linked to specific goals bolster engagement by showing employees the importance of their contributions.

    Significant components of employee engagement are tied to employee performance measures.

    A diagram of employee engagement survey and their implications.

    Which, in turn, drives business success.

    Improved employee engagement is proven to improve employee performance. Setting meaningful measures can impact your bottom line.

    Impact of Engagement on Performance

    A diagram that shows Percent of Positive Responses Among Engaged vs. Disengaged
    Source: McLean & Company Employee Engagement Survey Jan 2020-Jan 2023; N=5,185 IT Employees; were either Engaged or Disengaged (Almost Engaged and Indifferent were not included)

    Engaged employees don’t just work harder, they deliver higher quality service and products.

    Engaged employees are significantly more likely to agree that they regularly accomplish more than what’s expected of them, choose to work extra hours to improve results, and take pride in the work they do.

    Without this sense of pride and ownership over the quality-of-service IT provides, IT departments are at serious risk of not being able to deliver quality service, on-time and on-budget.

    Create meaningful performance measures to drive employee engagement by helping employees understand how they contribute to the organization.

    Unfortunately, many employee measures are meaningless and fail to drive high-quality performance.

    Too many ineffective performance measures create more work for the manager rather than inspire employee performance. Determine if your measures are worth tracking – or if they are lacking.

    Meaningful performance measures are:

    Ineffective performance measures are:

    Clearly linked to organizational mission, values, and objectives.

    Based on a holistic understanding of employee performance.

    Relevant to organizational decision-making.

    Accepted by employees and managers.

    Easily understood by employees and managers.

    Valid: relevant to the role and goals and within an employee’s control.

    Reliable: consistently applied to assess different employees doing the same job.

    Difficult to track, update, and communicate.

    Easily gamed by managers or employees.

    Narrowly focused on targets rather than the quality of work.

    The cause of unintended outcomes or incentive for the wrong behaviors.

    Overly complex or elaborate.

    Easily manipulated due to reliance on simple calculations.

    Negotiable without taking into account business needs, leading to lower performance standards.

    Adopt a holistic approach to create meaningful performance measurement

    A diagram that shows a holistic approach to create meaningful performance measurement, including inputs, organizational costs, department goals, team goals, individual goals, and output.

    Info-Tech’s methodology to set the stage for more effective employee measures

    1. Source and Set Goals

    Phase Steps
    1.1 Create business-aligned department and team goals
    1.2 Create business-aligned individual goals

    Phase Outcomes
    Understand how your department contributes to larger organizational goals.
    Determine the timelines you need to measure employees against.
    Set business-aligned department, team, and individual goals.

    2. Design Measures

    Phase Steps
    1.1 Choose measurement framework
    1.2 Define employee measures
    1.3 Determine weightings

    Phase Outcomes
    Choose your employee measurement framework: generic or individual.
    Define appropriate employee measures for preestablished goals.
    Determine employee measurement weightings to drive essential behaviors.
    Ensure employee measures are communicated to the right stakeholders.

    3. Communicate to Implement and Review

    Phase Steps
    1.1 Communicate to stakeholders
    1.2 Coaching and feedback
    1.3 When to update

    Phase Outcomes
    Communicate selected performance measure to stakeholders.
    Learn how to coach employees though blockers.
    Understand how to review and when to update measures.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit
    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

    Guided Implementation
    "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

    Workshop
    "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

    Consulting
    "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

    Guided Implementation

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is four to six calls over the course of two to four months.

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    A diagram that shows Guided Implementation in 3 phases.

    Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements

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    • Parent Category Name: End-User Computing Applications
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    Your organization is considering holding an event online, or has been, but:

    • The organization (both on the business and IT sides) may not have extensive experience hosting events online.
    • It is not immediately clear how your formerly in-person event’s activities translate to a virtual environment.
    • Like the work-from-home transformation, bringing events online instantly expands IT’s role and responsibilities.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    If you don't begin with strategy, you will fit your event to technology, instead of the other way around.

    Impact and Result

    To determine your requirements:

    • Determine the scope of the event.
    • Narrow down your list of technical requirements.
    • Use Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework to select the right software solution.

    Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements Storyboard – Use this storyboard to work through key decision points involved in creating digital events.

    This deck walks you through key decision points in creating virtual or hybrid events. Then, begin the process of selecting the right software by putting together the first draft of your requirements for a virtual event software solution.

    • Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements Storyboard

    2. Virtual Events Requirements Tool – Use this tool to begin selecting your requirements for a digital event solution.

    The business should review the list of features and select which ones are mandatory and which are nice to have or optional. Add any features not included.

    • Virtual/Hybrid Event Software Feature Analysis Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements

    Accelerate your event scoping and software selection process.

    Analyst Perspective

    When events go virtual, IT needs to cover its bases.

    The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a dramatic digital transformation on the events industry. Though event ticket and registration software, mobile event apps, and onsite audio/visual technology were already important pieces of live events, the total transformation of events into online experiences presented major challenges to organizations whose regular business operations involve at least one annual mid-sized to large event (association meetings, conferences, trade shows, and more).

    Many organizations worked to shift to online, or virtual events, in order to maintain business continuity. As time went on, and public gatherings began to restart, a shift to “hybrid” events began to emerge—events that accommodate both in-person and virtual attendance. Regardless of event type, this pivot to using virtual event software, or digital event technology, brings events more closely into IT’s areas of responsibility. If you don't begin with strategy, you risk fitting your event to technology, instead of the other way around.

    If virtual and hybrid events are becoming standard forms of delivering content in your organization, use Info-Tech’s material to help define the scope of the event and your requirements, and to support your software selection process.

    Photo of Emily Sugerman
    Emily Sugerman
    Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    The organization (both on the business and IT sides) may not have extensive experience hosting events online.

    It is not immediately clear how a formerly in-person event’s activities translate to a virtual environment.

    Like the work-from-home transformation, bringing events online expands IT’s role and responsibilities.

    Common Obstacles

    It is not clear what technological capabilities are needed for the event, which capabilities you already own, and what you may need to purchase.

    Though virtual events remove some barriers to attendance (distance, travel), it introduces new complications and considerations for planners.

    Hybrid events introduce another level of complexity.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    In order to determine your requirements:

    Determine the scope of the event.

    Narrow down your list of technical requirements.

    Use Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework to select the right software solution.

    Info-Tech Insight

    If you don't begin with strategy, you will fit your event to technology, instead of the other way around.

    Your challenge

    The solution you have been using for online events does not meet your needs.

    Though you do have some tools that support large meetings, it is not clear if you require a larger and more comprehensive virtual event solution. There is a need to determine what type of technology you might need to purchase versus leveraging what you already have.

    It is difficult to quickly and practically identify core event requirements and how they translate into technical capabilities.

    Maintaining or improving audience engagement is a perpetual challenge for virtual events.

    38%
    of event professionals consider virtual event technology “a tool for reaching a wider audience as part of a hybrid strategy.”

    21%
    consider it “a necessary platform for virtual events, which remain my go-to event strategy.”

    40%
    prioritize “mid-budget all-in-one event tech solution that will prevent remote attendees from feeling like second-class participants.”

    Source: Virtual Event Tech Guide, 2022

    Common obstacles

    These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations.

    Events with networking objectives are not always well served by webinars, which are traditionally more limited in their interactive elements.

    Events that include the conducting of organizational/association business (like voting) may have bylaws that make selecting a virtual solution more challenging.

    Maintaining attendee engagement is more challenging in a virtual environment.

    Prior to the pandemic, your organization may not have been as experienced in putting on fully virtual events, putting more responsibility in your corner as IT. Navigating virtual events can also require technological competencies that your attendee userbase may not universally possess.

    Technological limitations and barriers to access can exclude potential attendees just as much as bringing events online can open up attendance to new audiences.

    Opportunity: Virtual events can significantly increase an event’s reach

    Events held virtually during the pandemic noted significant increases in attendees.

    “We had 19,000 registrations from all over the world, almost 50 times the number of people we had expected to host in Amsterdam. . . . Most of this year’s [2020] attendees would not have been able to participate in a physical GrafanaCon in Amsterdam. That was a huge win.” – Raj Dutt, Grafana Labs CEO[5]

    Event In-person Online 2022
    Microsoft Build 2019: 6,000 attendees 2020: 230,000+ registrants[1] The 2022 conference was also held virtually[3]
    Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence A few hundred attendees expected for the original (cancelled) 2020 in-person conference 2020: 30,000 attendees attended the “COVID-19 and AI” virtual conference[2] The 2022 Spring Conference was a hybrid event[4]

    [1] Kelly, 2020; [2] Price, 2020; [3] Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2022; [4] Warren, 2022; [5] Fast Company, 2020

    Info-Tech’s methodology for defining virtual/hybrid event requirements

    A diagram that shows defining event scope, creating list of requirements, and selecting software.

    Event planning phases

    Apply project management principles to your virtual/hybrid event planning process.

    Online event planning should follow the same established principles as in-person event planning.
    Align the event’s concept and objectives with organizational goals.

    A diagram of event planning phases
    Source: Adapted from Event Management Body of Knowledge, CC BY 4.0

    Gather inputs to the planning processes

    Acquire as much of this information as possible before you being the planning process.

    Budget: Determine your organization’s budget for this event to help decide the scope of the event and the purchasing decisions you make as you plan.

    Internal human resources: Identify who in your organization is usually involved in the organization of this event and if they are available to organize this one.

    List of communication and collaboration tools: Acquire the list of the existing communication and collaboration tools you are currently licensed for. Ensure you know the following information about each tool:

    • Type of license
    • License limitations (maximum number of users)
    • Internal or external-facing tool (or capable of both)
    • Level of internal training and competency on the tool

    Decision point: Relate event goals to organizational goals

    What is driving the event?

    Your organization may hold a variety of in-person events that you now wish, for various reasons, to hold fully or partially online. Each event likely has a slightly different set of goals.

    Before getting into the details of how to transition your event online, return to the business/organizational goals the event is serving.

    Ensure each event (and each component of each event) maps back to an organizational goal.

    If a component of the event does not align to an organizational goal, assess whether it should remain as part of the event.

    Common organizational goals

    • Increase revenue
    • Increase productivity
    • Attract and retain talent
    • Improve change management
    • Carry out organizational mission
    • Identify new markets
    • Increase market share
    • Improve customer service
    • Launch new product/service

    Common event goals

    • Education/training
    • Knowledge transfer
    • Decision making
    • Professional development
    • Sales/lead generation
    • Fundraising
    • Entertainment
    • Morale boosting
    • Recognition of achievement

    Decision point: Identify your organization’s digital event vision

    What do you want the outcome of this event to be?

    Attendee goals: Who are your attendees? Why do they attend this event? What attendee needs does your event serve? What is your event’s value proposition? Are they intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to attend?

    Event goals: From the organizer perspective, why do you usually hold this event? Who are your stakeholders?

    Organizational goals: How do the event goals map to your organizational goals? Is there a clear understanding of what the event’s larger strategic purpose is.

    Common attendee goals

    Education: our attendees need to learn something new that they cannot learn on their own.
    Networking: our attendees need to meet people and make new professional connections.
    Professional development: our attendees have certain obligations to keep credentials updated or to present their work publicly to advance their careers.
    Entertainment: our attendees need to have fun.
    Commerce: our attendees need to buy and sell things.

    Decision point: Level of external event production

    Will you be completely self-managed, reliant on external event production services, or somewhere in the middle?

    You can review this after working through the other decision points and the scope becomes clearer.

    A diagram that shows Level of external event production, comparing Completely self-managed vs Fully externally-managed.

    Decision point: Assign event planning roles

    Who will be involved in planning the event? Fill/combine these roles as needed.

    Planning roles Description
    Project manager Shepherd event planning until completion while ensuring project remains on schedule and on budget.
    Event manager Correspond with presenters during leadup to event, communicate how to use online event tools/platform, perform tests with presenters/exhibitors, coordinate digital event staff/volunteers.
    Program planner Select the topics, speakers, activity types, content, streams.
    Designer and copywriter Design the event graphics; compose copy for event website.
    Digital event technologist Determine event technology requirements; determine how event technology fits together; prepare RFP, if necessary, for new hardware/software.
    Platform administrator Set up registration system/integrate registrations into platform(s) of choice; upload video files and collateral; add livestream links; add/delete staff roles and set controls and permissions; collect statistics and recordings after event.
    Commercial partner liaison Recruit sponsors and exhibitors (offer sponsorship packages); facilitate agreement/contract between commercial partners and organization; train commercial partners on how to use event technology; retrieve lead data.
    Marketing/social media Plan and execute promotional campaigns (email, social media) in the lead up to, and during, the event. Post-event, send follow-up communications, recording files, and surveys.

    Decision point: Assign event production roles

    Who will be involved in running the event?

    Event production roles Description
    Hosts/MCs Address attendees at beginning and end of event, and in-between sessions
    Provide continuity throughout event
    Introduce sessions
    Producers Prepare presenters for performance
    Begin and end sessions
    Use controls to share screens, switch between feeds
    Send backchannel messages to presenters (e.g., "Up next," "Look into webcam")
    Moderators Admit attendees from waiting room
    Moderate incoming questions from attendees
    Manage slides
    Pass questions to host/panelists to answer
    Moderate chat
    IT support Manage event technology stack
    Respond to attendee technical issues
    Troubleshoot network connectivity problems
    Ensure audio and video operational
    Start and stop session recording
    Save session recordings and files (chat, Q&As)

    Decision point: Map attendee goals to event goals to organizational goals

    Input: List of attendee benefits, List of event goals, List of organizational goals
    Output: Ranked list of event goals as they relate to attendee needs and organizational goals
    Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts
    Participants: Planning team

    1. Define attendee benefits:
      1. List the attendee benefits derived from your event (as many as possible).
      2. Rank attendee benefits from most to least important.
    2. Define event goals:
      1. List your event goals (as many as possible).
      2. Draw a connecting line to your ranked list of attendee benefits.
      3. Identify if any event goals exist with no clear relationship to attendee benefits. Discuss whether this event goal needs to be re-envisioned. If it connects to no discernible attendee benefits, consider removing it. Otherwise, figure out what attendee benefits the event goal provides.
    3. Define organizational goals:
      1. Acquire a list of your organization’s main strategic goals.
      2. Draw a connecting line from each event goal to the organizational goal it supports.
      3. If most of your event goals do not immediately seem to support an organizational goal, discuss why this is. Try to find the connection. If you cannot, discuss whether the event should proceed or be rethought.

    Decision point: Break down your event into its constituent components

    Identify your event archetype

    Decompose the event into its component parts

    Identify technical requirements that help meet event goals

    Benefits:

    • Clarify how formerly in-person events map to virtual archetypes.
    • Ensure your virtual event planning is anchored to organizational goals from the outset.
    • Streamline your virtual event tech stack planning later.

    Decision point: Determine your event archetype

    Analyze your event’s:

    • Main goals.
    • The components and activities that support those goals.
    • How these components and activities fall into people- vs. content-centric activities, and real-time vs. asynchronous activities.
    1. Conference
    2. Trade show
    3. Annual general meeting
    4. Department meeting
    5. Town hall
    6. Workshop

    A diagram that shows people- vs. content-centric activities, and real-time vs. asynchronous activities

    Info-Tech Insight

    Begin the digital event planning process by understanding how your event’s content is typically consumed. This will help you make decisions later about how best to deliver the content virtually.

    Conference

    Goals: Education/knowledge transfer; professional advancement; networking.

    Major content

    • Call for proposals/circulation of abstracts
    • Keynotes or plenary address: key talk addressed to large audience
    • Panel sessions: multiple panelists deliver address on common theme
    • Poster sessions: staffed/unstaffed booths demonstrate visualization of major research on a poster
    • Association meetings (see also AGM archetype): professional associations hold AGM as one part of a larger conference agenda

    Community

    • Formal networking (happy hours, social outings)
    • Informal networking (hallway track, peer introductions)
    • Business card exchange
    • Pre- and post-event correspondence

    Commercial Partners

    • Booth reps: Publishing or industry representatives exhibit products/discuss collaboration

    A quadrants matrix of conference

    Trade show

    Objectives: Information transfer; sales; lead generation.

    Major content

    • Live booth reps answer questions
    • Product information displayed
    • Promotional/information material distributed
    • Product demonstrations at booths or onstage
    • Product samples distributed to attendees

    Community interactions

    • Statements of intent to buy
    • Lead generation (badge scanning) of booth visitors
    • Business card exchange
    • Pre- and post-event correspondence

    A quadrants matrix of Trade show

    Annual general meeting

    Objectives: Transparently update members; establish governance and alignment.

    Meeting events

    • Updates provided to members on organization’s activities/finances
    • Decisions made regarding organization’s direction
    • Governance over organization established (elections)
    • Speakers addressing large audience from stage
    • In-camera sessions
    • Translation of proceedings
    • Real-time weighted voting
    • Minutes taken during meeting

    Administration

    • Notice given of meeting within mandated time period
    • Agenda circulated prior to meeting
    • Distribution of proxy material
    • Minutes distributed

    A quadrants matrix of Annual general meeting

    Department meeting

    Objectives: Information transfer of company agenda/initiatives; group decision making.

    Major content

    • Agenda circulated prior to meeting
    • Updates provided from senior management/leadership to employees on organization’s initiatives and direction
    • Employee questions and feedback addressed
    • Group decision making
    • Minutes taken during meeting
    • Minutes or follow-up circulated

    A quadrants matrix of department meeting

    Town hall meeting

    Objectives: Update public; answer questions; solicit feedback.

    Major content

    • Public notice of meeting announced
    • Agenda circulated prior to meeting
    • Speakers addressing large audience from stage
    • Presentation of information pertinent to public interest
    • Audience members line up to ask questions/provide feedback
    • Translation of proceedings
    • Recording of meeting archived

    A quadrants matrix of Town hall meeting

    Workshop

    Objectives: Make progress on objective; achieve consensus; knowledge transfer.

    Major content

    • Scheduling of workshop
    • Agenda circulated prior to meeting
    • Facilitator leads group activities
    • Participants develop alignment on project
    • Progress achieved on workshop project
    • Feedback on workshop shared with facilitator

    A quadrants matrix of Workshop

    Decision point: Analyze your event’s purpose and value

    Use the event archetypes to help you identify your event’s core components and value proposition.

    1. Attendee types: Who typically attends your event? Exclusively internal participants? External participants? A mix of the two?
    2. Communication: How do participants usually communicate with each other during this event? How do they communicate with the event organizers? Include both formal types of communication (listening to panel sessions) and informal (serendipitous conversations in the hallway).
    3. Connection: What types of connections do your attendees need to experience? (networking with peers; interactions with booth reps; consensus building with colleagues).
    4. Exchange of material: What kind of material is usually exchanged at this event and between whom? (Pamphlets, brochures, business cards, booth swag).
    5. Engagement: How do you usually retain attendees' attention and make sure they remain engaged throughout the event?
    6. Length: How long does the event typically last?
    7. Location and setup: Where does the event usually take place and who is involved in its setup?
    8. Success metrics: How do you usually measure your event's success?

    Info-Tech Insight

    Avoid trying to exactly reproduce the formerly in-person event online. Instead, identify the value proposition of each event component, then determine what its virtual expression could be.

    Example: Trade show

    Goals: Information transfer; sales; lead generation.

    1. Identify event component(s)
    2. Document its face-to-face expression(s)
    3. Identify the expression’s value proposition
    4. Translate the value proposition to a virtual component that facilitates overall event goal

    Event component

    Face-to-face expression

    Value proposition of component

    Virtual expression

    Attendee types Paying attendees Revenue for event organizer; sales and lead generation for booth rep Access to virtual event space
    Attendee types Booth rep Revenue for event organizer; information source for paying attendees Access to virtual event space
    Communication/connection Conversation between booth rep and attendee Lead generation for booth rep; information to inform decision making for attendee Ability to enter open video breakout session staffed by booth reps OR

    Ability to schedule meeting times with booth rep

    Multiple booth reps on hand to monitor different elements of the booth (one person to facilitate the discussion over video, another to monitor chat and Q&A)
    Communication/connection Serendipitous conversation between attendees Increased attendee contacts; fun Multiple attendees can attend the booth’s breakout session simultaneously and participate in web conferencing, meeting chat, or submit questions to Q&A
    Communication/connection Badges scanned at booth/email sign-up sheets filled out at table Lead generation for exhibitors List of visitors to booth shared with exhibitor (if consent given by attendees)

    Ability for attendees to request to be contacted for more information
    Exchange of material Catering (complimentary coffee, pastries) Obviate the need for attendees to leave the event for refreshments N/A: not included in virtual event
    Exchange of material Pamphlets, product literature, swag Portable information for attendee decision making Downloadable files (pdf)
    Location Responsibility of both the organizers (tables, chairs, venue) and booth reps (posters, handouts) Booth reps need a dedicated space where they can be easily found by attendees and advertise themselves Booth reps need access to virtual platform to upload files, images, provide booth description
    Engagement Attendees able to visit all booths by strolling through space Event organizers have a captive audience who is present in the immediacy of the event site Attendees motivated to stay in the event space and attend booths through gamification strategies (points awarded for number of booths visited or appointments booked)
    Length of event 2 full days Attendees travel to event site and spend the entire 2 days at the event, allowing them to be immersed in the event and absorb as much information in as little time as possible Exhibitors’ visiting hours will be scheduled so they work for both attendees attending in Eastern Standard Time and Pacific Time
    Metrics for success -Positive word of mouth
    -Number of registrations
    These metrics can be used to advertise to future exhibitors and attendees Number of virtual booths visited

    Number of file downloads

    Survey sent to attendees after event (favorite booths, preferred way to interact with exhibitors, suggestions for improvement, most valuable part of experience)

    Plan your metrics

    Use the analytics and reporting features available in your event technology toolset to capture the data you want to measure. Decide how each metric will impact your planning process for the next event.

    Examples of metrics:

    • Number of overall participants/registrants: Did you have more or fewer registrants/attendees than previous iterations of the event? What is the difference between number of registrants and number of real attendees?
    • Locations of participants: Where are people participating from? How many are attending for the first time? Are there new audiences you can pursue next time?
    • Most/least popular sessions: How long did people stay in the sessions and the event overall?
    • Most/least popular breakout rooms and discussion boards: Which topics should be repeated/skipped next time?
    • Social media mentions: Which topics received the most engagement on social media?
    • Surveys: What do participants report enjoying most? Least?
    • Technical failures: Can your software report on failures? Identify what technical problems arose and prepare a plan to mitigate them next time.

    Ensure the data you capture feeds into better planning for the next event

    Determine compliance requirements

    A greater event reach also means new data privacy considerations, depending on the location of your guests.

    General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

    Concerns over the collection of personal electronic data may not have previously been a part of your event planning considerations. However, now that your event is online, it’s wise to explore which data protection regulations apply to you. Remember, even if your organization is not located in the EU, if any of your attendees are European data subjects you may still be required to comply with GDPR, which involves the notification of data collected, allowing for opt-out options and the right to have data purged. The data must be collected for a specific purpose; if that purpose is expired, it can no longer be retained. You also have an obligation to report any breaches.

    Accessibility requirements

    What kind of accessibility laws are you subject to (AODA, WCAG2)? Regardless of compliance requirements, it is a good idea to ensure the online event follows accessibility best practices.

    Decision point: Set event policies

    What event policies need to be documented?
    How will you communicate them to attendees?

    Code of conduct

    One trend in the large event and conference space in recent years has been the development of codes of conduct that attendees are required to abide by to continue participating in the event.
    Now that your event is online, consider whether your code of conduct requires updating. Are there new types of appropriate/inappropriate online behavior that you need to define for your attendees?

    Harassment reporting

    If your organization has an event harassment reporting process, determine how this process will transfer over to the digital event.
    Ensure the reporting process has an owner and a clear methodology to follow to deal with complaints, as well as a digital reporting channel (a dedicated email or form) that is only accessed by approved staff to protect sensitive information.

    Develop a risk management plan

    Plan for how you will mitigate technical risks during your virtual event
    Provide presenters with a process to follow if technical problems arise.

    • Presenter’s internet connection cuts out
    • Attendees cannot log in to event platform
    • Attendees cannot hear/see video feed
    • What process will be followed when technical problems occur: ticketing system; chatbot; generic email accessible by all IT support assigned

    Testing/Rehearsal

    Test audio hardware: Ensure speakers use headphones/earbuds and mics (they do not have to be fancy/expensive). Relying on the computer/laptop mic can lead to more ambient noise and potential feedback problems.

    Check lighting: Avoid backlighting. Reposition speakers so they are not behind windows. Ask them to open/close shades. Add lamps as needed.

    Prevent interruptions: Before the event, ask panelists to turn phone and computer notifications to silent. Put a sign on the door saying Do not Disturb.

    Control audience view of screenshare: If your presenters will be sharing their screens, teach them how this works on the platform they are using. Advise them to exit out of any other application that is not part of their presentation, so they do not share the wrong screen unintentionally. Advise them to remove anything from the desktop that they do not want the audience to see, in case their desktop becomes visible at any point.

    Control audience view of physical environment: Before the event, advise participants to turn their cameras on and examine their backgrounds. Remove anything the audience should not be able to see.

    Test network connectivity: Send the presenters a link to a speed test and check their internet speed.

    Emergency contact: Exchange cell phone numbers for emergency backchannel conversations if problems arise on the day of the event.

    Set expectations: Presenting to an online audience feels very different to a live crowd. Prepare presenters for a lack of applause and lack of ability to see their audience, and that this does not mean the presentation was unsuccessful.

    Identify requirements

    To determine what kind of technical requirements you need to build the virtual expression of your event, consult the Virtual Event Platform Requirements Tool.

    1. If you have determined that the requirements you wish to use for the event exceed the capabilities of your existing communication and collaboration toolset, identify whether these gaps tip the scale toward purchasing a new tool. Use the requirement gaps to make the business case for purchasing a new tool.
    2. Use the Virtual Event Platform Requirements Tool to create a list of requirements.
    3. Consult the Software Reviews category for Virtual Event Platform Data Quadrant and Emotional Footprint reports.
    4. Assemble your documentation for approvals and the Rapid Application Selection Process.

    A photo of Detailed Feature Analysis Worksheet.

    Download the Virtual/Hybrid Event Software Feature Analysis Tool

    Rapid Application Selection Framework and Contract Review

    A photo of Rapid Application Selection Framework
    Launch Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework.

    Using the requirements you’ve just gathered as a base, use Info-Tech’s complete framework to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of software selection.

    Once you’ve selected a vendor(s), review the contract. Does it define an exit strategy? Does it define when your data will be deleted? Does it set service-level agreements that you find acceptable? Leverage Info-Tech’s contract review service once you have selected the virtual event solution and have received a contract from the vendor.

    Further research

    Photo of Run Better Meetings
    Run Better Meetings

    Bibliography

    Dutt, Raj. “7 Lessons from This Company’s First-Ever Virtual Conference.” Fast Company, 29 Jul 2020. Web.

    Kelly, Samantha Murphy. “Microsoft Build Proves Splashy Tech Events Can Thrive Online.” CNN, 21 May 2020. Web.

    “Phases.” Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK), n.d. Web.

    Price, Michael. “As COVID-19 Forces Conferences Online, Scientists Discover Upsides of Virtual Format.” Science, 28 Apr 2020. Web.

    “Stanford HAI Spring Conference - Key Advances in Artificial Intelligence.” Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2022. Web.

    “Virtual Event Tech Guide 2022.” Skift Meetings, April 2022. Web.

    Warren, Tom. “Microsoft Build 2022 Will Take Place May 24th–26th.” The Verge, 30 March 2022. Web.

    Contributors

    6 anonymous contributors

    Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization

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    • Parent Category Name: Innovation
    • Parent Category Link: /innovation
    • End users often have a disjointed experience while interacting with your organization in using its products and services.
    • You have been asked by your senior leadership to start a new or revive an existing design or innovation function within your organization. However, your organization has dismissed design thinking as the latest “management fad” and does not buy into the depth and rigor that design thinking brings.
    • The design or innovation function lives on the fringes of your organization due to its apathy towards design thinking or tumultuous internal politics.
    • You, as a CIO, want to improve the user satisfaction with the IT services your team provides to both internal and external users.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • A user’s perspective while interacting with the products and services is very different from the organization’s internal perspective while implementing and provisioning those. A design-based organization balances the two perspectives to drive user-satisfaction over end-to-end journeys.
    • Top management must have a design thinker – the guardian angel of the balance between exploration (i.e. discovering new business models) and exploitation (i.e. leveraging existing business models).
    • Your approach to adopt design thinking must consider your organization’s specific goals and culture. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

    Impact and Result

    • User satisfaction, with the end-to-end journeys orchestrated by your organization, will significantly increase.
    • Design-centric organizations enjoy disproportionate financial rewards.

    Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should adopt design thinking in your organization, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. What is design thinking?

    The focus of this phase is on revealing what designers do during the activity of designing, and on building an understanding of the nature of design ability. We will formally examine the many definitions of design thinking from experts in this field. At the core of this phase are several case studies that illuminate the various aspects of design thinking.

    • Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization – Phase 1: What Is Design Thinking?
    • Victor Scheinman's Experiment for Design

    2. How does an organization benefit from design thinking?

    This phase will illustrate the relevance of design in strategy formulation and in service-design. At the core of this phase are several case studies that illuminate these aspects of design thinking. We will also identify the trends impacting your organization and establish a baseline of user-experience with the journeys orchestrated by your organization.

    • Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization – Phase 2: How Does an Organization Benefit From Design Thinking?
    • Trends Matrix (Sample)

    3. How do you build a design organization?

    The focus of this phase is to:

  • Measure the design-centricity of your organization and subsequently, identify the areas for improvement.
  • Define an approach for a design program that suites your organization’s specific goals and culture.
    • Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization – Phase 3: How Do You Build a Design Organization?
    • Report on How Design-Centric Is Your Organization (Sample)
    • Approach for the Design Program (Sample)
    • Interview With David Dunne on Design Thinking
    • Interview With David Dunne on Design Thinking (mp3)
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Adopt Design Thinking in Your Organization

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 What Is Design Thinking?

    The Purpose

    The focus of this module is on revealing what designers do during the activity of designing, and on building an understanding of the nature of design ability. We will also review the report on the design-centricity of your organization and subsequently, earmark the areas for improvement.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An intimate understanding of the design thinking

    An assessment of design-centricity of your organization and identification of areas for improvement

    Activities

    1.1 Discuss case studies on how designers think and work

    1.2 Define design thinking

    1.3 Review report from Info-Tech’s diagnostic: How design-centric is your organization?

    1.4 Earmark areas for improvement to raise the design-centricity of your organization

    Outputs

    Report from Info-Tech’s diagnostic: ‘How design-centric is your organization?’ with identified areas for improvement.

    2 How Does an Organization Benefit From Design Thinking?

    The Purpose

    In this module, we will discuss the relevance of design in strategy formulation and service design. At the core of this module are several case studies that illuminate these aspects of design thinking. We will also identify the trends impacting your organization. We will establish a baseline of user experience with the journeys orchestrated by your organization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An in-depth understanding of the relevance of design in strategy formulation and service design

    An understanding of the trends that impact your organization

    A taxonomy of critical customer journeys and a baseline of customers’ satisfaction with those

    Activities

    2.1 Discuss relevance of design in strategy through case studies

    2.2 Articulate trends that impact your organization

    2.3 Discuss service design through case studies

    2.4 Identify critical customer journeys and baseline customers’ satisfaction with those

    2.5 Run a simulation of design in practice

    Outputs

    Trends that impact your organization.

    Taxonomy of critical customer journeys and a baseline of customers’ satisfaction with those.

    3 How to Build a Design Organization

    The Purpose

    The focus of this module is to define an approach for a design program that suits your organization’s specific goals and culture.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An approach for the design program in your organization. This includes aspects of the design program such as its objectives and measures, its model (one of the five archetypes or a hybrid one), and its governance.

    Activities

    3.1 Identify objectives and key measures for your design thinking program

    3.2 Structure your program after reviewing five main archetypes of a design program

    3.3 Balance between incremental and disruptive innovation

    3.4 Review best practices of a design organization

    Outputs

    An approach for your design thinking program: objectives and key measures; structure of the program, etc.

    Effectively Recognize IT Employees

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    • Parent Category Name: Engage
    • Parent Category Link: /engage
    • Even when organizations do have recognition programs, employees want more recognition than they currently receive.
    • In a recent study, McLean & Company found that 69% of IT employees surveyed felt they were not adequately praised and rewarded for superior work.
    • In a lot of cases, the issue with recognition programs isn’t that IT departments haven’t thought about the importance but rather that they haven’t focused on proper execution.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • You’re busy – don’t make your recognition program more complicated than it needs to be. Focus on day-to-day ideas and actively embed recognition into your IT team’s culture.
    • Recognition is impactful independent of rewards (i.e. items with a monetary value), but rewarding employees without proper recognition can be counterproductive. Put recognition first and use rewards as a way to amplify its effectiveness.

    Impact and Result

    • Info-Tech tools and guidance will help you develop a successful and sustainable recognition program aligned to strategic goals and values.
    • By focusing on three key elements – customization, alignment, and transparency – you can improve your recognition culture within four weeks, increasing employee engagement and productivity, improving relationships, and reducing turnover.

    Effectively Recognize IT Employees Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should implement an IT employee recognition program, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Effectively Recognize IT Employees – Executive Brief
    • Effectively Recognize IT Employees – Phases 1-3

    1. Assess the current recognition landscape

    Understand the current perceptions around recognition practices in the organization and determine the behaviors that your program will seek to recognize.

    • Effectively Recognize IT Employees – Phase 1: Assess the Current Recognition Landscape
    • IT Employee Recognition Survey Questions

    2. Design the recognition program

    Determine the structure and processes to enable effective recognition in your IT organization.

    • Effectively Recognize IT Employees – Phase 2: Design the Recognition Program
    • Employee Recognition Program Guide
    • Employee Recognition Ideas Catalog
    • Employee Recognition Nomination Form

    3. Implement the recognition program

    Rapidly build and roll out a recognition action and sustainment plan, including training managers to reinforce behavior with recognition.

    • Effectively Recognize IT Employees – Phase 3: Implement the Recognition Program
    • Recognition Action and Communication Plan
    • Manager Training: Reinforce Behavior With Recognition
    [infographic]

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    Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller (VAR)

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    • Parent Category Name: Vendor Management
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    Organizations need to understand their value-added reseller (VAR) portfolio and the greater VAR landscape to better:

    • Manage the VAR portfolio.
    • Understand additional value each VAR can provide.
    • Maximize existing VAR commitments.
    • Evaluate the VARs’ performance.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    VARs typically charge more for products because they are in some way adding value. If you’re not leveraging any of the provided value, you’re likely wasting money and should use a basic commodity-type reseller for procurement.

    Impact and Result

    This project will provide several benefits to Vendor Management and Procurement:

    • Defined VAR value and performance tracking.
    • Manageable portfolio of VARs that fully benefit the organization.
    • Added training, licensing advice, faster quoting, and invoicing resolution.
    • Reduced deployment and logistics costs.

    Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller (VAR) Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our informative Executive Brief to find out why you should maximize value from your value-added reseller, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the three ways to better manage your VARs improve performance and reduce costs.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Organize and prioritize

    Organize all your VARs and create a manageable portfolio detailing their value, specific, product, services, and certifications.

    • Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller – Phase 1: Organize and Prioritize
    • VAR Listing and Prioritization Tool

    2. “EvaluRate” your VARs

    Create an in-depth evaluation of the VARs’ capabilities.

    • Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller – Phase 2: EvaluRate Your VARs
    • VAR Features Checklist Tool
    • VAR Profile and EvaluRation Tool

    3. Consolidate and reduce

    Assess each VAR for low performance and opportunity to increase value or consolidate to another VAR and reduce redundancy.

    • Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller – Phase 3: Consolidate and Reduce

    4. Maximize their value

    Micro-manage your primary VARs to ensure performance to commitments and maximize their value.

    • Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller – Phase 4: Maximize Their Value
    • VAR Information and Scorecard Workbook
    [infographic]

    Explore the Secrets of Workday Licensing

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    • Parent Category Name: Licensing
    • Parent Category Link: /licensing
    • Organizations examining a move to Workday or renewing a contract struggle to gain information and leverage in the negotiation process on commercial components such as pricing transparency, contractual flexibility, terms, and license use rights.
    • Implementations and customization can become difficult if adequate planning steps and communication are not taken beforehand.
    • The FSE Worker Calculation formula is used in the pricing process and can be negotiable.
    • Information and training documentation must be searched in online handbooks, making it difficult to find and time consuming
    • Workday’s partner ecosystem, while closely managed, isn’t flowing with resources. Finding the right partner, at the right cost to support an implementation can be challenging.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    1. Know which defined areas of the agreement can be negotiated and which can't.
    2. Workday closely manages the Partner ecosystem and requests feedback on how to better support and implement its technologies. However, resource availability and talent management can be difficult as not many have the necessary skills.
    3. Recognize and accept that you’ve chosen the premium priced product in the market, so be prepared to pay up for best-in-class capabilities on a cloud-native ERP platform.

    Impact and Result

    • Focus on needs first. Conduct a thorough needs assessment and document the results. Well-documented worker counts by category and licenses required will be your best asset in navigating Workday licensing and negotiating your agreement.
    • Ensure the chosen implementation partner isn’t simply an integrator but provides consultative help and service.
    • Leverage executive relationships, downstream increased spending opportunities, and effective communication to drive and manage the relationship and attain necessary information to make effective decisions.

    Explore the Secrets of Workday Licensing Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should explore the secrets of Workday licensing, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand Workday

    Understand Workday’s business model, competitive options, and what to know when conducting due diligence and requirements gathering.

    • Explore the Secrets of Workday Licensing – Phase 1: Understand Workday

    2. Understand licensing, negotiate commercial terms, and purchase

    Review product options and licensing rules. Determine negotiation points. Evaluate and finalize the contract.

    • Explore the Secrets of Workday Licensing – Phase 2: Understand Licensing, Negotiate Commercial Terms, and Purchase
    • Workday Terms and Conditions Evaluation Tool
    [infographic]

    Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative

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    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 10.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.
    • member rating average days saved: Read what our members are saying
    • Parent Category Name: Customer Relationship Management
    • Parent Category Link: /customer-relationship-management
    • Augmented reality is a new technology and use cases are still emerging. Organizations have to work hard to stay ahead of the curve and predict how they will be impacted.
    • There are limited off-the-shelf augmented reality solutions in terms of business applications. IT not only needs to understand the emerging augmented reality hardware, but also the plethora of development platforms.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Augmented reality presents a new avenue to solve problems that cannot be addressed efficiently with existing technology. It is a new tool that will impact the way you work.
    • Beyond addressing existing problems, augmented reality will provide the ability to differently execute business processes. Current processes have been designed with existing systems and capabilities in mind. Augmented reality impacts organizational design processes that are more complex.
    • As a technology with an evolving set of use cases, IT and the business must anticipate some of the challenges that may arise with the use of augmented reality (e.g. health and safety, application development, regulatory).

    Impact and Result

    • Our methodology addresses the possible issues by using a case-study approach to demonstrate the “art of the possible” for augmented reality.
    • With an understanding of augmented reality, it is possible to find applicable use cases for this emerging technology and get a leg up on competitors.
    • By utilizing Info-Tech’s Augmented Reality Use Case Picklist and the Augmented Reality Stakeholder Presentation Template, the IT team and their business stakeholders can confidently approach augmented reality adoption.

    Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why your organization should care about augmented reality’s potential to transform the workplace and how Info-Tech will support you as you identify and build your augmented reality use case.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand augmented reality

    Analyze the four key benefits of augmented reality to understand how the technology can resolve industry issues.

    • Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative – Phase 1: Understand Augmented Reality
    • Augmented Reality Glossary

    2. Finding space for augmented reality

    Develop and prioritize use cases for augmented reality using Info-Tech’s AR Initiative Framework.

    • Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative – Phase 2: Finding Space for Augmented Reality
    • Augmented Reality Use Case Picklist

    3. Communicate project decisions to stakeholders

    Present the augmented reality initiative to stakeholders and understand the way forward for the AR initiative.

    • Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative – Phase 3: Communicate Project Decisions to Stakeholders
    • Augmented Reality Stakeholder Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Activate Your Augmented Reality Initiative

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Understand Augmented Reality and Its Use Cases

    The Purpose

    Understand the fundamentals of augmented reality technology and its real-world business applications.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A prioritized list of augmented reality use cases.

    Activities

    1.1 Introduce augmented reality technology.

    1.2 Understand augmented reality use cases.

    1.3 Review augmented reality case studies.

    Outputs

    An understanding of the history and current state of augmented reality technology.

    An understanding of “the art of the possible” for augmented reality.

    An enhanced understanding of augmented reality.

    2 Conduct an Environmental Scan and Internal Review

    The Purpose

    Examine where the organization stands in the current competitive environment.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of what is needed from an augmented reality initiative to differentiate your organization from its competitors.

    Activities

    2.1 Environmental analysis (PEST+SWOT).

    2.2 Competitive analysis.

    2.3 Listing of interaction channels and disposition.

    Outputs

    An understanding of the internal and external propensity for augmented reality.

    An understanding of comparable organizations’ approach to augmented reality.

    A chart with the disposition of each interaction channel and its applicability to augmented reality.

    3 Parse Critical Technology Drivers

    The Purpose

    Determine which business processes will be affected by augmented reality.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of critical technology drivers and their KPIs.

    Activities

    3.1 Identify affected process domains.

    3.2 Brainstorm impacts of augmented reality on workflow enablement.

    3.3 Distill critical technology drivers.

    3.4 Identify KPIs for each driver.

    Outputs

    A list of affected process domains.

    An awareness of critical technology drivers for the augmented reality initiative.

    Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy

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    • Parent Category Name: Marketing Solutions
    • Parent Category Link: /marketing-solutions

    Digital Marketers working with an outdated or bad SEO strategy often see:

    • Declining keyword ranking and traffic
    • Poor keyword strategy
    • On-page errors

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    Most marketers fail in their SEO efforts because they focus on creating content for computers, not people.

    Impact and Result

    Using the SoftwareReviews methodology, digital marketers are able to break up their SEO project and data into bite-sized, actionable steps that focus on long-term improvement. Our methodology includes:

    • Competitive keyword research and identification of opportunities
    • On-page keyword strategy

    Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy

    Update your on-page SEO strategy with competitively relevant keywords.

    • Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy Storyboard
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy
    Update your on-page SEO strategy with competitively relevant keywords.

    Analyst Perspective

    Most marketers fail in their SEO efforts because they focus on creating content for computers, not people.

    Leading search engine optimization methods focus on creating and posting relevant keyword-rich content, not just increasing page rank. Content and keywords should move a buyer along their journey, close a sale, and develop long-term relationships. Unfortunately, many SEO specialists focus on computers, not the buyer. What's even more concerning is that up to 70% of SaaS businesses have already been impacted by outdated and inefficient SEO techniques. Poor strategies often focus on ballooning SEO metrics in the short-term instead of building the company's long-term PageRank.

    Best-in-class digital marketers stop chasing the short-term highs and focus on long-term growth. This starts with developing a competitive keyword strategy and updating website content with the new keywords.

    SEO is a large topic, so we have broken the strategy into small, easy-to-implement steps, taking the guesswork out of how to use the data from SEO tools and giving CMOs a solid path to increase their SEO results.

    This is a picture of Terra Higginson

    Terra Higginson
    Marketing Research Director
    SoftwareReviews

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Digital marketers working with an outdated or bad SEO strategy often see:

    • Declining keyword ranking and traffic
    • Poor keyword strategy
    • On-page errors

    Search algorithms change all the time, which means that the strategy is often sitting on the sifting sands of technology, making SEO strategies quickly outdated.

    Common Obstacles

    Digital marketers are responsible for developing and implementing a competitive SEO strategy but increasingly encounter the following obstacles:

    • SEO practitioners that focus on gaming the system
    • Ever-changing SEO technology
    • Lack of understanding of the best SEO techniques
    • SEO techniques focus on the needs of computers, not people
    • Lack of continued investment

    SoftwareReviews' Approach

    Using the SoftwareReviews methodology, digital marketers are able to break up their SEO project and data into bite-sized, actionable steps that focus on long-term improvement. Our methodology includes:

    • Competitive keyword research and identification of opportunities
    • On-page keyword strategy

    Our methodology will take a focused step-by-step strategy in a series of phases that will increase PageRank and competitive positioning.

    SoftwareReviews' SEO Methodology

    In this blueprint, we will cover:

    Good SEO vs. Poor SEO Techniques

    The difference between good and bad SEO techniques.

    Common Good
    SEO Techniques

    Common Poor
    SEO Techniques

    • Writing content for people, not machines.
    • Using SEO tools to regularly adjust and update SEO content, keywords, and backlinks.
    • Pillar and content cluster strategy in addition to a basic on- and off-page strategy.
    • Keyword stuffing and content duplication.
    • A strategy that focuses on computers first and people second.
    • Low-quality or purchased backlinks.

    Companies With Great SEO…

    Keyword Strategy

    • Have identified a keyword strategy that carves out targets within the white space available between themselves and the competition.

    Error-Free Site

    • Have error-free sites without duplicate content. Their URLs and redirects are all updated. Their site is responsive, and every page loads in under two seconds.

    Pillar & Content Clusters

    • Employ a pillar and content cluster strategy to help move the buyer through their journey.

    Authentic Off-Page Strategy

    • Build an authentic backlink strategy that incorporates the right information on the right sites to move the buyer through their journey.

    SEO Terms Defined

    A glossary to define common Phase 1 SEO terms.

    Search Volume: this measures the number of times a keyword is searched for in a certain time period. Target keywords with a volume of between 100-100,000. A search volume greater than 100,000 will be increasingly difficult to rank (A Beginner's Guide to Keyword Search Volume, 2022, Semrush).

    Keyword Difficulty: the metric that quantifies how difficult it will be to rank for a certain keyword. The keyword difficulty percentage includes the number of competitors attempting to rank for the same keyword, the quality of their content, the search intent, backlinks, and domain authority (Keyword Difficulty: What Is It and Why Is It Important? 2022, Semrush).

    Intent: this metric focuses on the intent of the user's search. All search intent is categorized into Informational, Commercial, Navigational, and Transactional (What Is Search Intent? A Complete Guide, 2022, Semrush).

    On-Page SEO: refers to the practice of search engine optimizing elements of your site such as title tags, internal links, HTML code, URL optimization, on-page content, images, and user experience.

    Off-Page SEO: refers to the practice of optimizing brand awareness (What Is Off-Page SEO? A Comprehensive Guide, 2022, Semrush).

    H1: HTML code that tells a search engine the title of the page (neilpatel.com).

    SEO Tool: A subscription-based all-in-one search engine optimization MarTech tool.

    Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful… We believe Search should deliver the most relevant and reliable information available.
    – An excerpt from Google's mission statement

    Your Challenge

    Google makes over 4.5k algorithm changes per year1, directly impacting digital marketing search engine optimization efforts.

    Digital marketers with SEO problems will often see the following issues:

    • Keyword ranking – A decline in keyword ranking is alarming and results in decreased PageRank.
    • Bounce rate – Attracting the wrong audience to your site will increase the bounce rate because the H1 doesn't resonate with your audience.
    • Outdated keywords – Many companies are operating on a poor keyword strategy, or even worse, no keyword strategy. In addition, many marketers haven't updated their strategy to include pillar and cluster content.
    • Errors – Neglected sites often have a large number of errors.
    • Bad backlinks – Neglected sites often have a large number of toxic backlinks.

    The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of the search results.
    – Huffington Post

    Common Obstacles

    Digital marketers are responsible for developing and executing a competitive SEO strategy but increasingly encounter the following obstacles:

    • Inefficient and ineffective SEO practitioners.
    • Changing SEO technology and search engine algorithms.
    • Lack of understanding of the best-in-class SEO techniques.
    • Lack of a sustainable plan to manage the strategy and invest in SEO.

    SEO is a helpful activity when it's applied to people-first content. However, content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying.
    – Google Search Central Blog

    Benefits of Proper SEO

    A good SEO keyword strategy will create long-term, sustainable SEO growth:

    • Write content for people, not algorithms – Good SEO prioritizes the needs of humans over the needs of computers, being ever thoughtful of the meaning of content and keywords.
    • Content that aligns with intent – Content and keyword intent will align with the buyer journey to help move prospects through the funnel.
    • Competitive keyword strategy – Find keyword white space for your brand. Keywords will be selected to optimize your ranking among competition with reasonable and sustainable targets.
    • Actionable and impactful fixes – By following the SoftwareReviews phases of SEO, you will be able to take a very large task and divide it into conquerable actions. Small improvements everyday lead to very large improvements over time.

    Digital Marketing SEO Stats

    61%
    61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success.
    Source: Safari Digital

    437%
    Updating an existing title tag with an SEO optimised one can increase page clicks by more than 437%.
    Source: Safari Digital

    Good SEO Aligns With Search Intent

    What type of content is the user searching for? Align your keyword to the logical search objective.

    Informational

    This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to inform or educate themselves on a specific topic.

    Commercial

    This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to do research before making a purchase.

    Transactional

    This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to purchase something.

    Navigational

    This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to find a specific page.

    SoftwareReviews' Methodology toCreate an Effective SEO Strategy

    1. Competitive Analysis & Keyword Discovery 2. On-Page Keyword Optimization
    Phase Steps
    1. Make a list of keywords in your current SEO strategy – including search volume, keyword difficulty percentage, intent.
    2. Research the keywords of top competitors.
    3. Make a list of target keywords you would like to own – including the search volume, keyword difficulty percentage, and intent. Make sure that these keywords align with your buyer persona.
    1. List product and service pages, along with the URL and current ranking(s) for the keyword(s) for that URL.
    2. Create a new individual page strategy for each URL. Record the current keyword, rank, title tag, H1 tag, and meta description. Then, with keyword optimization in mind, develop the new title tag, new H1 tag, and new meta description. Build the target keywords into the pages and tags.
    3. Record the current ranking for the pages' keywords then reassess after three to six months.
    Phase Outcomes
    • Understanding of competitive landscape for SEO
    • A list of target new keywords
    • Keyword optimized product and service pages

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2

    Call #1: Identify your current SEO keyword strategy.

    Call #2: Discuss how to start a competitive keyword analysis.

    Call #4: Discuss how to build the list of target keywords.

    Call #6: Discuss keyword optimization of the product & services pages.

    Call #8: (optional)

    Schedule a call to update every three to six months.

    Call #3: Discuss the results of the competitive keyword analysis.

    Call #5: Discuss which pages to update with new target keywords.

    Call #7: Review final page content and tags.

    Call #9: Schedule a call for SEO Phase 2: On-Page Technical Refinement.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 1 to 2 months.

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2

    Call #1: Identify your current SEO keyword strategy.

    Call #2: Discuss how to start a competitive keyword analysis.

    Call #4: Discuss how to build the list of target keywords.

    Call #6: Discuss keyword optimization of the product & services pages.

    Call #8: (optional)

    Schedule a call to update every three to six months.

    Call #3: Discuss the results of the competitive keyword analysis.

    Call #5: Discuss which pages to update with new target keywords.

    Call #7: Review final page content and tags.

    Call #9: Schedule a call for SEO Phase 2: On-Page Technical Refinement.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 1 to 2 months.

    SoftwareReviews offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    Included Within an Advisory Membership Optional Add-Ons
    DIY Toolkit Guided Implementation Workshop Consulting
    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Insight Summary

    People-First Content

    Best-in-class SEO practitioners focus on people-first content, not computer-first content. Search engine algorithms continue to focus on how to rank better content first, and a strategy that moves your buyers through the funnel in a logical and cohesive way will beat any SEO trick over the long run.

    Find White Space

    A good SEO strategy uses competitive research to carve out white space and give them a competitive edge in an increasingly difficult ranking algorithm. An understanding of the ideal client profile and the needs of their buyer persona(s) sit as a pre-step to any good SEO strategy.

    Optimize On-Page Keywords

    By optimizing the on-page strategy with competitively relevant keywords that target your ideal client profile, marketers are able to take an easy first step at improving the SEO content strategy.

    Understand the Strategy

    If you don't understand the strategy of your SEO practitioner, you are in trouble. Marketers need to work hand in hand with their SEO specialists to quickly uncover gaps, create a strategy that aligns with the buyer persona(s), and execute the changes.

    Quality Trumps Quantity

    The quality of the prospect that your SEO efforts bring to your site is more important than the number of people brought to your site.

    Stop Here and Ask Yourself:

    • Do I have an updated (completed within the last two years) buyer persona and journey?
    • Do I know who the ICP (ideal client profile) is for my product or company?

    If not, stop here, and we can help you define your buyer persona and journey, as well as your ideal client profile before moving forward with SEO Phase 1.

    The Steps to SEO Phase 1

    The Keyword Strategy

    1. Current Keywords
      • Identify the keywords your SEO strategy is currently targeting.
    2. Competitive Analysis
      • Research the keywords of competitor(s). Identify keyword whitespace.
    3. New Target Keywords
      • Identify and rank keywords that will result in more quality leads and less competition.
    4. Product & Service Pages
      • Identify your current product and service pages. These pages represent the easiest content to update on your site.
    5. Individual Page Update
      • Develop an SEO strategy for each of your product and service pages, include primary target keyword, H1, and title tags, as well as keyword-rich description.

    Resources Needed for Search Engine Optimization

    Consider the working skills required for search engine optimization.

    Required Skills/Knowledge

    • SEO
    • Web development
    • Competitive analysis
    • Content creation
    • Understanding of buyer persona and journey
    • Digital marketing

    Suggested Titles

    • SEO Analyst
    • Competitive Intelligence Analyst
    • Content Marketing Manager
    • Website Developer
    • Digital Marketing Manager

    Digital Marketing Software

    • CMS that allows you to easily access and update your content

    SEO Software

    • SEO tool

    Step 1: Current Keywords

    Use this sheet to record your current keyword research.

    Use your SEO tool to research keywords and find the following:
    Use a quality tool like SEMRush to obtain SEO data.

    1. Keyword difficulty
    2. Search volume
    3. Search intent

    This is a screenshot of the SEO tool SEMRush, which can be used to identify current keywords.

    Step 2: Competitive Analysis

    Use this sheet to guide the research on your competitors' keywords.

    Use your SEO tool to find the following:

    1. Top organic keywords
    2. Ranking of keywords
    3. Domain authority and trust
    4. Position changes

    This is a screenshot of the SEO tool SEMRush, which can be used to perform an competitive analysis

    Step 3: New Target Keywords

    Use this sheet to record target keywords that have a good volume but are less competitive. The new target keywords should align with your buyer persona and their journey.

    Use your SEO tool to research keywords and find the following:
    Use a quality tool like SEMRush to obtain SEO data.

    1. Keyword difficulty
    2. Search volume
    3. Search intent

    This is a screenshot of the SEO tool SEMRush, which can be used to identify new target keywords.

    Step 4: Product & Service Pages

    Duplicate this page so that you have a separate page for each URL from Step 4

    Use this sheet to identify your current product and service pages.

    Use your SEO tool to find the following:

    1. Current rank
    2. Current keywords

    This is a screenshot of the SEO tool SEMRush, showing where you can display product and service pages.

    Step 5: Individual Page Strategy

    Develop a keyword strategy for each of your product and service pages. Use a fresh page for each URL.

    Date last optimized:
    mm/dd/yyyy

    This is a screenshot of the SEO tool SEMRush, with an example of how you can use an individual page strategy to develop a keyword strategy.

    Bibliography

    Council, Y. "Council Post: The Rundown On Black Hat SEO Techniques And Why You Should Avoid Them." Forbes, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

    "Our approach – How Google Search works." Google Search. Accessed September 2022.

    "The Best Place to Hide a Dead Body is Page Two of Google." HuffPost, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

    Patel, Neil. "How to Create the Perfect H1 Tag for SEO." neilpatel.com. Accessed September 2022.

    Schwartz, B. "Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond." Search Engine Land, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

    Schwartz, B. "Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond." Search Engine Land, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

    Build a Data Architecture Roadmap

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    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 8.8/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $8,846 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 23 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Data Management
    • Parent Category Link: /data-management
    • Data architecture involves many moving pieces requiring coordination to provide greatest value from data.
    • Data architects are at the center of this turmoil and must be able to translate high-level business requirements into specific instructions for data workers using complex data models.
    • Data architects must account for the constantly growing data and application complexity, more demanding needs from the business, an ever-increasing number of data sources, and a growing need to integrate components to ensure that performance isn’t compromised.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Data architecture needs to evolve with the changing business landscape. There are four common business drivers that put most pressure on archaic architectures. As a result, the organization’s architecture must be flexible and responsive to changing business needs.
    • Data architecture is not just about models. Viewing data architecture as just technical data modeling can lead to structurally unsound data that does not serve the business.
    • Data is used differently across the layers of an organization’s data architecture, and the capabilities needed to optimize use of data change with it. Architecting and managing data from source to warehousing to presentation requires different tactics for optimal use.

    Impact and Result

    • Have a framework in place to identify the appropriate solution for the challenge at hand. Our three-phase practical approach will help you build a custom and modernized data architecture.
      • Identify and prioritize the business drivers in which data architecture changes would create the largest overall benefit, and determine the corresponding data architecture tiers that need to be addressed.
      • Discover the best-practice trends, measure your current state, and define the targets for your data architecture tactics.
      • Build a cohesive and personalized roadmap for restructuring your data architecture. Manage your decisions and resulting changes.

    Build a Data Architecture Roadmap Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why your organization should optimize its data architecture as it evolves with the drivers of the business to get the most from its data.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Prioritize your data architecture with business-driven tactics

    Identify the business drivers that necessitate data architecture improvements, then create a tactical plan for optimization.

    • Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy – Phase 1: Prioritize Your Data Architecture With Business-Driven Tactics
    • Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool
    • Data Architecture Optimization Template

    2. Personalize your tactics to optimize your data architecture

    Analyze how you stack up to Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model to uncover your tactical plan, and discover groundbreaking data architecture trends and how you can fit them into your action plan.

    • Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy – Phase 2: Personalize Your Tactics to Optimize Your Data Architecture
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool
    • Data Architecture Trends Presentation

    3. Create your tactical data architecture roadmap

    Optimize your data architecture by following tactical initiatives and managing the resulting change brought on by those optimization activities.

    • Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy – Phase 3: Create Your Tactical Data Architecture Roadmap
    • Data Architecture Decision Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build a Data Architecture Roadmap

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Identify the Drivers of the Business for Optimizing Data Architecture

    The Purpose

    Explain approach and value proposition.

    Review the common business drivers and how the organization is driving a need to optimize data architecture.

    Understand Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture model.

    Determine the pattern of tactics that apply to the organization for optimization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of the current data architecture landscape.

    Priorities for tactical initiatives in the data architecture practice are identified.

    Target state for the data quality practice is defined.

    Activities

    1.1 Explain approach and value proposition.

    1.2 Review the common business drivers and how the organization is driving a need to optimize data architecture.

    1.3 Understand Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture model.

    1.4 Determine the pattern of tactics that apply to the organization for optimization.

    Outputs

    Five-tier logical data architecture model

    Data architecture tactic plan

    2 Determine Your Tactics For Optimizing Data Architecture

    The Purpose

    Define improvement initiatives.

    Define a data architecture improvement strategy and roadmap.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Gaps, inefficiencies, and opportunities in the data architecture practice are identified.

    Activities

    2.1 Create business unit prioritization roadmap.

    2.2 Develop subject area project scope.

    2.3 Subject area 1: data lineage analysis, root cause analysis, impact assessment, business analysis

    Outputs

    Business unit prioritization roadmap

    Subject area scope

    Data lineage diagram

    3 Create a Strategy for Data Quality Project 2

    The Purpose

    Define improvement initiatives.

    Define a data quality improvement strategy and roadmap.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Improvement initiatives are defined.

    Improvement initiatives are evaluated and prioritized to develop an improvement strategy.

    A roadmap is defined to depict when and how to tackle the improvement initiatives.

    Activities

    3.1 Create business unit prioritization roadmap.

    3.2 Develop subject area project scope.

    3.3 Subject area 1: data lineage analysis, root cause analysis, impact assessment, business analysis.

    Outputs

    Business unit prioritization roadmap

    Subject area scope

    Data lineage diagram

    Further reading

    Build a Data Architecture Roadmap

    Optimizing data architecture requires a plan, not just a data model.

    ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

    Integral to an insight-driven enterprise is a modern and business-driven data environment.

    “As business and data landscapes change, an organization’s data architecture needs to be able to keep pace with these changes. It needs to be responsive so as to not only ensure the organization continues to operate efficiently but that it supports the overall strategic direction of the organization.

    In the dynamic marketplace of today, organizations are constantly juggling disruptive forces and are finding the need to be more proactive rather than reactive. As such, organizations are finding their data to be a source of competitive advantage where the data architecture has to be able to not only support the increasing amount, sources, and rate at which organizations are capturing and collecting data but also be able to meet and deliver on changing business needs.

    Data architecture optimization should, therefore, aid in breaking down data silos and creating a more shared and all-encompassing data environment for better empowering the business.” (Crystal Singh, Director, Research, Data and Information Practice, Info-Tech Research Group)

    Our understanding of the problem

    This Research Is Designed For:
    • Data architects or their equivalent, looking to optimize and improve the efficiency of the capture, movement and storage of data for a variety of business drivers.
    • Enterprise architects looking to improve the backbone of the holistic approach of their organization’s structure.
    This Research Will Help You:
    • Identify the business drivers that are impacted and improved by best-practice data architecture.
    • Optimize your data architecture using tactical practices to address the pressing issues of the business to drive modernization.
    • Align the organization’s data architecture with the grander enterprise architecture.
    This Research Will Also Assist:
    • CIOs concerned with costs, benefits, and the overall structure of their organizations data flow.
    • Database administrators tasked with overseeing crucial elements of the data architecture.
    This Research Will Help Them:
    • Get a handle on the current situation of data within the organization.
    • Understand how data architecture affects the operations of the data sources within the enterprise.

    Executive summary

    Situation

    • The data architecture of a modern organization involves many moving pieces requiring coordination to provide greatest value from data.
    • Data architects are at the center of this turmoil and must be able to translate high-level business requirements into specific instructions for data workers using complex data models.

    Complication

    • Data architects must account for the constantly growing data and application complexity, and more demanding needs from the business.
    • There is an ever-increasing number of data sources and a growing need to integrate components to ensure that performance isn’t compromised.
    • There isn’t always a clearly defined data architect role, yet the responsibilities must be filled to get maximum value from data.

    Resolution

    • To deal with these challenges, a data architect must have a framework in place to identify the appropriate solution for the challenge at hand.
      • Identify and prioritize the business drivers in which data architecture changes would create the largest overall benefit, and determine the corresponding data architecture tiers that need to be addressed to customize your solution.
      • Discover the best practice trends, measure your current state, and define the targets for your data architecture tactics.
      • Build a cohesive and personalized roadmap for restructuring your data architecture. Manage your decisions and resulting changes.

    Info-Tech Insight

    1. Data architecture is not just about models. Viewing data architecture as just technical data modeling can lead to a data environment that does not aptly serve or support the business. Identify the priorities of your business and adapt your data architecture to those needs.
    2. Changes to data architecture are typically driven by four common business driver patterns. Use these as a shortcut to understand how to evolve your data architecture.
    3. Data is used differently across the layers of an organization’s data architecture; therefore, the capabilities needed to optimize the use of data change with it. Architecting and managing data from source to warehousing to presentation requires different tactics for optimal use.

    Your data is the foundation of your organization’s knowledge and ability to make decisions

    Data should be at the foundation of your organization’s evolution.

    The transformational insights that executives are constantly seeking to leverage can be uncovered with a data practice that makes high quality, trustworthy information readily available to the business users who need it.

    50% Organizations that embrace data are 50% more likely to launch products and services ahead of their competitors. (Nesta, 2016)

    Whether hoping to gain a better understanding of your business or trying to become an innovator in your industry, any organization can get value from its data regardless of where you are in your journey to becoming a data-driven enterprise:

    Business Monitoring
    • Data reporting
    • Uncover inefficiencies
    • Monitor progress
    • Track inventory levels
    Business Insights
    • Data analytics
    • Expose patterns
    • Predict future trends
    Business Optimization
    • Data-based apps
    • Build apps to automate actions based on insights
    Business Transformation
    • Monetary value of data
    • Create new revenue streams
    (Journey to Data Driven Enterprise, 2015)

    As organizations seek to become more data driven, it is imperative to better manage data for its effective use

    Here comes the zettabyte era.

    A zettabyte is a billion terabytes. Organizations today need to measure their data size in zettabytes, a challenge that is only compounded by the speed at which the data is expected to move.

    Arriving at the understanding that data can be the driving force of your organization is just the first step. The reality is that the true hurdles to overcome are in facing the challenges of today’s data landscape.

    Challenges of The Modern Data Landscape
    Data at rest Data movement
    Greater amounts Different types Uncertain quality Faster rates Higher complexity

    “The data environment is very chaotic nowadays. Legacy applications, data sprawl – organizations are grappling with what their data landscape looks like. Where are our data assets that we need to use?” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Solution

    Well-defined and structured data management practices are the best way to mitigate the limitations that derive from these challenges and leverage the most possible value from your data.

    Refer to Info-Tech’s capstone Create a Plan For Establishing a Business-Aligned Data Management Practice blueprint to understand data quality in the context of data disciplines and methods for improving your data management capabilities.

    Data architecture is an integral aspect of data management

    Data Architecture

    The set of rules, policies, standards, and models that govern and define the type of data collected and how it is used, stored, managed, and integrated within the organization and its database systems.

    In general, the primary objective of data architecture is the standardization of data for the benefit of the organization.

    54% of leading “analytics-driven” enterprises site data architecture as a required skill for data analytics initiatives. (Maynard 2015)

    MYTH

    Data architecture is purely a model of the technical requirements of your data systems.

    REALITY

    Data architecture is largely dependent on a human element. It can be viewed as “the bridge between defining strategy and its implementation”. (Erwin 2016)

    Functions

    A strong data architecture should:

    • Define, visualize, and communicate data strategy to various stakeholders.
    • Craft a data delivery environment.
    • Ensure high data quality.
    • Provide a roadmap for continuous improvement.

    Business value

    A strong data architecture will help you:

    • Align data processes with business strategy and the overall holistic enterprise architecture.
    • Enable efficient flow of data with a stronger focus on quality and accessibility.
    • Reduce the total cost of data ownership.

    Data architects must maintain a comprehensive view of the organization’s rapidly proliferating data

    The data architect:
    • Acts as a “translator” between the business and data workers to communicate data and technology requirements.
    • Facilitates the creation of the data strategy.
    • Manages the enterprise data model.
    • Has a greater knowledge of operational and analytical data use cases.
    • Recommends data management policies and standards, and maintains data management artifacts.
    • Reviews project solution architectures and identifies cross impacts across the data lifecycle.
    • Is a hands-on expert in data management and warehousing technologies.
    • Is not necessarily it’s own designated position, but a role that can be completed by a variety of IT professionals.

    Data architects bridge the gap between strategic and technical requirements:

    Visualization centering the 'Data Architect' as the bridge between 'Data Workers', 'Business', and 'Data & Applications'.

    “Fundamentally, the role of a data architect is to understand the data in an organization at a reasonable level of abstraction.” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Many are experiencing the pains of poor data architecture, but leading organizations are proactively tackling these issues

    Outdated and archaic systems and processes limit the ability to access data in a timely and efficient manner, ultimately diminishing the value your data should bring.

    59%

    of firms believe their legacy storage systems require too much processing to meet today’s business needs. (Attivio, Survey Big Data decision Makers, 2016)

    48%

    of companies experience pains from being reliant on “manual methods and trial and error when preparing data.” (Attivio, Survey Big Data decision Makers, 2016)

    44%
    +
    22%

    44% of firms said preparing data was their top hurdle for analytics, with 22% citing problems in accessing data. (Data Virtualization blog, Data Movement Killed the BI Star, 2016)

    Intuitive organizations who have recognized these shortcomings have already begun the transition to modernized and optimized systems and processes.

    28%

    of survey respondents say they plan to replace “data management and architecture because it cannot handle the requirements of big data.” (Informatica, Digital Transformation: Is Your Data Management Ready, 2016)

    50%

    Of enterprises plan to replace their data warehouse systems and analytical tools in the next few years. (TDWI, End of the Data Warehouse as we know it, 2017)

    Leading organizations are attacking data architecture problems … you will be left behind if you do not start now!

    Once on your path to redesigning your data architecture, neglecting the strategic elements may leave you ineffective

    Focusing on only data models without the required data architecture guidance can cause harmful symptoms in your IT department, which will lead to organization-wide problems.

    IT Symptoms Due to Ineffective Data Architecture

    Poor Data Quality

    • Inconsistent, duplicate, missing, incomplete, incorrect, unstandardized, out of date, and mistake-riddled data can plague your systems.

    Poor Accessibility

    • Delays in accessing data.
    • Limits on who can access data.
    • Limited access to data remotely.

    Strategic Disconnect

    • Disconnect between owner and consumer of data.
    • Solutions address narrow scope problems.
    • System barriers between departments.
    Leads to Poor Organizational Conditions

    Inaccurate Insights

    • Inconsistent and/or erroneous operational and management reports.
    • Ineffective cross-departmental use of analytics.

    Ineffective Decision Making

    • Slow flow of information to executive decision makers.
    • Inconsistent interpretation of data or reports.

    Inefficient Operations

    • Limits to automated functionality.
    • Increased divisions within organization.
    • Regulatory compliance violations.
    You need a solution that will prevent the pains.

    Follow Info-Tech’s methodology to optimize data architecture to meet the business needs

    The following is a summary of Info-Tech’s methodology:

    1

    1. Prioritize your core business objectives and identify your business driver.
    2. Learn how business drivers apply to specific tiers of Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture model.
    3. Determine the appropriate tactical pattern that addresses your most important requirements.
    Visualization of the process described on the left: Business drivers applying to Info-Tech's five-tier data architecture, then determining tactical patterns, and eventually setting targets of your desired optimized state.

    2

    1. Select the areas of the five-tier architecture to focus on.
    2. Measure current state.
    3. Set the targets of your desired optimized state.

    3

    1. Roadmap your tactics.
    2. Manage and communicate change.
    A roadmap leading to communication.

    Info-Tech will get you to your optimized state faster by focusing on the important business issues

    First Things First

    1. Info-Tech’s methodology helps you to prioritize and establish the core strategic objectives behind your goal of modernizing data architecture. This will narrow your focus to the appropriate areas of your current data systems and processes that require the most attention.

    Info-Tech has identified these four common drivers that lead to the need to optimize your data architecture.

    • Becoming More Data Driven
    • Regulations and Compliance
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • New Functionality or Business Rule

    These different core objectives underline the motivation to optimize data architecture, and will determine your overall approach.

    Use the five-tier architecture to provide a consumable view of your data architecture

    Every organization’s data system requires a unique design and an assortment of applications and storage units to fit their business needs. Therefore, it is difficult to paint a picture of an ideal model that has universal applications. However, when data architecture is broken down in terms of layers or tiers, there exists a general structure that is seen in all data systems.

    Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture. The five tiers being 'Sources' which includes 'Apps', 'Excel and other documents', and 'Access database(s)'; 'Integration and Translation' the 'Movement and transformation of data'; 'Warehousing' which includes 'Data Lakes & Warehouse(s) (Raw Data)'; 'Analytics' which includes 'Data Marts', 'Data Cube', 'Flat Files', and 'BI Tools'; and 'Presentation' which includes 'Reports' and 'Dashboards'.

    Thinking of your data systems and processes in this framework will allow you to see how different elements of the architecture relate to specific business operations.

    1. This blueprint will demonstrate how the business driver behind your redesign requires you to address specific layers of the five-tier data architecture.
    1. Once you’ve aligned your business driver to the appropriate data tiers, this blueprint will provide you with the best practice tactics you should apply to achieve an optimized data architecture.

    Use the five-tier architecture to prioritize tactics to improve your data architecture in line with your pattern

    Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model
    Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model featuring the five-tier architecture listing 'Core Capabilities' and 'Advanced Capabilities' within each tier, and a list of 'Cross Capabilities' which apply to all tiers.
    1. Based on your business driver, the relevant data tiers, and your organization’s own specific requirements you will need to establish the appropriate data architecture capabilities.
    2. This blueprint will help you measure how you are currently performing in these capabilities…
    3. And help you define and set targets so you can reach your optimized state.
    1. Once completed, these steps will be provided with the information you will need to create a comprehensive roadmap.
    2. Lastly, this blueprint will provide you with the tools to communicate this plan across your organization and offer change management guidelines to ensure successful adoption.
    Info-Tech Insight

    Optimizing data architecture requires a tactical approach, not a passive approach.

    The demanding task of optimization requires the ability to heavily prioritize. After you have identified why, determine how using our pre-built roadmap to address the four common drivers.

    Do not forget: data architecture is not a standalone concept; it fits into the more holistic design of enterprise architecture

    Data Architecture in Alignment

    Data architecture can not be designed to simply address the focus of data specialists or even the IT department.

    It must act as a key component in the all encompassing enterprise architecture and reflect the strategy and design of the entire business.

    Data architecture collaborates with application architecture in the delivery of effective information systems, and informs technology architecture on data related infrastructure requirements/considerations

    Please refer to the following blueprints to see the full picture of enterprise architecture:

    A diagram titled 'Enterprise Architecture' with multiple forms of architecture interacting with each other. At the top is 'Business Architecture' which feeds into 'Data Architecture' and 'Application Architecture' which feed into each other, and influence 'Infrastructure Architecture' and 'Security Architecture'.
    Adapted from TOGAF
    Refer to Phase C of TOGAF and Bizbok for references to the components of business architecture that are used in data architecture.

    Info-Tech’s data architecture optimization methodology helped a monetary authority fulfill strict regulatory pressures

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Financial
    Source: Info-Tech Consulting
    Symbol for 'Monetary Authority Case Study'. Look for this symbol as you walk through the blueprint for details on how Info-Tech Consulting assisted this monetary authority.

    Situation: Strong external pressures required the monetary authority to update and optimize its data architecture.

    The monetary authority is responsible for oversight of the financial situation of a country that takes in revenue from foreign incorporation. Due to increased pressure from international regulatory bodies, the monetary authority became responsible for generating multiple different types of beneficial ownership reports based on corporation ownership data within 24 hours of a request.

    A stale and inefficient data architecture prevented the monetary authority from fulfilling external pressures.

    Normally, the process to generate and provide beneficial ownership reports took a week or more. This was due to multiple points of stale data architecture, including a dependence on outdated legacy systems and a broken process for gathering the required data from a mix of paper and electronic sources.

    Provide a structured approach to solving the problem

    Info-Tech helped the monetary authority identify the business need that resulted from regulatory pressures, the challenges that needed to be overcome, and actionable tactics for addressing the needs.

    Info-Tech’s methodology was followed to optimize the areas of data architecture that address the business driver.

    • External Requirements
    • Business Driver
        Diagnose Data Architecture Problems
      • Outdated architecture (paper, legacy systems)
      • Stale data from other agencies
      • Incomplete data
          Data Architecture Optimization Tactics
        1. Optimized Source Databases
        2. Improved Integration
        3. Data Warehouse Optimization
        4. Data Marts for Reports
        5. Report Delivery Efficiency

    As you walk through this blueprint, watch for additional case studies that walk through the details of how Info-Tech helped this monetary authority.

    This blueprint’s three-step process will help you optimize data architecture in your organization

    Phase 1
    Prioritize Your Data Architecture With Business-Driven Tactics
    Phase 2
    Personalize Your Tactics to Optimize Your Data Architecture
    Phase 3
    Create Your Tactical Data Architecture Roadmap
    Step 1: Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data Architecture
    • Learn about what data architecture is and how it must evolve with the drivers of the business.
    • Determine the business driver that your organization is currently experiencing.
    • Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool

    Step 2: Determine Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture
    • Create your data architecture optimization plan to determine the high-level tactics you need to follow.
    • Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Step 1: Measure Your Data Architecture Capabilities
    • Determine where you currently stand in the data architecture capabilities across the five-tier data architecture.
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Step 2: Set a Target for Data Architecture Capabilities
    • Identify your targets for the data architecture capabilities.
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Step 3: Identify the Tactics that Apply to Your Organization
    • Understand the trends in the field of data architecture and how they can help to optimize your environment.
    • Data Architecture Trends Presentation

    Step 1: Personalize Your Data Architecture Roadmap
    • Personalize the tactics across the tiers that apply to you to build your personalized roadmap.
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Step 2: Manage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes
    • Document the changes in the organization’s data architecture.
    • Data architecture involves change management – learn how data architects should support change management in the organization.
    • Data Architecture Decision Template

    Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research

    Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.

    A small monochrome icon of a wrench and screwdriver creating an X.

    This icon denotes a slide where a supporting Info-Tech tool or template will help you perform the activity or step associated with the slide. Refer to the supporting tool or template to get the best results and proceed to the next step of the project.

    A small monochrome icon depicting a person in front of a blank slide.

    This icon denotes a slide with an associated activity. The activity can be performed either as part of your project or with the support of Info-Tech team members, who will come onsite to facilitate a workshop for your organization.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    Guided Implementation

    Workshop

    Consulting

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy – project overview

    PHASE 1
    Prioritize Your Data Architecture With Business-Driven Tactics
    PHASE 2
    Personalize Your Tactics to Optimize Your Data Architecture
    PHASE 3
    Create Your Tactical Data Architecture Roadmap
    Supporting Tool icon

    Best-Practice Toolkit

    1.1 Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data Architecture

    1.2 Determine Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture

    2.1 Measure Your Data Architecture Capabilities

    2.2 Set a Target for Data Architecture Capabilities

    2.3 Identify the Tactics that Apply to Your Organization

    3.1 Personalize Your Data Architecture Roadmap

    3.2 Manage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes

    Guided Implementations

    • Understand what data architecture is, how it aligns with enterprise architecture, and how data architects support the needs of the business.
    • Identify the business drivers that necessitate the optimization of the organization’s data architecture.
    • Create a tactical plan to optimize data architecture across Info-Tech’s five-tier logical data architecture model.
    • Understand Info-Tech’s tactical data architecture capability model and measure the current state of these capabilities at the organization.
    • Determine the target state of data architecture capabilities.
    • Understand the trends in the field of data architecture and identify how they can fit into your environment.
    • Use the results of the data architecture capability gap assessment to determine the priority of activities to populate your personalized data architecture optimization roadmap.
    • Understand how to manage change as a data architect or equivalent.
    Associated Activity icon

    Onsite Workshop

    Module 1:
    Identify the Drivers of the Business for Optimizing Data Architecture
    Module 2:
    Create a Tactical Plan for Optimizing Data Architecture
    Module 3:
    Create a Personalized Roadmap for Data Architecture Activities

    Workshop overview

    Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Preparation

    Workshop Day 1

    Workshop Day 2

    Workshop Day 3

    Workshop Day 4

    Workshop Day 5

    Organize and Plan Workshop Identify the Drivers of the Business for Optimizing Data Architecture Determine the Tactics For Optimizing Data Architecture Create Your Roadmap of Optimization Activities Create Your Personalized Roadmap Create a Plan for Change Management

    Morning Activities

    • Finalize workshop itinerary and scope.
    • Identify workshop participants.
    • Gather strategic documentation.
    • Engage necessary stakeholders.
    • Book interviews.
    • 1.1 Explain approach and value proposition.
    • 1.2 Review the common business drivers and how the organization is driving a need to optimize data architecture.
    • 2.1 Create your data architecture optimization plan.
    • 2.2 Interview key business stakeholders for input on business drivers for data architecture.
    • 3.1 Align with the enterprise architecture by interviewing the enterprise architect for input on the data architecture optimization roadmap.
    • 4.1 As a group, determine the roadmap activities that are applicable to your organization and brainstorm applicable initiatives.
    • 5.1 Use the Data Architecture Decision Documentation Template to document key decisions and updates.

    Afternoon Activities

    • 1.3 Understand Info-Tech’s Five-Tier Data Architecture.
    • 1.4 Determine the pattern of tactics that apply to the organization for optimization.
    • 2.3 With input from the business and enterprise architect, determine the current data architecture capabilities.
    • 3.3 With input from the business and enterprise architect, determine the target data architecture capabilities.
    • 4.2 Determine the timing and effort of the roadmap activities.
    • 5.2 Review best practices for change management.
    • 5.3 Present roadmap and findings to the business stakeholders and enterprise architect.

    Deliverables

    • Workshop Itinerary
    • Workshop Participant List
    1. Five-Tier Logical Data Architecture Model
    2. Data Architecture Tactic Plan
    1. Five-Tier Data Architecture Capability Model
    1. Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap
    1. Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap
    1. Data Architecture Decision Template

    Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy

    PHASE 1

    Prioritize Your Data Architecture With Business-Driven Tactics

    Phase 1 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 1: Prioritize Your Data Architecture With Business-Driven Tactics

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 1.1: Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data Architecture Step 1.2: Determine Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Understand what data architecture is, what it is not, and how it fits into the broader enterprise architecture program.
    • Determine the drivers that fuel the need for data architecture optimization.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Understand the Five-Tier Data Architecture Model and how the drivers of the business inform your priorities across this logical model of data architecture.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Complete the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Create a tactical data architecture optimization plan based on the business driver input.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Phase 1 Results & Insights

    • Data Architecture is not just about data models. The approach that Phase 1 guides you through will help to not only plan where you need to focus your efforts as a data architect (or equivalent) but also give you guidance in how you should go about optimizing the holistic data architecture environment based on the drivers of the business.

    Phase 1 will help you create a strategy to optimize your data architecture using actionable tactics

    In this phase, you will determine your focus for optimizing your data architecture based on the business drivers that are commonly felt by most organizations.

    1. Identify the business drivers that necessitate data architecture optimization efforts.
    2. Understand Info-Tech’s Five-Tier Data Architecture, a logical architecture model that will help you prioritize tactics for optimizing your data architecture environment.
    3. Identify tactics for optimizing the organization’s data architecture across the five tiers.

    “To stay competitive, we need to become more data-driven. Compliance pressures are becoming more demanding. We need to add a new functionality.”

    Info-Tech’s Five-Tier Data Architecture:

    1. Data Sources
    2. Data Integration and Translation
    3. Data Warehousing
    4. Data Analytics
    5. Data Presentation

    Tactical plan for Data Architecture Optimization

    Phase 1, Step 1: Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data Architecture

    PHASE 1

    1.1 1.2
    Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data Architecture Determine Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Understand how data architecture fits into the organization’s larger enterprise architecture.
    • Understand what data architecture is and how it should be driven by the business.
    • Identify the driver that is creating a need for data architecture optimization.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect
    • Enterprise Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • A starting point for the many responsibilities of the data architect role. Balancing business and technical requirements can be challenging, and to do so you need to first understand what is driving the need for data architecture improvements.
    • Holistic understanding of the organization’s architecture environment, including enterprise, application, data, and technology architectures and how they interact.

    Data architecture involves planning, communication, and understanding of technology

    Data Architecture

    A description of the structure and interaction of the enterprise’s major types and sources of data, logical data assets, physical data assets, and data management resources (TOGAF 9).

    The subject area of data management that defines the data needs of the enterprise and designs the master blueprints to meet those needs (DAMA DMBOK, 2009).

    IBM (2007) defines data architecture as the design of systems and applications that facilitate data availability and distribution across the enterprise.

    Definitions vary slightly across major architecture and management frameworks.

    However, there is a general consensus that data architecture provides organizations with:

    • Alignment
    • Planning
    • Road mapping
    • Change management
    • A guide for the organization’s data management program

    Data architecture must be based on business goals and objectives; developed within the technical strategies, constraints, and opportunities of the organization in support of providing a foundation for data management.

    Current Data Management
    • Alignment
    • Planning
    • Road mapping
    Goal for Data Management

    Info-Tech Insight

    Data Architecture is not just data models. Data architects must understand the needs of the business, as well as the existing people and processes that already exist in the organization to effectively perform their job.

    Review how data architecture fits into the broader architectural context

    A flow diagram starting with 'Business Processes/Activities' to 'Business Architecture' which through a process of 'Integration' flows to 'Data Architecture' and 'Application Architecture', the latter of which also flows into to the former, and they both flow into 'Technology Architecture' which includes 'Infrastructure' and 'Security'.

    Each layer of architecture informs the next. In other words, each layer has components that execute processes and offer services to the next layer. For example, data architecture can be broken down into more granular activities and processes that inform how the organization’s technology architecture should be arranged.

    Data does not exist on its own. It is informed by business architecture and used by other architectural domains to deliver systems, IT services, and to support business processes. As you build your practice, you must consider how data fits within the broader architectural framework.

    The Zachman Framework is a widely used EA framework; within it, data is identified as the first domain.

    The framework aims to standardize artifacts (work-products) within each architectural domain, provides a cohesive view of the scope of EA and clearly delineates data components. Use the framework to ensure that your target DA practice is aligned to other domains within the EA framework.

    'The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture: The Enterprise Ontology', a complicated framework with top and bottom column headers and left and right row headers. Along the top are 'Classification Names': 'What', 'How', 'Where', 'Who', 'When', and 'Why'. Along the bottom are 'Enterprise Names': 'Inventory Sets', 'Process Flows', 'Distribution Networks', 'Responsibility Assignments', 'Timing Cycles', and 'Motivation Intentions'. Along the left are 'Audience Perspectives': 'Executive Perspective', 'Business Mgmt. Perspective', 'Architect Perspective', 'Engineer Perspective', 'Technician Perspective', and 'Enterprise Perspective'. Along the right are 'Model Names': 'Scope Contexts', 'Business Concepts', 'System Logic', 'Technology Physics', 'Tool Components', and 'Operations Instances'.
    (Source: Zachman International)

    Data architects operate in alignment with the other various architecture groups

    Data architects operate in alignment with the other various architecture groups, with coordination from the enterprise architect.

    Enterprise Architect
    The enterprise architect provides thought leadership and direction to domain architects.

    They also maintain architectural standards across all the architectural domains and serve as a lead project solution architect on the most critical assignments.

    • Business Architect
      A business subject matter expert who works with the line-of-business team to assist in business planning through capability-based planning.
    • Security Architect
      Plays a pivotal role in formulating the security strategy of the organization, working with the business and CISO/security manager. Recommends and maintains security standards, policies, and best practices.
    • Infrastructure Architect
      Recommends and maintains standards across the compute, storage, and network layers of the organization. Reviews project solution architectures to ensure compliance with infrastructure standards, regulations, and target state blueprints.
    • Application Architect
      Manages the business effectiveness, satisfaction, and maintainability of the application portfolio. Conduct application architecture assessments to document expected quality attribute standards, identify hotspots, and recommend best practices.
    • Data Architect
      Facilitates the creation of data strategy and has a greater understanding of operational and analytical data use cases. Manages the enterprise data model which includes all the three layers of modelling - conceptual, logical, and physical. Recommends data management policies and standards, and maintains data management artefacts. Reviews project solution architectures and identifies cross impacts across the data lifecycle.

    As a data architect, you must maintain balance between the technical and the business requirements

    The data architect role is integral to connecting the long-term goals of the business with how the organization plans to manage its data for optimal use.

    Data architects need to have a deep experience in data management, data warehousing, and analytics technologies. At a high level, the data architect plans and implements an organization’s data, reporting, and analytics roadmap.

    Some of the role’s primary duties and responsibilities include:

    1. Data modeling
    2. Reviewing existing data architecture
    3. Benchmark and improve database performance
    4. Fine tune database and SQL queries
    5. Lead on ETL activities
    6. Validate data integrity across all platforms
    7. Manage underlying framework for data presentation layer
    8. Ensure compliance with proper reporting to bureaus and partners
    9. Advise management on data solutions

    Data architects bridge the gap between strategic and technical requirements:

    Visualization centering the 'Data Architect' as the bridge between 'Data Workers', 'Business', and 'Data & Applications'.

    “Fundamentally, the role of a data architect is to understand the data in an organization at a reasonable level of abstraction.” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Info-Tech Insight

    The data architect role is not always clear cut. Many organizations do not have a dedicated data architect resource, and may not need one. However, the duties and responsibilities of the data architect must be carried out to some degree by a combination of resources as appropriate to the organization’s size and environment.

    Understand the role of a data architect to ensure that essential responsibilities are covered in the organization

    A database administrator (DBA) is not a data architect, and data architecture is not something you buy from an enterprise application vendor.

    Data Architect Role Description

    • The data architect must develop (along with the business) a short-term and long-term vision for the enterprise’s data architecture.
    • They must be able to create processes for governing the identification, collection, and use of accurate and valid metadata, as well as for tracking data quality, completeness, and redundancy.
    • They need to create strategies for data security, backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and archiving, and ensure regulatory compliance.

    Skills Necessary

    • Hands-on experience with data architecting and management, data mining, and large-scale data modeling.
    • Strong understanding of relational and non-relational data structures, theories, principles, and practices.
    • Strong familiarity with metadata management.
    • Knowledge of data privacy practices and laws.

    Define Policies, Processes, and Priorities

    • Policies
      • Boundaries of the data architecture.
      • Data architecture standards.
      • Data architecture security.
      • Responsibility of ownership for the data architecture and data repositories.
      • Responsibility for data architecture governance.
    • Processes
      • Data architecture communication.
      • Data architecture change management.
      • Data architecture governance.
      • Policy compliance monitoring.
    • Priorities
      • Align architecture efforts with business priorities.
      • Close technology gaps to meet service level agreements (SLAs).
      • Determine impacts on current or future projects.

    See Info-Tech’s Data Architect job description for a comprehensive description of the data architect role.

    Leverage data architecture frameworks to understand how the role fits into the greater Enterprise Architecture framework

    Enterprise data architectures are available from industry consortiums such as The Open Group (TOGAF®), and open source initiatives such as MIKE2.0.

    Logo for The Open Group.

    The Open Group TOGAF enterprise architecture model is a detailed framework of models, methods, and supporting tools to create an enterprise-level architecture.

    • TOGAF was first developed in 1995 and was based on the Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management (TAFIM) developed by the US Department of Defense.
    • TOGAF includes application, data, and infrastructure architecture domains providing enterprise-level, product-neutral architecture principles, policies, methods, and models.
    • As a member of The Open Group, it is possible to participate in ongoing TOGAF development initiatives.

    The wide adoption of TOGAF has resulted in the mapping of it to several other industry standards including CoBIT and ITIL.

    Logo for MIKE2.0.

    MIKE2.0 (Method for an Integrated Knowledge Environment), is an open source method for enterprise information management providing a framework for information development.

    • SAFE (Strategic Architecture for the Federated Enterprise) provides the technology solution framework for MIKE2.0
    • SAFE includes application, presentation, information, data, Infrastructure, and metadata architecture domains.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    If an enterprise-level IT architecture is your goal, TOGAF is likely a better model. However, if you are an information and knowledge-based business then MIKE2.0 may be more relevant to your business.

    The data architect must identify what drives the need for data from the business to create a business-driven architecture

    As the business landscape evolves, new needs arise. An organization may undergo new compliance requirements, or look to improve their customer intimacy, which could require a new functionality from an application and its associated database.

    There are four common scenarios that lead to an organization’s need to optimize its data architecture and these scenarios all present unique challenges for a data architect:

    1. Becoming More Data Driven As organizations are looking to get more out of their data, there is a push for more accurate and timely data from applications. Data-driven decision making requires verifiable data from trustworthy sources. Result: Replace decisions made on gut or intuition with real and empirical data - make more informed and data-driven decisions.
    2. New Functionality or Business Rule In order to succeed as business landscapes change, organizations find themselves innovating on products or services and the way they do things. Changes in business rules, product or service offering, and new functionalities can subsequently demand more from the existing data architecture. Result: Prepare yourself to successfully launch new business initiatives with an architecture that supports business needs.
    3. Mergers and Acquisitions If an organization has recently acquired, been acquired, or is merging with another, the technological implications require careful planning to ensure a seamless fit. Application consolidation, retirement, data transfer, and integration points are crucial. Result: Leverage opportunities to incorporate and consolidate new synergistic assets to realize the ROI.
    4. Risk and Compliance Data in highly regulated organizations needs to be kept safe and secure. Architectural decisions around data impact the level of compliance within the organization. Result: Avoid the fear of data audits, regulatory violations, and privacy breaches.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    These are not the only reasons why data architects need to optimize the organization’s data architecture. These are only four of the most common scenarios, however, other business needs can be addressed using the same concept as these four common scenarios.

    Use the Data Architecture Driver tool to identify your focus for data architecture

    Supporting Tool icon 1.1 Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool

    Follow Info-Tech’s process of first analyzing the needs of the business, then determining how best to architect your data based on these drivers. Data architecture needs to be able to rapidly evolve to support the strategic goals of the business, and the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool will help you to prioritize your efforts to best do this.

    Tab 2. Driver Identification

    Objective: Objectively assess the most pressing business drivers.

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, tab 2.

    Tab 3. Tactic Pattern Plan, Section 1

    Purpose: Review your business drivers that require architectural changes in your environment.

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, tab 3, section 1.

    Tab 3. Tactic Pattern Plan, Section 2

    Purpose: Determine a list of tactics that will help you address the business drivers.

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, tab 3, section 2.

    Step
    • Evaluate business drivers to determine the data architecture optimization priorities and tactics.
    Step
    • Understand how each business driver relates to data architecture and how each driver gives rise to a specific pattern across the five-tier data architecture.
    Step
    • Review the list of high-level tactics presented to optimize your data architecture across the five tier architecture.

    Identify the drivers for improving your data architecture

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.1 1 hour

    INPUT: Data Architecture Driver tool assessment prompts.

    OUTPUT: Identified business driver that applies to your organization.

    Materials: Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool

    Participants: Data architect, Enterprise architect

    Instructions

    In Tab 2. Driver Identification of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, assess the degree to which the organization is feeling the pains of the four most common business drivers:

    1. Is there a present or growing need for the business to be making data-driven decisions?
    2. Does the business want to explore a new functionality and hence require a new application?
    3. Is your organization acquiring or merging with another entity?
    4. Is your organization’s regulatory environment quick to change and require stricter reporting?

    Data architecture improvements need to be driven by business need.

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, tab 2 Driver Identification.
    Tab 2. Driver Identification

    “As a data architect, you have to understand the functional requirements, the non-functional requirements, then you need to make a solution for those requirements. There can be multiple solutions and multiple purposes. (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Interview the business to get clarity on business objectives and drivers

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.2 1 hour per interview

    INPUT: Sample questions targeting the activities, challenges, and opportunities of each business unit

    OUTPUT: Sample questions targeting the activities, challenges, and opportunities of each business unit

    Materials: Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool

    Participants: Data architect, Business representatives, IT representatives

    Identify 2-3 business units that demonstrate enthusiasm for or a positive outlook on improving how organizational data can help them in their role and as a unit.

    Conducting a deep-dive interview process with these key stakeholders will help further identify high-level goals for the data architecture strategy within each business unit. This process will help to secure their support throughout the implementation process by giving them a sense of ownership.

    Key Interview Questions:

    1. What are your primary activities? What do you do?
    2. What challenges do you have when completing your activities?
    3. How is poor data impacting your job?
    4. If [your selected domain]’s data is improved, what business issues would this help solve?

    Request background information and documentation from stakeholders regarding the following:

    • What current data management policies and processes exist (that you know of)?
    • Who are the data owners and end users?
    • Where are the data sources within the department stored?
    • Who has access to these data sources?
    • Are there existing or ongoing data issues within those data sources?

    Interview the enterprise architect to get input on the drivers of the business

    Associated Activity icon 1.1.3 2 hours

    INPUT: Data Architecture Driver tool assessment prompts.

    OUTPUT: Identified business driver that applies to your organization.

    Materials: Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool

    Participants: Data architect, Enterprise architect

    Data architecture improvements need to be driven by business need.

    Instructions

    As you work through Tab 2. Driver Identification of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, consult with the enterprise architect or equivalent to assist you in rating the importance of each of the symptoms of the business drivers. This will help you provide greater value to the business and more aligned objectives.

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, tab 2 Driver Identification.
    Tab 2. Driver Identification

    Once you know what that need is, go to Step 2.

    Phase 1, Step 2: Establish Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture

    PHASE 1

    1.11.2
    Identify Your Business Driver for Optimizing Data ArchitectureDetermine Actionable Tactics to Optimize Data Architecture

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Understand Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture to begin focusing your architectural optimization.
    • Create your Data Architecture Optimization Template to plan your improvement tactics.
    • Prioritize your tactics based on the five-tier architecture to plan optimization.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect
    • Enterprise Architect
    • DBAs

    Outcomes of this step

    • A tactical and prioritized plan for optimizing the organization’s data architecture according to the needs of the business.

    To plan a business-driven architecture, data architects need to keep the organization’s big picture in mind

    Remember… Architecting an organization involves alignment, planning, road mapping, design, and change management functions.

    Data architects must be heavily involved with:

    • Understanding the short- and long-term visions of the business to develop a vision for the organization’s data architecture.
    • Creating processes for governing the identification, collection, and use of accurate and valid data, as well as for tracking data quality, completeness, and redundancy.
    • They need to create strategies for data security, backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and archiving, and ensure regulatory compliance.

    To do this, you need a framework. A framework provides you with the holistic view of the organization’s data environment that you can use to design short- and long-term tactics for improving the use of data for the needs of the business.

    Use Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture to model your environment in a logical, consumable fashion.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    The more complicated an environment is, the more need there is for a framework. Being able to pick a starting point and prioritize tasks is one of the most difficult, yet most essential, aspects of any architect’s role.

    The five tiers of an organization’s data architecture support the use of data throughout its lifecycle

    Info-Tech’s five-tier data architecture model summarizes an organization’s data environment at a logical level. Data flows from left to right, but can also flow from the presentation layer back to the warehousing layer for repatriation of data.

    Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture. The five tiers being 'Sources' which includes 'App1 ', 'App2', 'Excel and other documents', 'Access database(s)', 'IOT devices', and 'External data feed(s) & social media'; 'Integration and Translation' which includes 'Solutions: SOA, Point to Point, Manual Loading, ESB , ETL, ODS, Data Hub' and 'Functions: Scrambling Masking Encryption, Tokenizing, Aggregation, Transformation, Migration, Modeling'; 'Warehousing' which includes 'Data Lakes & Warehouse(s) (Raw Data)', 'EIM, ECM, DAM', and 'Data Lakes & Warehouse(s) (Derived Data)'; 'Analytics' which includes 'Data Marts', 'Data Cube', 'Flat Files', 'BI Tools', and the 'Protected Zone: Data Marts - BDG Class Ref. MDM'; and 'Presentation' which includes 'Formulas', 'Thought Models', 'Reports', 'Dashboards', 'Presentations', and 'Derived Data (from analytics activities)'.

    Use the Data Architecture Optimization Template to build your improvement roadmap

    Supporting Tool icon 1.2 Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Download the Data Architecture Optimization Template.

    Overview

    Use this template to support your team in creating a tactical strategy for optimizing your data architecture across the five tiers of the organization’s architecture. This template can be used to document your organization’s most pressing business driver, the reasons for optimizing data architecture according to that driver, and the tactics that will be employed to address the shortcomings in the architecture.

    Sample of Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Optimization Template. Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Optimization Template Table of Contents
    1. Build Your Current Data Architecture Logical Model Use this section to document the current data architecture situation, which will provide context for your plan to optimize your data architecture.
    2. Optimization Plan Use this section to document the tactics that will be employed to optimize the current data architecture according to the tactic pattern identified by the business driver.

    Fill out as you go

    As you read about the details of the five-tier data architecture model in the following slides, start building your current logical data architecture model by filling out the sections that correspond to the various tiers. For example, if you identified that the most pressing business driver is becoming compliant with regulations, document the sources of data required for compliance, as well as the warehousing strategy currently being employed. This will help you to understand the organization’s data architecture at a logical level.

    Tier 1 represents all of the sources of your organization’s data

    Tier 1 of Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture, 'Sources', which includes 'App1 ', 'App2', 'Excel and other documents', 'Access database(s)', 'IOT devices', and 'External data feed(s) & social media'.
    –› Data to integration layer

    Tier 1 is where the data enters the organization.

    All applications, data documents such as MS Excel spreadsheets, documents with table entries, manual extractions from other document types, user-level databases including MS Access and MySQL, other data sources, data feeds, big datasets, etc. reside here.

    This tier typically holds the siloed data that is so often not available across the enterprise because the data is held within department-level applications or systems. This is also the layer where transactions and operational activities occur and where data is first created or ingested.

    There are any number of business activities from transactions through business processes that require data to flow from one system to another, so it is often at this layer we see data created more than once, data corruption occurs, manual re-keying of data from system to system, and spaghetti-like point-to-point connections are built that are often fragile. This is usually the single most problematic area within an enterprise’s data environment. Application- or operational-level (siloed) reporting often occurs at this level.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An optimized Tier 1 has the following attributes:

    • Rationalized applications
    • Operationalized database administration
    • Databases governed, monitored, and maintained to ensure optimal performance

    Tier 2 represents the movement of data

    Tier 2 of Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture, 'Integration and Translation', which includes 'Solutions: SOA, Point to Point, Manual Loading, ESB , ETL, ODS, Data Hub' and 'Functions: Scrambling Masking Encryption, Tokenizing, Aggregation, Transformation, Migration, Modeling'.
    –› Data to Warehouse Environment

    Find out more

    For more information on data integration, see Info-Tech’s Optimize the Organization’s Data Integration Practices blueprint.

    Tier 2 is where integration, transformation, and aggregation occur.

    Regardless of how you integrate your systems and data stores, whether via ETL, ESB, SOA, data hub, ODS, point-to-point, etc., the goal of this layer is to move data at differing speeds for one of two main purposes:

    1) To move data from originating systems to downstream systems to support integrated business processes. This ensures the data is pristine through the process and improves trustworthiness of outcomes and speed to task and process completion.

    2) To move data to Tier 3 - The Data Warehouse Architecture, where data rests for other purposes. This movement of data in its purest form means we move raw data to storage locations in an overall data warehouse environment reflecting any security, compliance and other standards in our choices for how to store.

    Also, this is where data is transformed for unique business purpose that will also be moved to a place of rest or a place of specific use. Data masking, scrambling, aggregation, cleansing and matching, and other data related blending tasks occur at this layer.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An optimized Tier 2 has the following attributes:

    • Business data glossary is leveraged
    • ETL is governed
    • ETL team is empowered
    • Data matching is facilitated
    • Canonical data model is present

    Tier 3 is where data comes together from all sources to be stored in a central warehouse environment

    Tier 3 is where data rests in long-term storage.

    This is where data rests (long-term storage) and also where an enterprise’s information, documents, digital assets, and any other content types are stored. This is also where derived and contrived data creations are stored for re-use, and where formulas, thought models, heuristics, algorithms, report styles, templates, dashboard styles, and presentations-layer widgets are all stored in the enterprise information management system.

    At this layer there may be many technologies and many layers of security to reflect data domains, classifications, retention, compliance, and other data needs. This is also the layer where data lakes exist as well as traditional relational databases, enterprise database systems, enterprise content management systems, and simple user-level databases.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An optimized Tier 3 has the following attributes:

    • Data warehouse is governed
    • Data warehouse operations and planning
    • Data library is comprehensive
    • Four Rosetta Stones of data are in place: BDG, data classification, reference data, master data.
    Data from integration layer –›
    Tier 3 of Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture, 'Data Warehouse Environment' which includes 'Data Lakes & Warehouse(s) (Raw Data)', 'EIM, ECM, DAM'.
    –› Analytics

    Find out more

    For more information on Data Warehousing, see Info-Tech’s Build an Extensible Data Warehouse Foundation and Drive Business Innovation With a Modernized Data Warehouse Environment blueprints.

    Tier 4 is where knowledge and insight is born

    Tier 4 represents data being used for a purpose.

    This is where you build fit-for-purpose data sets (marts, cubes, flat files) that may now draw from all enterprise data and information sources as held in Tier 3. This is the first place where enterprise views of all data may be effectively done and with trust that golden records from systems of record are being used properly.

    This is also the layer where BI tools get their greatest use for performing analysis. Unlike Tier 3 where data is at rest, this tier is where data moves back into action. Data is brought together in unique combinations to support reporting, and analytics. It is here that the following enterprise analytic views are crafted:
    Exploratory, Inferential, Causal, Comparative, Statistical, Descriptive, Diagnostic, Hypothesis, Predictive, Decisional, Directional, Prescriptive

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An optimized Tier 4 has the following attributes:

    • Reporting meets business needs
    • Data mart operations are in place
    • Governance of data marts, cubes, and BI tools in place
    Warehouse Environment –›
    Tier 4 of Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture, 'Analytics', which includes 'Data Marts', 'Data Cube', 'Flat Files', and 'BI Tools'.
    –› Presentation

    Find out more

    For more information on BI tools and strategy, see Info-Tech’s Select and Implement a Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution and Build a Next Generation BI with a Game-Changing BI Strategy blueprints.

    The presentation layer, Tier 5, is where data becomes presentable information

    Tier 5 represents data in knowledge form.

    This is where the data and information combine in information insight mapping methods (presentations, templates, etc.). We craft and create new ways to slice and dice data in Tier 4 to be shown and shared in Tier 5.

    Templates for presenting insights are extremely valuable to an enterprise, both for their initial use, and for the ability to build deeper, more insightful analytics. Re-use of these also enables maximum speed for sharing, consuming the outputs, and collective understanding of these deeper meanings that is a critical asset to any enterprise. These derived datasets and the thought models, presentation styles, templates, and other derived and contrived assets should be repatriated into the derived data repositories and the enterprise information management systems respectively as shown in Tier 3.

    Find out more

    For more information on enterprise content management and metadata, see Info-Tech’s Develop an ECM Strategy and Break Open Your DAM With Intuitive Metadata blueprints.

    Tier 5 of Info-Tech's Five Tier Data Architecture, 'Presentation', which includes 'Formulas', 'Thought Models', 'Reports', 'Dashboards', 'Presentations', and 'Derived Data (from analytics activities)'. The 'Repatriation of data' feeds the derived data back into Warehousing.

    Info-Tech Best Practice

    An optimized Tier 5 has the following attributes:

    • Metadata creation is supervised
    • Metadata is organized
    • Metadata is governed
    • Content management capabilities are present

    Info-Tech Insight

    Repatriation of data and information is an essential activity for all organizations to manage organizational knowledge. This is the activity where information, knowledge, and insights that are stored in content form are moved back to the warehousing layer for long-term storage. Because of this, it is crucial to have an effective ECM strategy as well as the means to find information quickly and efficiently. This is where metadata and taxonomy come in.

    As a data architect, you must prioritize your focus according to business need

    Determine your focus.

    Now that you have an understanding of the drivers requiring data architecture optimization, as well as the current data architecture situation at your organization, it is time to determine the actions that will be taken to address the driver.

    1. Business driver

    Screenshot of Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, Tab 2. Tactic Pattern Plan.
    Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, Tab 2. Tactic Pattern Plan

    3. Documented tactic plan

    Data Architecture Optimization Template

    2. Tactics across the five tiers

    Another screenshot of Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, Tab 2. Tactic Pattern Plan.

    The next four slides provide an overview of the priorities that accompany the four most common business drivers that require updates to a stale data architecture.

    Business driver #1: Adding a new functionality to an application can have wide impacts on data architecture

    Does the business wants to add a new application or supplement an existing application with a new functionality?

    Whether the business wants to gain better customer intimacy, achieve operational excellence, or needs to change its compliance and reporting strategy, the need for collecting new data through a new application or a new functionality within an existing application can arise. This business driver has the following attributes:

    • Often operational oriented and application driven.
    • An application is changed through an application version upgrade, migration to cloud, or application customization, or as a result of application rationalization or changes in the way that application data is generated.
    • However, not all new functionalities trigger this scenario. Non-data-related changes, such as a new interface, new workflows, or any other application functionality changes that do not involve data, will not have data architecture impacts.
    Stock photo of someone using a smartphone with apps.
    Modified icon for Tools & Templates. When this business driver arises, data architects should focus on optimizing architecture at the source tier and the integration of the new functionality. Tactics for this business driver should address the following pattern:
    Tiers 1 and 2 highlighted.

    Business driver #2: Organizations today are looking to become more data driven

    Does the business wants to better leverage its data?

    An organization can want to use its data for multiple reasons. Whether these reasons include improving customer experience or operational excellence, the data architect must ensure that the organization’s data aggregation environment, reporting and analytics, and presentation layer are assessed and optimized for serving the needs of the business.

    “Data-drivenness is about building tools, abilities, and, most crucially, a culture that acts on data.” (Carl Anderson, Creating a Data-Driven Organization)

    Tactics for this business driver should address the following pattern:
    Tiers 3, 4, and 5 highlighted.
    Modified icon for Tools & Templates. When this business driver arises, data architects should focus on optimizing architecture at the source tier and the integration of the new functionality.
    Stock photo of someone sitting at multiple computers with analytics screens open.
    • This scenario is typically project driven and analytical oriented.
    • The business is looking to leverage data and information by processing data through BI tools and self-service.
    • Example: The organization wants to include new third-party data, and needs to build a new data mart to provide a slice of data for analysis.

    Business driver #3: Risk and compliance demands can put pressure on outdated architectures

    Is there increasing pressure on the business to maintain compliance requirements as per regulations?

    An organization can want to use its data for multiple reasons. Whether these reasons include improving customer experience or operational excellence, the data architect must ensure that the organization’s data aggregation environment, reporting and analytics, and presentation layer are assessed and optimized for serving the needs of the business.

    There are different types of requirements:
    • Can be data-element driven. For example, PII, PHI are requirements around data elements that are associated with personal and health information.
    • Can be process driven. For example, some requirements restrict data read/write to certain groups.
    Stock photo of someone pulling a block out of a Jenga tower.
    Modified icon for Tools & Templates. When this business driver arises, data architects should focus on optimizing architecture where data is stored: at the sources, the warehouse environment, and analytics layer. Tactics for this business driver should address the following pattern:
    Tiers 1, 3, and 4 highlighted.

    Business driver #4: Mergers and acquisitions can require a restructuring of the organization’s data architecture

    Is the organization looking to acquire or merge with another organization or line of business?

    There are three scenarios that encompass the mergers and acquisitions business driver for data architecture:

    1. The organization acquires/merges with another organization and wants to integrate the data.
    2. The organization acquires/merges a subset of an organization (a line of business, for example) and wants to integrate the data.
    3. The organization acquires another organization for competitive purposes, and does not need to integrate the data.
    Regardless of what scenario your organization falls into, you must go through the same process of identifying the requirements for the new data:
    1. Understand what data you are getting.
      The business may acquire another organization for the data, for the technology, and/or for algorithms (for example). If the goal is to integrate the new data, you must understand if the data is unstructured, structured, how much data, etc.
    2. Plan for the integration of the new data into your environment.
      Do you have the expertise in-house to integrate the data? Database structures and systems are often mismatched (for example, acquired company could have an Oracle database whereas you are an SAP shop) and this may require expertise from the acquired company or a third party.
    3. Integrate the new data.
      Often, the extraction of the new data is the easy part. Transforming and loading the data is the difficult and costly part.
    “As a data architect, you must do due diligence of the acquired firm. What are the workflows, what are the data sources, what data is useful, what is useless, what is the value of the data, and what are the risks of embedding the data?” (Anonymous Mergers and Acquisitions Consultant)
    Modified icon for Tools & Templates. When this business driver arises, data architects should focus on optimizing architecture at the source tier, the warehousing layer, and analytics. Tiers 1, 3, and 4 highlighted.

    Determine your tier priority pattern and the tactics that you should address based on the business drivers

    Associated Activity icon 1.2.1 30 minutes

    INPUT: Business driver assessment

    OUTPUT: Tactic pattern and tactic plan

    Materials: Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool, Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Participants: Data architect, Enterprise architect

    Instructions
    1. After you have assessed the organization’s business driver on Tab 1. Driver Identification, move to Tab 2. Tactic Pattern Plan.
    2. Here, you will find a summary of the business driver that applies to you, as well as the tier priority pattern that will help you to focus your efforts for data architecture.
    3. Document the Tier Priority Pattern and associated tactics in Section 2. Optimization Plan of the Data Architecture Optimization Plan.
    Screenshot of Data Architecture Driver Tool.
    Data Architecture Driver Tool
    Arrow pointing right. Sample of Data Architecture Optimization Template
    Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Info-Tech Insight

    Our approach will help you to get to the solution of the organization’s data architecture problems as quickly as possible. However, keep in mind that you should still address the other tiers of your data architecture even if they are not part of the pattern we identified. For example, if you need to become more data driven, don’t completely ignore the sources and the integration of data. However, to deliver the most and quickest value, focus on tiers 3, 4, and 5.

    This phase helped you to create a tactical plan to optimize your data architecture according to business priorities

    Phase 1 is all about focus.

    Data architects and those responsible for updating an organization’s data architecture have a wide-open playing field with which to take their efforts. Being able to narrow down your focus and generate an actionable plan will help you provide more value to the organization quickly and get the most out of your data.

      Phase 1
      • Business Drivers
        • Tactic Pattern
          • Tactical Plan

    Now that you have your prioritized tactical plan, move to Phase 2. This phase will help you map these priorities to the essential capabilities and measure where you stack up in these capabilities. This is an essential step in creating your data architecture roadmap and plan for coming years to modernize the organization’s data architecture.

    To identify what the monetary authority needed from its data architecture, Info-Tech helped determine the business driver

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Financial
    Source: Info-Tech Consulting
    Symbol for 'Monetary Authority Case Study'.

    Part 1

    Prior to receiving new external requirements, the monetary Authority body had been operating with an inefficient system. Outdated legacy systems, reports in paper form, incomplete reports, and stale data from other agencies resulted in slow data access. The new requirements demanded speeding up this process.

    Diagram comparing the 'Original Reporting' requirement of 'Up to 7 days' vs the 'New Requirement' of 'As soon as 1 hour'. The steps of reporting in that time are 'Report Request', 'Gather Data', and 'Make Report'.

    Although the organization understood it needed changes, it first needed to establish what were the business objectives, and which areas of their architecture they would need to focus on.

    The business driver in this case was compliance requirements, which directed attention to the sources, aggregation, and insights tiers.

    Tiers 1, 3, and 4 highlighted.

    Looking at the how the different tiers relate to certain business operations, the organization uncovered the best practise tactics to achieving an optimized data architecture.

    1. Source Tactics: 3. Warehousing Tactics: 4. Analytics Tactics:
    • Identify data sources
    • Ensure data quality
    • Properly catalogue data
    • Properly index data
    • Provide the means for data accessibility
    • Allow for data reduction/space for report building

    Once the business driver had been established, the organization was able to identify the specific areas it would eventually need to evaluate and remedy as needed.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of an Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    1.1.1

    Sample of activity 1.1.1 'Identify the drivers for improving your data architecture'. Identify the business driver that will set the direction of your data architecture optimization plan.

    In this activity, the facilitator will guide the team in identifying the business driver that is creating the need to improve the organization’s data architecture. Data architecture needs to adapt to the changing needs of the business, so this is the most important step of any data architecture improvements.

    1.2.1

    Sample of activity 1.2.1 'Determine your tier priority pattern and the tactics that you should address based on the business drivers'. Determine the tactics that you will use to optimize data architecture.

    In this activity, the facilitator will help the team create a tactical plan for optimizing the organization’s data architecture across the five tiers of the logical model. This plan can then be followed when addressing the business needs.

    Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy

    PHASE 2

    Personalize Your Tactics to Optimize Your Data Architecture

    Phase 2 will determine your tactics that you should implement to optimize your data architecture

    Business Drivers
    Each business driver requires focus on specific tiers and their corresponding capabilities, which in turn correspond to tactics necessary to achieve your goal.
    New Functionality Risk and Compliance Mergers and Acquisitions Become More Data Driven
    Tiers 1. Data Sources 2. Integration 3. Warehousing 4. Insights 5. Presentation
    Capabilities Current Capabilities
    Target Capabilities
    Example Tactics Leverage indexes, partitions, views, and clusters to optimize performance.

    Cleanse data source.

    Leverage integration technology.

    Identify matching approach priorities.

    Establish governing principles.

    Install performance enhancing technologies.

    Establish star schema and snowflake principles.

    Share data via data mart.

    Build metadata architecture:
    • Data lineage
    • Sharing
    • Taxonomy
    • Automatic vs. manual creation

    Phase 2 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 2: Personalize Your Tactics to Optimize Your Data Architecture

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 2.1: Measure Your Data Architecture Capabilities Step 2.2: Set a Target for Data Architecture Capabilities Step 2.3: Identify the Tactics That Apply to Your Organization
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Understand Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model to begin identifying where to develop tactics for optimizing your data architecture.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Understand Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model to begin identifying where to develop tactics for optimizing your data architecture.
    Finalize phase deliverable:
    • Learn about the trends in data architecture that can be leveraged to develop tactics.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Measure your current state across the tiers of the capability model that will help address your business driver.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Measure your target state for the capabilities that will address your business driver.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Review the tactical roadmap that was created with guidance from the capability gap analysis.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Trends Presentation Template

    Phase 2 Results & Insights

    • Data architecture is not just data models. Understand the essential capabilities that your organization needs from its data architecture to develop a tactical plan for optimizing data architecture across its people, processes, and technology.

    Phase 2, Step 1: Measure Your Data Architecture Capabilities

    PHASE 2

    2.1 2.2 2.3
    Measure Your Data Architecture Capabilities Set a Target for Data Architecture Capabilities Identify the Tactics That Apply to Your Organization

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • As you walk through the data architecture capability model, measure your current state in each of the relevant capabilities.
    • Distinguish between essential and nice-to-have capabilities for your organization.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • A framework for generating a tactical plan for data architecture optimization.
    • Knowledge of the various trends in the data architecture field that can be incorporated into your plan.

    To personalize your tactical strategy, you must measure up your base data architecture capabilities

    What is a capability?

    Capabilities represent a mixture of people, technology, and processes. The focus of capability design is on the outcome and the effective use of resources to produce a differentiating capability or an essential supporting capability.

    To personalize your tactics, you have to understand what the essential capabilities are across the five tiers of an organization’s data architecture. Then, assess where you currently stand in these capabilities and where you need to go in order to build your optimization plan.

    'Capability' as a mixture of 'People', 'Technology', 'Process', and 'Assets'.

    Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model can be laid over the five-tier data architecture to understand the essential and advanced capabilities that an organization should have, and to build your tactical strategy for optimizing the organization’s data architecture across the tiers.

    Use Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model as a resource to assess and plan your personalized tactics

    Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model can be laid over the five-tier data architecture to understand the essential and advanced capabilities that an organization should have, and to build your tactical strategy for optimizing the organization’s data architecture across the tiers.

    Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model featuring the five-tier architecture listing 'Core Capabilities' and 'Advanced Capabilities' within each tier, and a list of 'Cross Capabilities' which apply to all tiers.

    Use the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool to create a tailored plan of action

    Supporting Tool icon 2.1.1 Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Instructions

    Use the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool as your central tool to develop a tactical plan of action to optimize the organization’s data architecture.

    This tool contains the following sections:

    1. Business Driver Input
    2. Capability Assessment
    3. Capability Gap Analysis
    4. Tactical Roadmap
    5. Metrics
    6. Initiative Roadmap

    INFO-TECH DELIVERABLE

    Sample of the Info-Tech deliverable Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool.

    Benefits of using this tool:

    • Comprehensive documentation of data architecture capabilities present in leading organizations.
    • Generates an accurate architecture roadmap for your organization that is developed in alignment with the broader enterprise architecture and related architectural domains.

    To create a plan for your data architecture priorities, you must first understand where you currently stand

    Now that you understand the business problem that you are trying to solve, it is time to take action in solving the problem.

    The organization likely has some of the capabilities that are needed to solve the problem, but also a need to improve other capabilities. To narrow down the capabilities that you should focus on, first select the business driver that was identified in Phase 1 in Tab 1. Business Driver Input of the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool. This will customize the roadmap tool to deselect the capabilities that are likely to be less relevant to your organization.

    For Example: If you identified your business driver as “becoming more data-driven”, you will want to focus on measuring and building out the capabilities within Tiers 3, 4, and 5 of the capability model.

    Data Architecture Capability Model
    Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model with tiers 3, 4, and 5 highlighted.

    Note

    If you want to assess your organization for all of the capabilities across the data architecture capability model, select “Comprehensive Data Architecture Assessment” in Tab 1. Business Driver Input of the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool.

    Determine your current state across the related architecture tiers

    Associated Activity icon 2.1.2 1 hour

    INPUT: Current data architecture capabilities.

    OUTPUT: An idea of where you currently stand in the capabilities.

    Materials: Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Participants: Data architect, Enterprise architect, Business representatives

    Use the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool to evaluate the baseline and target capabilities of your practice in terms of how data architecture is approached and executed.

    Instructions
    1. Invite the appropriate stakeholders to participate in this exercise.
    2. On Tab 2. Practice Components, assess the current and target states of each capability on a scale of 1–5.
    3. Note: “Ad hoc” implies a capability is completed, but randomly, informally, and without a standardized method.
      These results will set the baseline against which you will monitor performance progress and keep track of improvements over time.
    To assess data architecture maturity, Info-Tech uses the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) program for rating capabilities on a scale of 1 to 5:

    1 = Initial/Ad hoc

    2 = Developing

    3 = Defined

    4 = Managed and Measurable

    5 = Optimized

    Info-Tech Insight

    Focus on Early Alignment. Assessing capabilities within specific people’s job functions can naturally result in disagreement or debate, especially between business and IT people. Objectively facilitate any debate and only finalize capability assessments when there is full alignment. Remind everyone that data architecture should ultimately serve business needs wherever possible.

    Phase 2, Step 2: Set a Target for Data Architecture Capabilities

    PHASE 2

    2.12.22.3
    Measure Your Data Architecture CapabilitiesSet a Target for Data Architecture CapabilitiesIdentify the Tactics That Apply to Your Organization

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine your target state in each of the relevant capabilities.
    • Distinguish between essential and nice-to-have capabilities for your organization.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • A holistic understanding of where the organization’s data architecture currently sits, where it needs to go, and where the biggest gaps lie.

    To create a plan for your data architecture priorities, you must also understand where you need to get to in the future

    Keep the goal in mind by documenting target state objectives. This will help to measure the highest priority gaps in the organization’s data architecture capabilities.

    Example driver = Becoming more data driven Arrow pointing right. Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model with tiers 3, 4, and 5 highlighted. Arrow pointing right. Current Capabilities Arrow pointing right. Target Capabilities
    Gaps and Priorities
    Stock photo of a hand placing four shelves arranged as stairs. On the first step is a mini-cut-out of a person walking.

    Determine your future state across the relevant tiers of the data architecture capability model

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.1 2 hours

    INPUT: Current state of data architecture capabilities.

    OUTPUT: Target state of data architecture capabilities.

    Materials: Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Participants: Data architect

    The future of data architecture is now.

    Determine the state of data architecture capabilities that the organization needs to reach to address the drivers of the business.

    For example: If you identified your business driver as “becoming more data driven”, you will want to focus on the capabilities within Tiers 3, 4, and 5 of the capability model.

    Driver = Becoming more data driven Arrow pointing right. Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Capability Model with tiers 3, 4, and 5 highlighted. Arrow pointing right. Target Capabilities

    Identify where gaps in your data architecture capabilities lie

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.2 1 hour

    INPUT: Current and target states of data architecture capabilities.

    OUTPUT: Holistic understanding of where you need to improve data architecture capabilities.

    Materials: Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Participants: Data architect

    Visualization of gap assessment of data quality practice capabilities

    To enable deeper analysis on the results of your capability assessment, Tab 4. Capability Gap Analysis in the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool creates visualizations of the gaps identified in each of your practice capabilities and related data management practices. These diagrams serve as analysis summaries.

    Gap Assessment of Data Source Capabilities

    Sample of the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool, tab 4. Capability Gap Analysis.

    Use Tab 3. Data Quality Practice Scorecard to enhance your data quality project.

    1. Enhance your gap analyses by forming a relative comparison of total gaps in key practice capability areas, which will help in determining priorities.
    2. Put these up on display to improve discussion in the gap analyses and prioritization sessions.
    3. Improve the clarity and flow of your strategy template, final presentations, and summary documents by copying and pasting the gap assessment diagrams.

    Phase 2, Step 3: Identify the Tactics That Apply to Your Organization

    PHASE 2

    2.12.22.3
    Measure Your Data Architecture CapabilitiesSet a Target for Data Architecture CapabilitiesIdentify the Tactics That Apply to Your Organization

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Before making your personal tactic plan, identify the trends in data architecture that can benefit your organization.
    • Understand Info-Tech’s data architecture capability model.
    • Initiate the Data Architecture Roadmap Tool to begin creating a roadmap for your optimization plan.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • A framework for generating a tactical plan for data architecture optimization.
    • Knowledge of the various trends in the data architecture field that can be incorporated into your plan.

    Capitalize on trends in data architecture before you determine the tactics that apply to you

    Stop here. Before you begin to plan for optimization of the organization’s data environment, get a sense of the sustainability and scalability of the direction of the organization’s data architecture evolution.

    Practically any trend in data architecture is driven by an attempt to solve one or more the common challenges of today’s tumultuous data landscape, otherwise known as “big data.” Data is being produced in outrageous amounts, at very high speeds, and in a growing number of types and structures.

    To meet these demands, which are not slowing down, you must keep ahead of the curve. Consider the internal and external catalysts that might fuel your organization’s need to modernize its data architecture:

    Big Data

    Data Storage

    Advanced analytics

    Unstructured data

    Integration

    Hadoop ecosystem

    The discussion about big data is no longer about what it is, but how do businesses of all types operationalize it.

    Is your organization currently capturing and leveraging big data?

    Are they looking to do so in the near future?

    The cloud

    The cloud offers economical solutions to many aspects of data architecture.

    Have you dealt with issues of lack of storage space or difficulties with scalability?

    Do you need remote access to data and tools?

    Real-time architecture

    Advanced analytics (machine learning, natural language processing) often require data in real-time. Consider Lambda and Kappa architectures.

    Has your data flow prevented you from automation, advanced analytics, or embracing the world of IoT?

    Graph databases

    Self-service data access allows more than just technical users to participate in analytics. NoSQL can uncover buried relationships in your data.

    Has your organization struggled to make sense of different types of unstructured data?

    Is ETL enough?

    What SQL is to NoSQL, ETL is to NoETL. Integration techniques are being created to address the high variety and high velocity of data.

    Have your data scientists wasted too much time and resources in the ETL stage?

    Read the Data Architecture Trends Presentation to understand the current cutting edge topics in data architecture

    Supporting Tool icon 2.1 Data Architecture Trends Presentation

    The speed at which new technology is changing is making it difficult for IT professionals to keep pace with best practices, let alone cutting edge technologies.

    The Info-Tech Data Architecture Trends Presentation provides a glance at some of the more significant innovations in technology that are driving today’s advanced data architectures.

    This presentation also explains how these trends relate to either the data challenges you may be facing, or the specific business drivers you are hoping to bring to your organization.

    Sample of the Data Architecture Trends Presentation.
    Data Architecture Trends Presentation

    Gaps between your current and future capabilities will help you to determine the tactics that apply to you

    Now that you know where the organization currently stands, follow these steps to begin prioritizing the initiatives:

    1. What are you trying to accomplish? Determine target states that are framed in quantifiable objectives that can be clearly communicated. The more specific the objectives are the better.
    2. Evaluate the “delta,” or difference between where the organization currently stands and where it needs to go. This will be expressed in terms of gap closure strategies, and will help clarify the initiatives that will populate the road map.
    3. Determine the relative business value of each initiative, as well as the relative complexities of successfully implementing them. These scores should be created with stakeholder input, and then plotted in an effort/transition quadrant map to determine where the quickest and most valuable wins lie.
    Current State Gap Closure Strategies Target State Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap
    • Organization objectives
    • Functional needs
    • Current operating models
    • Technology assets
    Initiatives involving:
    • Organizational changes
    • Functional changes
    • Technology changes
    • Process changes
    • Performance objectives (revenue growth, customer intimacy, growth of organization)
    • Operating model improvements
    • Prioritized, simplified, and compelling vision of how the organization will optimize data architecture

    (Source: “How to Build a Roadmap”)

    Info-Tech Insight

    Optimizing data architecture requires a tactical approach, not a passive approach. The demanding task of optimization requires the ability to heavily prioritize. After you have identified why, determine how using our pre-built roadmap to address the four common drivers.

    Each of the layers of an organization’s data architecture have associated challenges to optimization

    Stop! Before you begin, recognize these “gotchas” that can present roadblocks to creating an effective data architecture environment.

    Before diving headfirst into creating your tactical data architecture plan, documenting the challenges associated with each aspect of the organization’s data architecture can help to identify where you need to focus your energy in optimizing each tier. The following table presents the common challenges across the five tiers:

    Source Tier

    Integration Tier

    Warehousing Tier

    Analytics Tier

    Presentation Tier

    Inconsistent data models Performance issues Scalability of the data warehouse Data currency, flexibility Model interoperability
    Data quality measures: data accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, relevance Duplicated data Infrastructure needed to support volume of data No business context for using the data in the correct manner No business context for using the data in the correct manner
    Free-form field and data values beyond data domain Tokenization and other required data transformations Performance
    Volume
    Greedy consumers can cripple performance
    Insufficient infrastructure
    Inefficiencies in building the data mart Report proliferation/chaos (“kitchen sink dashboards”)
    Reporting out of source systems DB model inefficiencies
    Manual errors;
    Application usability
    Elasticity

    Create metrics before you plan to optimize your data architecture

    Associated Activity icon 2.2.3 1 hour

    INPUT: Tactics that will be used to optimize data architecture.

    OUTPUT: Metrics that can be used to measure optimization success.

    Materials: Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool

    Participants: Data architect

    Metrics will help you to track your optimization efforts and ensure that they are providing value to the organization.

    There are two types of metrics that are useful for data architects to track and measure: program metrics and project metrics. Program metrics represent the activities that the data architecture program, which is the sum of multiple projects, should help to improve. Project metrics are the more granular metrics that track each project.

    Program Metrics

    • TCO of IT
      • Costs associated with applications, databases, data maintenance
      • Should decrease with better data architecture (rationalized apps, operationalized databases)
    • Cost savings:
      • Retiring a legacy system and associated databases
      • Consolidated licensing
      • Introducing shared services
    • Data systems under maintenance (maintenance burden)
    • End-user data requests fulfilled
    • Improvement of time of delivery of reports and insights

    Project Metrics

    • Percent of projects in alignment with EA
    • Percent of projects compliant with the EA governance process (architectural due diligence rate)
    • Reducing time to market for launching new products
      • Reducing human error rates
      • Speeding up order delivery
      • Reducing IT costs
      • Reducing severity and frequency of security incidents

    Use Tab 6. Metrics of the Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool to document and track metrics associated with your optimization tactics.

    Use Info-Tech’s resources to build your data architecture capabilities

    The following resources from Info-Tech can be used to improve the capabilities that were identified as having a gap. Read more about the details of the five-tier architecture in the blueprints below:

    Data Governance

    Data architecture depends on effective data governance. Use our blueprint, Enable Shared Insights With an Effective Data Governance Engine to get more out of your architecture.

    Data Quality

    The key to maintaining high data quality is a proactive approach that requires you to establish and update strategies for preventing, detecting, and correcting errors. Find out more on how to improve data quality with Info-Tech’s blueprint, Restore Trust in Your Data Using a Business-Aligned Data Quality Management Approach.

    Master Data Management

    When you start your data governance program, you will quickly realize that you need an effective MDM strategy for managing your critical data assets. Use our blueprint, Develop a Master Data Management Strategy and Roadmap to Better Monetize Data to get started with MDM.

    Data Warehouse

    The key to maintaining high data quality is a proactive approach that requires you to establish and update strategies for preventing, detecting, and correcting errors. Find out more on how to improve data quality with Info-Tech’s blueprint, Drive Business Innovation With a Modernized Data Warehouse Environment.

    With the optimal tactics identified, the monetary authority uncovered areas needing improvement

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Financial
    Source: Info-Tech Consulting
    Symbol for 'Monetary Authority Case Study'.

    Part 2

    After establishing the appropriate tactics based on its business driver, the monetary authority was able to identify its shortcomings and adopt resolutions to remedy the issues.

    Best Practice Tactic Current State Solution
    Tier 1 - Data Sources Identify data sources Data coming from a number of locations. Create data model for old and new systems.
    Ensure data quality Internal data scanned from paper and incomplete. Data cleansing and update governance and business rules for migration to new system.
    External sources providing conflicting data.
    Tier 3 - Data Warehousing Data catalogue Data aggregated incompletely. Built proper business data glossary for searchability.
    Indexing Data warehouse performance sub-optimal. Architected data warehouse for appropriate use (star schema).
    Tier 4 - Data Analytics Data accessibility Relevant data buried in warehouse. Build data marts for access.
    Data reduction Accurate report building could not be performed in current storage. Built interim solution sandbox, spin up SQL database.

    Establishing these solutions provided the organization with necessary information to build their roadmap and move towards implementing an optimized data architecture.

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of a Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    2.1.1 – 2.2.2

    Sample of activities 2.1.1 and 2.2.2, the first being 'Determine your current state across the related architecture tiers'. Evaluate your current capabilities and design your target data quality practice from two angles

    In this assessment and planning activity, the team will evaluate the current and target capabilities for your data architecture’s ability to meet business needs based on the essential capabilities across the five tiers of an organization’s architectural environment.

    2.2.3

    Sample of activity 2.2.3 'Create metrics before you plan to optimize your data architecture'. Create metrics to track the success of your optimization plan.

    The Info-Tech facilitator will guide you through the process of creating program and project metrics to track as you optimize your data architecture. This will help to ensure that the tactics are helping to improve crucial business attributes.

    Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy

    PHASE 3

    Create Your Tactical Data Architecture Roadmap

    Phase 3 outline

    Associated Activity icon Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

    Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

    Guided Implementation 3: Create Your Tactical Data Architecture Roadmap

    Proposed Time to Completion: 2 weeks
    Step 3.1: Personalize Your Data Architecture RoadmapStep 3.2: Manage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes
    Start with an analyst kick-off call:
    • Review the tactical plan that addresses the business drivers by optimizing your data architecture in the relevant focus areas.
    Review findings with analyst:
    • Discuss and review the roadmap of optimization activities, including dependencies, timing, and ownership of activities.
    • Understand how change management is an integral aspect of any data architecture optimization plan.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Create your detailed data architecture initiative roadmap.
    Then complete these activities…
    • Create your Data Architecture Decision Template to document the changes that are going to be made to optimize your data architecture environment.
    • Review how change management fits into the data architecture improvement program.
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap Tool
    With these tools & templates:
    • Data Architecture Decision Template

    Phase 3 Results & Insights

    • Phase 3 will help you to build a personalized roadmap and plan for optimizing data architecture in your organization. In carrying out this roadmap, changes will, by necessity, occur. Therefore, an integral aspect of a data architect’s role is change management. Use the resources included in Phase 3 to smoothen the change management process.

    Phase 3, Step 1: Personalize Your Data Architecture Roadmap

    PHASE 3

    3.1 3.2
    Personalize Your Data Architecture Roadmap Manage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • Determine the timing, effort, and ownership of the recommended optimization initiatives.
    • Brainstorm initiatives that are not yet on the roadmap but apply to you.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect
    • DBAs
    • Enterprise Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • A roadmap of specific initiatives that map to the tactical plan for optimizing your organization’s data architecture.
    • A plan for communicating high-level business objectives to data workers to address the issues of the business.

    Now that you have tactical priorities, identify the actionable steps that will lead you to an optimized data architecture

    Phase 1 and 2 helped you to identify tactics that address some of the most common business drivers. Phase 3 will bring you through the process of practically planning what those tactics look like in your organization’s environment and create a roadmap to plan how you will generate business value through optimization of your data architecture environment.

    Diagram of the three phases and the goals of each one. The first phase says 'Identify your data architecture business driver' and highlights 'Business Driver 3' out of four to focus on in Phase 2. Phase 2 says 'Optimization tactics across the five-tier logical data architecture' and identifies four of six 'Tactics' to use in Phase 3. Phase 3 is a 'Practical Roadmap of Initiatives' and utilizes a timeline of initiatives in which to apply the chosen tactics.

    Use the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool to personalize your roadmap

    Supporting Tool icon 3.1.1 Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool
    Generating Your Roadmap
    1. On Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning, you will find a list of tactics that correspond to every capability that applies to your chosen driver and where there is a gap. In addition, each tactic has a sequence of “Suggested Initiatives,” which represent the best-practice steps that you should take to optimize your data architecture according to your priorities and gaps.
    2. Customize this list of initiatives according to your needs.
    3. The Gantt chart is generated in Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap, and can be used to organize your plan and ensure that all of the essential aspects of optimizing data architecture are addressed.
    4. The roadmap can be used as an “executive brief” roadmap and as a communication tool for the business.
    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool, Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning.
    Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning

    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool, Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap.
    Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap

    Determine the details of your data architecture optimization activities

    Associated Activity icon 3.1.2 1 hour

    INPUT: Timing of initiatives for optimizing data architecture.

    OUTPUT: Optimization roadmap

    Materials: Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool

    Participants: Data architect, Enterprise Architect

    Instructions

    1. With the list of suggested activities in place on Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning, select whether or not the initiatives will be included in the roadmap. By default, all of the initiatives are set to “Yes.”
    2. Plan the sequence, starting time, and length of each initiative, as well as the assigned responsibility of the initiative in Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning of the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool.
    3. The tool will a generate a Gantt chart based on the start and length of your initiatives.
    4. The Gantt chart is generated in Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap.
    Screenshot of the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool, Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning. Tab 5. Tactic and Initiative Planning Screenshot of the Data Architecture Tactic Roadmap Tool, Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap. Tab 7. Initiative Roadmap

    Info-Tech Insight

    The activities that populate the roadmap can be taken as best practice activities. If you want an actionable, comprehensive, and prescriptive plan for optimizing your data architecture, fill in the timing of the activities and print the roadmap. This can serve as a rapid communication tool for your data architecture plan to the business and other architects.

    Optimizing data architecture relies on communication between the business and data workers

    Remember: Data architects bridge the gap between strategic and technical requirements of data.

    Visualization centering the 'Data Architect' as the bridge between 'Data Workers', 'Business', and 'Data & Applications'.

    Therefore, as you plan the data and its interactions with applications, it is imperative that you communicate the plan and its implications to the business and the data workers. Stock photo of coworkers communicating.
    Also remember: In Phase 1, you built your tactical data architecture optimization plan.
    Sample 1 of the Data Architecture Optimization Template. Sample 2 of the Data Architecture Optimization Template.
    Use this document to communicate your plan for data architecture optimization to both the business and the data workers. Socialize this document as a representation of your organization’s current data architecture as well as where it is headed in the future.

    Communicate your data architecture optimization plan to the business for approval

    Associated Activity icon 3.1.3 2 hours

    INPUT: Data Architecture Tactical Roadmap

    OUTPUT: Communication plan

    Materials: Data Architecture Optimization Template

    Participants: Data Architect, Business representatives, IT representatives

    Instructions

    Begin by presenting your plan and roadmap to the business units who participated in business interviews in activity 1.1.3 of Phase 1.

    If you receive feedback that suggests that you should make revisions to the plan, consult Info-Tech Research Group for suggestions on how to improve the plan.

    If you gain approval for the plan, communicate it to DBAs and other data workers.

    Iterative optimization and communication plan:
    Visualization of the Iterative optimization and communication plan. 'Start here' at 'Communicate Plan and Roadmap to the Business', and then continue in a cycle of 'Receive Approval or Suggested Modifications', 'Get Advice for Improvements to the Plan', 'Revise Plan', and back to the initial step until you receive 'Approval', then 'Present to Data Workers'.

    With a roadmap in place, the monetary authority followed a tactical and practical plan to repair outdated data architecture

    CASE STUDY

    Industry: Financial
    Source: Info-Tech Consulting
    Symbol for 'Monetary Authority Case Study'.

    Part 3

    After establishing the appropriate tactics based on its business driver, the monetary authority was able to identify its shortcomings and adopt resolutions to remedy the issues.

    Challenge

    A monetary authority was placed under new requirements where it would need to produce 6 different report types on its clients to a regulatory body within a window potentially as short as 1 hour.

    With its current capabilities, it could complete such a task in roughly 7 days.

    The organization’s data architecture was comprised of legacy systems that had poor searchability. Moreover, the data it worked with was scanned from paper, regularly incomplete and often inconsistent.

    Solution

    The solution first required the organization to establish the business driver behind the need to optimize its architecture. In this case, it would be compliance requirements.

    With Info-Tech’s methodology, the organization focused on three tiers: data sources, warehousing, and analytics.

    Several solutions were developed to address the appropriate lacking capabilities. Firstly, the creation of a data model for old and new systems. The implementation of governance principles and business rules for migration of any data. Additionally, proper indexing techniques and business data glossary were established. Lastly, data marts and sandboxes were designed for data accessibility and to enable a space for proper report building.

    Results

    With the solutions established, the monetary authority was given information it needed to build a comprehensive roadmap, and is currently undergoing the implementation of the plan to ensure it will experience its desired outcome – an optimized data architecture built with the capacity to handle external compliance requirements.

    Phase 3, Step 2: Manage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes

    PHASE 3

    3.13.2
    Personalize Your Data Architecture RoadmapManage Your Data Architecture Decisions and the Resulting Changes

    This step will walk you through the following activities:

    • With a plan in place, document the major architectural decisions that have been and will be made to optimize data architecture.
    • Create a plan for change and release management, an essential function of the data architect role.

    This step involves the following participants:

    • Data Architect
    • Enterprise Architect

    Outcomes of this step

    • Resources for documenting and managing the inevitable change associated with updates to the organization’s data architecture environment.

    To implement data architecture changes, you must plan to accommodate the issues that come with change

    Once you have a plan in place, one the most challenging aspects of improving an organization is yet to come…overcoming change!

    “When managing change, the job of the data architect is to avoid unnecessary change and to encapsulate necessary change.

    You must provide motivation for simplifying change, making it manageable for the whole organization.” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Stock photo of multiple hands placing app/website design elements on a piece of paper.

    Create roadmap

    Arrow pointing down.

    Communicate roadmap

    Arrow pointing down.

    Implement roadmap

    Arrow pointing down.

    Change management

    Use the Data Architecture Decision Template when architectural changes are made

    Supporting Tool icon 3.2 Data Architecture Decision Template
    Document the architectural decisions made to provide context around changes made to the organization’s data environment.

    The goal of this Data Architecture Decision Template is to provide data architects with a template for managing the changes that accompany major architectural decisions. As you work through the Build a Business-Aligned Data Architecture Optimization Strategy blueprint, you will create a plan for tactical initiatives that address the drivers of the business to optimize your data architecture. This plan will bring about changes to the organization’s data architecture that need change management considerations.

    Document any major changes to the organization’s data architecture that are required to evolve with the organization’s drivers. This will ensure that major architectural changes are documented, tracked, and that the context around the decision is maintained.

    “Environment is very chaotic nowadays – legacy apps, sprawl, ERPs, a huge mix and orgs are grappling with what our data landscape look like? Where are our data assets that we need to use?” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    Sample of the Data Architecture Decision Template.

    Use Info-Tech’s Data Architecture Decision Template to document any major changes in the organization’s data architecture.

    Leverage Info-Tech’s resources to smooth change management

    As changes to the architectural environment occur, data architects must stay ahead of the curve and plan the change management considerations that come with major architectural decisions.

    “When managing change, the job of the data architect is to avoid unnecessary change and to encapsulate necessary change.

    You must provide motivation for simplifying change, making it manageable for the whole organization.” (Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant)

    See Info-Tech’s resources on change management to smooth changes:
    Banner for the blueprint set 'Optimize Change Management' with subtitle 'Turn and face the change with a right-sized change management process'.
    Sample of the Optimize Change Management blueprint.

    Change Management Blueprint

    Sample of the Change Management Roadmap Tool.

    Change Management Roadmap Tool

    Use Info-Tech’s resources for effective release management

    As changes to the architectural environment occur, data architects must stay ahead of the curve and plan the release management considerations around new hardware and software releases or updates.

    Release management is a process that encompasses the planning, design, build, configuration, and testing of hardware and software releases to create a defined set of release components (ITIL). Release activities can include the distribution of the release and supporting documentation directly to end users. See Info-Tech’s resources on Release Management to smooth changes:

    Banner for the blueprint set 'Take a Holistic View to Optimize Release Management' with subtitle 'Build trust by right-sizing your process using appropriate governance'.
    Samples of the Release Management blueprint.

    Release Management Blueprint

    Sample of the Release Management Process Standard Template.

    Release Management Process Standard Template

    If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech Workshop Associated Activity icon

    Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

    Photo of a Info-Tech analyst.
    • To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
    • Info-Tech analyst will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech's historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
    • Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

    The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

    3.1.1

    Sample of activity 3.1.2 'Determine the timing of your data architecture optimization activities'. Create your personalized roadmap of activities.

    In this activity, the facilitator will guide the team in evaluating practice gaps highlighted by the assessment, and compare these gaps at face value so general priorities can be documented. The same categories as in 3.1.1 are considered.

    3.1.3

    Sample of activity 3.1.3 'Communicate your Data Architecture Optimization Plan to the business for approval'. Communicate your data architecture optimization plan.

    The facilitator will help you to identify the optimal medium and timing for communicating your plan for optimizing your data architecture.

    Insight breakdown

    Insight 1

    • Data architecture needs to evolve along with the changing business landscape. There are four common business drivers that put most pressure on archaic architectures. As a result, the organization’s architecture must be flexible and responsive to changing business needs.

    Insight 2

    • Data architecture is not just about models.
      Viewing data architecture as just technical data modeling can lead to structurally unsound data that does not serve the business.

    Insight 3

    • Data is used differently across the layers of an organization’s data architecture, and the capabilities needed to optimize use of data change with it. Architecting and managing data from source to warehousing to presentation requires different tactics for optimal use.

    Summary of accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • An understanding of what data architecture is, how data architects can provide value to the organization, and how data architecture fits into the larger enterprise architecture picture.
    • The capabilities required for optimization of the organization’s data architecture across the five tiers of the logical data architecture model.

    Processes Optimized

    • Prioritization and planning of data architect responsibilities across the five tiers of the five-tier logical data architecture model.
    • Roadmapping of tactics that address the most common business drivers of the organization.
    • Architectural change management.

    Deliverables Completed

    • Data Architecture Driver Pattern Identification Tool
    • Data Architecture Optimization Template
    • Data Architecture Trends Presentation
    • Data Architecture Roadmap Tool
    • Data Architecture Decision Template

    Research contributors and experts

    Photo of Ron Huizenga, Senior Product Manager, Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. Ron Huizenga, Senior Product Manager
    Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.

    Ron Huizenga has over 30 years of experience as an IT executive and consultant in enterprise data architecture, governance, business process reengineering and improvement, program/project management, software development, and business management. His experience spans multiple industries including manufacturing, supply chain, pipelines, natural resources, retail, healthcare, insurance, and transportation.

    Photo of Andrew Johnston, Architect, Independent Consultant. Andrew Johnston, Architect Independent Consultant

    An independent consultant with a unique combination of managerial, commercial, and technical skills, Andrew specializes in the development of strategies and technical architectures that allow businesses to get the maximum benefit from their IT resources. He has been described by clients as a "broad spectrum" architect, summarizing his ability to engage in many problems at many levels.

    Research contributors

    Internal Contributors
    Logo for Info-Tech Research Group.
    • Steven J. Wilson, Senior Director, Research & Advisory Services
    • Daniel Ko, Research Manager
    • Bernie Gilles, Senior Director, Research & Advisory Services
    External Contributors
    Logo for Embarcadero.
    Logo for Questa Computing. Logo for Geha.
    • Ron Huizenga, Embercardo Technologies
    • Andrew Johnston, Independent Consultant
    • Darrell Enslinger, Government Employees Health Association
    • Anonymous Contributors

    Bibliography

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    Aston, Dan. “The Economic value of Enterprise Architecture and How to Show It.” Erwin. Aug, 2016. Web. 20 Apr 2017. [http://erwin.com/blog/economic-value-enterprise-architecture-show/]

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    Select and Implement a Reporting and Analytics Solution

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}363|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): 9.0/10 Overall Impact
    • member rating average dollars saved: $10,110 Average $ Saved
    • member rating average days saved: 3 Average Days Saved
    • Parent Category Name: Business Intelligence Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /business-intelligence-strategy
    • Statistics show that the top priority of 85% of CIOs is insight and intelligence. Yet an appetite for intelligence does not mean that business intelligence initiatives will be an automatic success. In fact, many industry studies found that only 30% to 50% of organizations considered their BI initiative to be a complete success. It is, therefore, imperative that organizations take the time to select and implement a BI suite that aligns with business goals and fosters end-user adoption.
    • The multitude of BI offerings creates a busy and sometimes overwhelming vendor landscape. When selecting a solution, you have to make sense of the many offerings and bridge the gap between what is out there and what your organization needs.
    • BI is more than software. A BI solution has to effectively address business needs and demonstrate value through content and delivery once the platform is implemented.
    • Another dimension of the success of BI is the quality and validity of the reports and insights. The overall success of the BI solution is only as good as the quality of data fueling them.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Business intelligence starts with data management. Without data management, including governance and data quality capabilities, your BI users will not be able to get the insights they need due to inaccurate and unavailable data.
    • When selecting a BI tool, it is crucial to ensure that the tool is fit for the purpose of the organization. Ensure alignment between the business drivers and the tool capabilities.
    • Self-serve BI requires a measured approach. Self-serve BI is meant to empower users to make more informed and faster decisions. But uncontrolled self-serve BI will lead to report chaos and prevent users from getting the most out of the tool. You must govern self-serve before it gets out of hand.

    Impact and Result

    • Evaluate your organization and land yourself into one of our three BI use cases. Find a BI suite that best suits the use case and, therefore, your organization.
    • Understand the ever-changing BI market. Get to know the established vendors as well as the emerging players.
    • Define BI requirements comprehensively through the lens of business, data, architecture, and user groups. Evaluate requirements to ensure they align with the strategic goals of the business.

    Select and Implement a Reporting and Analytics Solution Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should select and implement a business intelligence and analytics solution, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Launch a BI selection project

    Promote and get approval for the BI selection and implementation project.

    • Select and Implement a Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution – Phase 1: Launch a BI Selection Project
    • BI Score Calculator
    • BI Project Charter

    2. Select a BI solution

    Select the most suitable BI platform.

    • Select and Implement a Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution – Phase 2: Select a BI Solution
    • BI Use-Case Fit Assessment Tool
    • BI Planning and Scoring Tool
    • BI Vendor Demo Script
    • BI Vendor Shortlist & Detailed Feature Analysis Tool
    • BI Request for Proposal Template

    3. Implement the BI solution

    Build a sustainable BI program.

    • Select and Implement a Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution – Phase 3: Implement the BI Solution
    • BI Test Plan Template
    • BI Implementation Planning Tool
    • BI Implementation Work Breakdown Structure Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Select and Implement a Reporting and Analytics Solution

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Launch a BI Selection Project

    The Purpose

    Identify the scope and objectives of the workshop.

    Discuss the benefits and opportunities related to a BI investment.

    Gain a high-level understanding of BI and the BI market definitions and details.

    Outline a project plan and identify the resourcing requirements for the project.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Determine workshop scope.

    Identify the business drivers and benefits behind a BI investment.

    Outline the project plan for the organization’s BI selection project.

    Determine project resourcing.

    Identify and perform the steps to launch the organization’s selection project.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify business drivers for investing in process automation technology.

    1.2 Identify the organization’s fit for a BI investment.

    1.3 Create a project plan.

    1.4 Identify project resourcing.

    1.5 Outline the project’s timeline.

    1.6 Determine key metrics.

    1.7 Determine project oversight.

    1.8 Complete a project charter.

    Outputs

    Completion of a project charter

    Launched BI selection project

    2 Analyze BI Requirements and Shortlist Vendors

    The Purpose

    Identify functional requirements for the organization’s BI suite.

    Determine technical requirements for the organization’s BI suite.

    Identify the organization’s alignment to the Vendor Landscape’s use-case scenarios.

    Shortlist BI vendors.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Documented functional requirements.

    Documented technical requirements.

    Identified use-case scenarios for the future BI solution.

    Activities

    2.1 Interview business stakeholders.

    2.2 Interview IT staff.

    2.3 Consolidate interview findings.

    2.4 Build the solution’s requirements package.

    2.5 Identify use-case scenario alignment.

    2.6 Review Info-Tech’s BI Vendor Landscape results.

    2.7 Create custom shortlist.

    Outputs

    Documented requirements for the future solution.

    Identification of the organization’s BI functional use-case scenarios.

    Shortlist of BI vendors.

    3 Plan the Implementation Process

    The Purpose

    Identify the steps for the organization’s implementation process.

    Select the right BI environment.

    Run a pilot project.

    Measure the value of your implementation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Install a BI solution and prepare the BI solution in a way that allows intuitive and interactive uses.

    Keep track of and quantify BI success.

    Activities

    3.1 Select the right environment for the BI platform.

    3.2 Configure the BI implementation.

    3.3 Conduct a pilot to get started with BI and to demonstrate BI possibilities.

    3.4 Promote BI development in production.

    Outputs

    A successful BI implementation.

    BI is architected with the right availability.

    BI ROI is captured and quantified.

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

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    • Parent Category Name: Data Management
    • Parent Category Link: /data-management

    Organizations are joining the wave and adopting machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the value in their data and power their competitive advantage. But to succeed with these complex analytics programs, they need to begin by looking at their data – empowering their people to realize and embrace the valuable insights within the organization’s data.

    The key to achieve becoming a data-driven organization is to foster a strong data culture and equip employees with data skills through an organization-wide data literacy program.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Start with real business problems in a hands-on format to demonstrate the value of data.
    • Use a formalized organization-wide approach to data literacy program to bridge the data skills gap.
    • Provide relevant and practical training programs tailored to different learning styles and tenures (e.g. onboarding, development plan).

    Impact and Result

    Data literacy is critical to the success of digital transformation and AI analytics. Info-Tech’s approach to creating a sustainable and effective data literacy program is recognizing it is:

    • More than just technical training. A data literacy program isn’t just about data; it encompasses aspects of business, IT, and data.
    • More than a one-off exercise. To keep the literacy skills alive the program must be regular, sustainable, and tailored to different needs across all levels of the organization.
    • More than one delivery format. Different delivery methods need to be considered to suit various learning styles to ensure an effective delivery.

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy Storyboard – A step-by-step guide to help organizations build an effective and sustainable data literacy program that benefits all employees who work with data.

    Data literacy as part of the data governance strategic program should be launched to all levels of employees that will help your organization bridge the data knowledge gap at all levels of the organization. This research recommends approaches to different learning styles to address data skill needs and helps members create a practical and sustainable data literacy program.

    • Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy Storyboard

    2. Fundamental Data Literacy Program Template – A document that provides an example of a fundamental data literacy program.

    Kick off a data awareness program that explains the fundamental understanding of data and its lifecycle. Explore ways to create or mature the data literacy program with smaller amounts of information on a more frequent basis.

    • Fundamental Data Literacy Program Template
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

    Data literacy is an essential part of a data-driven culture, bridging the data knowledge gaps across all levels of the organization.

    Analyst Perspective

    Data literacy is the missing link to becoming a data-driven organization.

    “Digital transformation” and “data driven” are two terms that are inseparable. With organizations accelerating in their digital transformation roadmap implementation, organizations need to invest in developing data skills with their people. Talent is scarce and the demand for data skills is huge, with 70% of employees expected to work heavily with data by 2025. There is no time like the present to launch an organization-wide data literacy program to bridge the data knowledge gap and foster a data-driven culture.

    Data literacy training is as important as your cybersecurity training. It impacts all levels of the organization. Data literacy is critical to success with digital transformation and AI analytics.

    Annabel Lui

    Principal Advisory Director, Data & Analytics Practice
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Organizations are joining the wave and adopting machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the value in their data and power their competitive advantage. But to succeed with these complex analytics programs, they need to begin by empowering their people to realize and embrace the valuable insights within the organization’s data.

    The key to becoming a data-driven organization is to foster a strong data culture and equip people with data skills through an organization-wide data literacy program.

    Common Obstacles

    Challenges the data leadership is likely to face as digital transformation initiatives drive intensified competition:

    • Resistance to change
    • Technological distractions
    • “Shadow data”
    • Difficulty securing resources and skilled data professionals
    • Inability to appreciate the value of data and its meaning for users – even fear of it

    Info-Tech's Approach

    We interviewed data leaders and instructors to gather insights about investing in data:

    • Start with real business problems in a hands-on format to demonstrate the value of data.
    • Implement a formalized organization-wide approach to data literacy program to bridge the data skill gap.
    • Provide relevant and practical training programs tailored to different learning styles and tenures (e.g. onboarding,development plan).

    Info-Tech Insight

    By thoughtfully designing a data literacy training program for the audience's own experience, maturity level, and learning style, organizations build the data-driven and engaged culture that helps them to unlock their data's full potential and outperform other organizations.

    Your Challenge

    Data literacy is the missing link to drive business outcomes from data.

    • Having a data-driven culture as an organization’s mission statement without implementing a data literacy program is like making an empty promise and leaving the value unrealized and unattainable.
    • A study conducted by the Data Literacy Project clearly indicates that organizations with aggressive data literacy programs will outperform those who do not have such programs. By 2030, data literacy will be one of the most sought-after skill sets. All employees require data literacy skills.
    • Everyone has a role in data. From employees who are actively involved in data collection to operational teams who create reports with analytics tools and finally to executives who use data to make business decisions – they all require continuous data literacy training in a data-driven organization. Because of differences in maturity, data literacy strategies cannot be one-size-fits-all.

    “Data literacy is the ability to read, work with, analyze, and communicate with data. It's a skill that empowers all levels of workers to ask the right questions of data and machines, build knowledge, make decisions, and communicate meaning to others.” – Qlik, n.d.

    75% of organizational employees have access to data tools – only 21% demonstrated confidence in their data skills.

    Source: Accenture, 2020.

    89% of C-level executives expect team members to explain how data has informed their decisions, but only 11% employees are fully confident in their ability to read, analyze, work with, and communicate with data

    Source: Qlik, 2022.

    Data debt or data asset?

    Manage your data as strategic assets.

    “[Data debt is] when you have undocumented, unused, incomplete, and inconsistent data,” according to Secoda (2023). “When … data debt is not solved, data teams could risk wasting time managing reports no one uses and producing data that no one understands.”

    Signs of data debt when considering investing in data literacy:

    • Lack of definition and understanding of data terms, therefore they don’t speak the same language. Without data literacy, an organization will not succeed in becoming a data-driven organization.
    • Putting data literacy as a low priority. Organization sees this as “another” training to put on the list and keeps it on the back burner.
    • Data literacy is not seen as the number one skill set needed in the organization. However, anyone who works with data requires data skills.
    • End users are not trained on self-serve features and tools.
    • Focusing on a minority group of people rather than everyone in the organization or seeing it as a one-off exercise.
    • Delays or failure to deliver digital transformation projects due to lack of data skills and data access issues.

    66%

    of organizations say a backlog of data debt is impacting new data management initiatives.

    40%

    of organizations say individuals within the business do not trust data insights.

    30%

    of organizations are unable to become data-driven.

    Source: Experian, 2020

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Data literacy is critical to success with digital transformation and AI analytics.

    Diagram showing components of Data literacy: 1 - Data: understand your data, 2 - Business: define the purpose, 3 - IT: Introduce new ways of working

    The Info-Tech difference:

    1. More than just technical training. Data literacy program isn’t just about data but rather encompasses aspects of business, IT, and data.
    2. More than a one-off exercise. To keep literacy skills alive, the program must be routine and sustainable, tailored to different needs across all levels of the organization.
    3. More than one delivery format. Different delivery methods need to be considered to suit various learning styles.

    Data needs to be processed

    Data – facts – are organized, processed, and given meaning to become insights.

    Data, information, knowledge, insight, wisdom

    Image source: Welocalize, 2020.

    Data represents a discrete fact or event without relation to other things (e.g. it is raining). Data is unorganized and not useful on its own.

    Information organizes and structures data so that it is meaningful and valuable for a specific purpose (i.e. it answers questions). Information is a refined form of data.

    When information is combined with experience and intuition, it results in knowledge. It is our personal map/model of the world.

    Knowledge set with context generates insight. We become knowledgeable as a result of reading, researching, and memorizing (i.e. accumulating information).

    Wisdom means the ability to make sound judgments. Wisdom synthesizes knowledge and experiences into insights.

    Investment in data literacy is a game changer.

    Data literacy is the ability to collect, manage, evaluate, and apply data in a critical manner.

    A data-driven culture is “an operating environment that seeks to leverage data whenever and wherever possible to enhance business efficiency and effectiveness” (Forbes).

    Info-Tech Insight

    Data-driven culture refers to a workplace where decisions are made based on data evidence, not on gut instinct.

    Info-Tech’s methodology for building a data literacy program

    Phase Steps

    1. Define Data Literacy Objectives

    1.1 Understand organization’s needs

    1.2 Create vision and objective for data literacy program

    2. Assess Learning Style and Align to Program Design

    2.1 Create persona and identify audience

    2.2 Assess learning style and align to program design

    2.3 Determine the right delivery method

    3. Socialize Roadmap and Milestones

    3.1 Establish a roadmap

    3.2 Set key performance metrics and milestones

    Phase Outcomes

    Identify key objectives to establish and grow the data literacy program by articulating the problem and solutions proposed.

    Assess each audience’s learning style and adapt the program to their unique needs.

    Show a roadmap with key performance indicators to track each milestone and tell a data story.

    Insight Summary

    “In a world of more data, the companies with more data-literate people are the ones that are going to win.”

    – Miro Kazakoff, senior lecturer, MIT Sloan, in MIT Sloan School of Management, 2021

    Overarching insight

    By thoughtfully designing a data literacy training program personalized to each audience's maturity level, learning style, and experience, organizations can develop and grow a data-driven culture that unlocks the data's full potential for competitive differentiation.

    Module 1 insight

    We can learn a lot from each other. Literacy works both ways – business data stewards learn to “speak data” while IT data custodians understand the business context and value. Everyone should strive to exchange knowledge.

    Module 2 insight

    Avoid traditional classroom teaching – create a data literacy program that is learner-centric to allow participants to learn and experiment with data.

    Aligning program design to those learning styles will make participants more likely to be receptive to learning a new skill.

    Module 3 insight

    A data literacy program isn’t just about data but rather encompasses aspects of business, IT, and data. With executive support and partnership with business, running a data literacy program means that it won’t end up being just another technical training. The program needs to address why, what, how questions.

    Tactical insight

    A lot of programs don’t include the fundamentals. To get data concepts to stick, focus on socializing the data/information/knowledge/wisdom foundation.

    Tactical insight

    Many programs speak in abstract terms. We present case studies and tangible use cases to personalize training to the audience’s world and showcase opportunities enabled through data.

    Key performance indicators (KPIs) for your data literacy program

    How do you know if your data literacy program is successful? Here are some useful KPIs:

    Program Adoption Metrics

    • Percentage of employees attending data literacy training
    • Percentage of participants who report gains in data management knowledge after training sessions
    • Maturity assessment result
    • Survey and diagnostic feedback before and after training
    • Trend analysis of overall data literacy program

    Operational Metrics

    • Number of requests for analytics/reporting services
    • Number of reports created by users
    • Speed and quality of business decisions
    • User satisfaction with reports and analytics services
    • Improved business performance (customer satisfaction)
    • Improved valuation of organization data

    A data-driven culture builds tools and skills, builds users’ trust in the quality of data across sources, and raises the skills and understanding among the frontlines by encouraging everyone to leverage data for critical thinking and innovation.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

    Guided Implementation

    "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

    Workshop

    "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

    Consulting

    "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of the project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

    Workshop Overview

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Session 1

    Session 2

    Session 3

    Session 4

    Activities

    Define Data Literacy Objectives

    1.1 Review Data Culture Diagnostic results

    1.2 Identify business context: business goals, initiatives

    1.3 Create vision and objective for data literacy program

    Assess Learning Style and Align to Program Design

    2.1 Identify audience

    2.2 Assess learning style and align to program design

    2.3 Determine the right delivery method

    Build a Data Literacy Roadmap and Milestones

    3.1 Identify program initiatives and topics

    3.2 Determine delivery methods

    3.3 Build the data literacy roadmap

    Operational Strategy to implement Data Literacy

    4.1 Identify key performance metrics

    4.2 Identify owners and document RACI matrix

    4.3 Discuss next steps and wrap up.

    Deliverables

    1. Diagnostics reports (data culture survey)
    2. Vision and value statement
    1. Assessment of audience covering all levels of organization
    1. List of key program initiatives and topics
    2. Allocation of delivery methods
    3. Roadmap
    1. Data literacy metrics
    2. List of owners and roles and responsibilities
    3. Next step and implementation schedule

    Phase 1

    Define Data Literacy Objectives

    Phase 1: step 1 - Understand organization's needs, step 2 - Create vision and objective for data literacy program.

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Understand the organization’s needs.
    • Create vision and objective for data literacy program.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Data governance sponsor
    • Data owners
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians

    1.1 Gauge your organization’s current data culture

    Conduct data culture survey or diagnostic.

    1. Identify members of the data user base, data consumers, and other key stakeholders for surveying.
    2. Conduct an information session to introduce Info-Tech’s Data Culture Diagnostic survey. Explain the objective and importance of the survey and its role in helping to understand the organization’s current data culture and inform the improvement of that culture.
    3. Roll out the Info-Tech Data Culture Diagnostic survey to the identified users and stakeholders.
    4. Debrief and document the results and scorecard in the Data Strategy Stakeholder Interview Guide and Findings document.

    Input

    • Email addresses of participants in your organization who should receive the survey

    Output

    • Your organization’s Data Culture Scorecard for understanding current data culture as it relates to the use and consumption of data
    • An understanding of whether data is currently perceived to be an asset to the organization

    Materials

    • Info-Tech’s Data Culture Diagnostic service

    Participants

    • Participants include those at the senior leadership level through to middle management, as well as other business stakeholders at varying levels across the organization
    • Data owners, stewards, and custodians
    • Core data users and consumers

    Contact your Info-Tech Account Representative for details on launching a Data Culture Diagnostic.

    1.2 Define data literacy objectives

    1. Understand the organization’s needs by identifying opportunities and challenges relating to data. Document the described real-life examples.
    2. Categorize the list and identify areas where data literacy can address the business problem.
    3. Create a vision statement for the data literacy program, ensuring that it covers all levels of the organization.
    4. Articulate the intended targets and goals in planning for a data literacy program.

    Input

    • List of opportunities and challenges relating to data
    • Relevant business real-life examples

    Output

    • Categorized list of data literacy needs
    • Vision for literacy program
    • Targets and goals

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Sticky notes

    Participants

    • CDO or sponsor
    • Key business stakeholders
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians
    • Data governance working group

    Quick wins for improving data literacy

    Data collected through Info-Tech’s Data Culture Diagnostic suggests three ways to improve data literacy:

    87%

    think more can be done to define and document commonly used terms with methods such as a business data glossary.

    68%

    think they can have a better understanding of the meaning of all data elements that are being captured or managed.

    86%

    feel that they can have more training in terms of tools as well as on what data is available at the organization.

    Source: Info-Tech Research Group's Data Culture Diagnostic, 2022; N=2,652

    Quick Wins

    • Create a business data glossary to document and define common terms.
    • Provide easy access to the business data glossary and procedures on how data is captured and managed.
    • Launch an organization-wide data literacy program.

    Delivering value is a means and the goal

    Start with real business problems in a hands-on format to demonstrate the value of data.

    Identify business problem:

    • Business decisions without facts are just guesses.
    • Management spends a lot of time finding and fixing data.
    • Unknown challenges on data assets and risk.
    • Incomplete view of customer/client and industry.
    • Not ready for modern data opportunities (e.g. artificial intelligence).

    Create an objective

    Treat data as a strategic asset to gain insight into our customers for all levels of organization.

    The solution: Data-driven culture powered by people who speak data.

    • Data dictionary
    • Data literacy
    • Trusted single source
    • Access to analytics tools
    • Decision making

    "According to Forrester, 91% of organizations find it challenging to improve the use of data insights for decision-making – even though 90% see it as a priority. Why the disconnect? A lack of data literacy."

    – Alation, 2020

    Fundamental data literacy

    Data literacy is more than just a technical training or a one-off exercise.

    Info-Tech provides various topics suited for a data literacy program that can accommodate different data skill requirements and encompasses relevant aspects of business, IT, and data.

    Info-Tech Research Group’s Data Literacy Program

    Use discovery and diagnostics to understand users’ comfort level and maturity with data.

    Data lunch 'n' learn

    • The power and value of data
    • Everyone is a data steward
    • Becoming data literate
    • Data 101
    • The future is data
    1 hour
    For: General audience, senior leadership, data leads, change management

    Speak data

    • What is data
    • Meet the data team
    • Day in the life of a steward
    • How data impacts you
    • Tools of the trade
    1/2 day
    For: New stewards, data owners, pre-data strategy workshop

    Your data story

    • Ask the right questions
    • Find the top five data elements
    • Understand your data
    • Present your data story
    • Lessons from COVID-19
    1/2 day
    For: New stewards, business data owners, pre-BI/analytics workshop

    Phase 2

    Assess Learning Style and Align to Program Design

    Phase 2: step 1 - Identify audience, step 2 - Access learning style and align to program design, step 3 - Determine the right delivery method.

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Identify your audience.
    • Assess learning styles and align them to the data program design.
    • Determine the right delivery method.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Data governance sponsor
    • Data owners
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians

    Avoid common pitfalls

    75%

    feel that training was too long to remember or to apply in their day-to-day work.

    21%

    find training had insufficient follow-up to help them apply on the job.

    Source: Grovo, 2018.

    1. Information Overload

      Trying to cover too much useful information results in overwhelm and does not deliver on key training objectives.
    2. Limited Implementation

      Learning is only the beginning. The real results are obtained when learning is followed by practice, which turns new knowledge into reliable habits.
    3. Lack of Organizational Alignment

      Implementing training without a clear link to organizational objectives leaves you unable to clearly communicate its value, undermines your ability to secure buy-in from attendees and executives, and leaves you unable to verify that the training is actually improving effectiveness.

    2.1 Understand learning style

    1. Create persona and identify the audiences and their roles in data across all levels of the organization.
    2. Identify the data program initiatives and assign the best delivery method to each initiative.
    3. Assign participants to each program initiative based on their skill gap and learning style.

    Input

    • List of audiences, their roles, and tenures
    • Data skill gap assessment
    • List of literacy program initiatives/topics

    Output

    • Target audience grouping
    • List of program initiatives with assigned groups

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Sticky notes

    Participants

    • CDO or sponsor
    • Key business stakeholders
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians
    • Data governance working group

    You and data

    Is data an integral part of your work?

    Do you feel comfortable finding and using data in your organization?

    • Many people feel intimidated by data and therefore miss out on what data can do for them.
    • Often the obstacle is language. If you don’t understand the semantics around data, you will not feel confident to contribute to discussions around data.
    • You use data every day but need additional vocabulary to understand how to handle it properly.
    • Data literacy is the ability to “speak data” and to understand what data means (i.e. how to read charts and graphs, draw valid conclusions, and recognize when data is misinterpreted or used inappropriately to be misleading).
    • The business often doesn’t understand its role in data governance and how it informs and assists IT in responsible data management.

    Info-Tech Insight

    IT and data professionals need to understand the business as much as business needs to talk about data. Bidirectional learning and feedback improves the synergy between business and IT.

    Create personas

    Persona creation is a way to brainstorm ideas for the data literacy program.

    Choose a data role (e.g. data steward, data owner, data scientist).

    Describe the persona based on goals, priorities, tenures, preferred learning style, type of work with data.

    Identify data skill and level of skills required.

    Persona 1: Denise - Manager, People and Culture. Goals, priorities, tenure, data role, learning style, skill level

    Consider these other ways to brainstorm:

    • Review current in-flight projects.
    • Analyze types of data requests.
    • Understand needs by department.
    • Share learnings in a community of practice.

    Program design

    Categorize into six data skill areas

    Not everyone needs the same level of skill sets

    Bullseye board with skill levels (Innermost going outward): Expert, advanced, intermediate and Basic. The six data skill areas: 1. Understanding Data, 2. Find and Obtain Data, 3. Read, Interpret and Evaluate Data, 4. Manage Data, 5. Create and Use Data, 6. Tell a Story and Share Data are placed equally around in sections.

    Map the personas to the program

    Bridging the data knowledge gap.

    • Each component will promote the value of data to all levels of employees when demonstrating the right way for data to be understood, managed, and consumed in the organization.
    • Categorizing the data literacy program into six areas and levels of skill sets will provide clarity into which areas to focus on.
    • The program is intended to be implemented in stages, allowing the audience to learn and adopt the new skills. Leveraging in-flight projects for rolling out training will have a higher success because the need is already built into the project.
    Personas are placed at different points in the data skill area and skill level.

    Align program design to learning styles

    The four methods (Discussion, Information, Coaching, and Self-Discovery) are based on learner-centered model design rather than the traditional teacher-centered model.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Tailor your data literacy program to meet your organization’s needs, filling your range of knowledge gaps and catering to different levels of users.

    When it comes to rolling out a data literacy program, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Your data literacy program is intended to spread knowledge throughout your organization. It should target everyone from executive leadership to management to subject matter experts across all functions of the business.

    Discussion method

    Delivery Method

    • Interactive format between instructor and learner
    • Instructor empowers and motivates learner through dialogues and exercises

    The imaginative learner

    The imaginative learner group likes to engage in feelings and spend time on reflection. This type of learner desires personal meaning and involvement. They focus on personal values for themselves and others and make connections quickly.

    For this group of learners, their question is: why should I learn this?

    Learning characteristics

    • Seek meaning
    • Need to be personally involved
    • Learn by listening and sharing ideas
    • Function through social interaction

    Information method

    Delivery Method

    • Instructor does most of the talking in the training
    • Instructor is teaching the content, delivering the training content, and demonstrating

    Analytical learner

    The analytical learner group likes to listen, to think about information, and to come up with ideas. They are interested in acquiring facts and delving into concepts and processes. They can learn effectively and enjoy doing independent research.

    For this group of learners, their question is: what should I learn?

    Learning characteristics

    • Seek and examine the facts
    • Need to know what experts think
    • Interested in ideas and concepts
    • Critique information and collect data
    • Function by adapting to experts

    Coaching method

    Delivery Method

    • Learning has on-the-job training or learning through role-play exercises
    • Instructor is coaching and facilitating learner

    Common sense learner

    The common sense learner group likes thinking and doing. They are satisfied when they can carry out experiments, build and design, and create usability. They like tinkering and applying useful ideas.

    For this group of learners, their question is: how should I learn?

    Learning characteristics

    • Seek usability
    • Need to know how things work
    • Learn by testing theories using practical methods
    • Use factual data to build concepts
    • Enjoy hands-on experience

    Self-discovery method

    Delivery Method

    • Interactive format between instructor and learner
    • Instructor provides evaluation and remedial instruction

    Common sense learner

    The dynamic learner group learns through doing and experiencing. They are continually looking for hidden possibilities and researching ideas to make original adjustments. They learn through trial and error and self-discovery.

    For this group of learners, their question is: what if I learn this?

    Learning characteristics

    • Seek hidden possibilities
    • Need to know what can be done with things
    • Learn by trial and error
    • Enjoy variety and excel in being flexible

    Delivery method considerations

    There are four common ways to learn a new skill: by watching, conceptualizing, doing, and experiencing. The following are some suggestions on ways to implement your data literacy program through different delivery methods.

    There are four common ways to learn a new skill: by watching, conceptualizing, doing, and experiencing. The following are some suggestions on ways to implement your data literacy program through different delivery methods.

    Phase 3

    Map Out Data Literacy Roadmap and Milestones

    Phase 3: step 1 - Roadmap exercise, step 2 - Set key performance metrics and milestones.

    Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

    This phase will walk you through the following activities:

    • Complete a roadmap exercise.
    • Set key performance metrics and milestones.

    This phase involves the following participants:

    • Data governance sponsor
    • Data owners
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians

    3.1 Build the data literacy roadmap and milestones

    1-3 hours
    1. Gather the data literacy objectives and list of program initiatives with their assigned groups.
    2. Discuss each program initiative with the data literacy creation team, assigning content owners and estimating effort required to build the content.

    For the Gantt chart:

    • Input the roadmap start year.
    • List each data literacy topic and delivery method.
    • Populate the planned start and end dates for the prepopulated list of program initiatives.

    Input

    • List of data literacy topics with assigned groups
    • Vision statement of data literacy program
    • Data literacy objectives

    Output

    • Roadmap Gantt chart
    • List of program initiatives with start and end date
    • Content owner assignment

    Materials

    • Whiteboard/flip charts
    • Sticky notes
    • MS Projects/Excel

    Participants

    • CDO or sponsor
    • Key business stakeholders
    • Data stewards
    • Data custodians
    • Data governance working group

    Data literacy journey mapping

    Making it sustainable

    • Deliver the literacy program in stages to make it easier for the audience to consume the content.
    • Allow opportunities to apply the learnings at work.
    • Map out the data literacy trainings as they get delivered and identify gaps, if any. Continue to refine and adjust the program and delivery method for better outcome.
    • Set clear goals and KPIs measurement up front.
    • Conduct Info-Tech Research Group’s Data Culture Diagnostics to set the baseline and repeat the assessment in 12 to 18 months.
    • Assign champions to lead change and influence end users to adopt better processes.
    Data Literacy journey mapping. Different departments need different skills in data literacy.

    Research contributors

    Name

    Position

    Andrea Malick Advisory Director, Info-Tech Research Group
    Andy Neill AVP, Data and Analytics, Chief Enterprise Architect, Info-Tech Research Group
    Crystal Singh Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group
    Imad Jawadi Senior Manager, Consulting Advisory, Info-Tech Research Group
    Irina Sedenko Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group
    Reddy Doddipalli Senior Workshop Director, Info-Tech Research Group
    Sherwick Min Technical Counselor, Info-Tech Research Group
    Wayne Cain Principal Advisory Director, Info-Tech Research Group

    Info-Tech’s Data Literacy Program

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

    Session 1

    Session 2

    Session 3

    Session 4

    Activities

    Understand the WHY and Value of Data

    1.1 Business context, business objectives, and goals

    1.2 You and data

    1.3 Data journey from data to insights

    1.4 Speak data – common terminology

    Learn about the WHAT Through Data Flow

    2.1 Data creation

    2.2 Data ingestion

    2.3 Data accumulation

    2.4 Data augmentation

    2.5 Data delivery

    2.6 Data consumption

    Explore the HOW Through Data Visualization Training

    3.1 Ask the right questions

    3.2 Find the top five data elements

    3.3 Understand your data

    3.4 Present your data story

    3.5 Sharing of lessons learned

    Put Them All Together Through Data Governance Awareness

    4.1 Data governance framework

    4.2 Data roles and responsibilities

    4.3 Data domain and owners

    Deliverables

    1. Learning material for understanding the data fundamental and its terminology
    1. Learning material for data flow elements
    1. Learning material for data visualization
    1. Learning material for data governance awareness program

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Establish Data Governance

    Deliver measurable business value.

    Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy

    Key to building and fostering a data-driven culture.

    Create a Data Management Roadmap

    Streamline your data management program with our simplified framework.

    Bibliography

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    Belissent, Jennifer, and Aaron Kalb. “Data Literacy: The Key to Data-Driven Decision Making.” Alation, April 2020. Web.

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    Marr, Benard. “Why is data literacy important for any business?” Bernard Marr & Co., 16 Aug. 2022. Web.

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    Mizrahi, Etai. “How to stay ahead of data debt and downtime?” Secoda, 17 April 2023. Web.

    Needham, Mass., “IDC FutureScape: Top 10 Predictions for the Future of Intelligence.” IDC, 5 Dec. 2022. Web.

    Paton, J., and M.A.P. op het Veld. “Trusted Analytics.” Compact, 2017, vol. 2. Web.

    Qlik. “Data Literacy to be Most In-Demand Skill by 2030 as AI Transforms Global Workplaces.” Qlik., 16 Mar 2022. Web.

    Qlik. “What is data literacy?” Qlik, n.d. Web.

    Reed, David. Becoming Data Literate. Harriman House Publishing, 1 Sept. 2021. Print.

    Salomonsen, Summer. “Grovo’s First-Time Manager Microlearning® Program Will Help Your New Managers Thrive in 2018.” Grovos Blog, 5 Dec. 2018. Web.

    Webb, Ryan. “More Than Just Reporting: Uncovering Actionable Insights From Data.” Welocalize, 1 Sept. 2020. Web.

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    Explore the Secrets of SAP Digital Access Licensing

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    • Parent Category Name: Licensing
    • Parent Category Link: /licensing
    • SAP’s licensing rules surrounding use and indirect access are vague, making it extremely difficult to purchase with confidence and remain compliant.
    • SAP has released nine document-type licenses that can be used in digital access licensing scenarios, but this model has its own challenges.
    • Whether you decide to remain “as is” or proactively change licensing over to the document model, either option can be costly and confusing.
    • Indirect static read can be a cause of noncompliance when data is exported but the processing capability of SAP ERP is used in real time.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Examine all indirect access possibilities. Understanding how in-house or third-party applications may be accessing and utilizing the SAP digital core is critical to be able to correctly address issues.
    • Know what’s in your contract. Each customer agreement is different, and older agreements may provide both benefits and challenges when evaluating your SAP license position.
    • Understand the intricacies of document licensing. While it may seem digital access licensing will solve compliance concerns, there are still questions to address and challenges SAP must resolve.

    Impact and Result

    • Conduct an internal analysis to examine where digital access licensing may be needed to mitigate risk, as SAP will be speaking with all customers in due course. Indirect access can be a costly audit settlement.
    • Conduct an analysis to remove inactive and duplicate users, as multiple logins may exist and could end up costing the organization license fees when audited.
    • Adopt a cyclical approach to reviewing your SAP licensing and create a reference document to track your software needs, planned licensing, and purchase negotiation points.
    • Learn the SAP way of conducting business, which includes a best-in-class sales structure and unique contracts and license use policies, combined with a hyper-aggressive compliance function. Conducting business with SAP is not a typical vendor experience, and you will need different tools to emerge successfully from a commercial transaction.

    Explore the Secrets of SAP Digital Access Licensing Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you need to understand and document your SAP digital access licensing strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand, assess, and decide on digital access licensing

    Begin your SAP digital access licensing journey by evaluating licensing changes and options, and then make contractual changes to ensure compliance.

    • Explore the Secrets of SAP Digital Access Licensing – Phase 1: Understand, Assess, and Decide on Digital Access Licensing
    • SAP License Summary and Analysis Tool
    • SAP Digital Access Licensing Pricing Tool
    [infographic]

    Business Value

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    • Parent Category Name: Financial Management
    • Parent Category Link: /financial-management
    Maximize your ROI on IT through benefits realization

    Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget

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    • Parent Category Name: Security Strategy & Budgeting
    • Parent Category Link: /security-strategy-and-budgeting
    • Year after year, CISOs need to develop a comprehensive security budget that is able to mitigate against threats.
    • This budget will have to be defended against many other stakeholders to ensure there is proper funding.
    • Security budgets are unlike other departmental budgets. Increases or decreases in the budget can drastically affect the organizational risk level.
    • CISOs struggle with the ability to assess the effectiveness of their security controls and where to allocate money.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • CISOs can demonstrate the value of security when they correlate mitigations to business operations and attribute future budgetary needs to business evolution.
    • To identify the critical areas and issues that must be reflected in your security budget, develop a comprehensive corporate risk analysis and mitigation effectiveness model, which will illustrate where the moving targets are in your security posture.

    Impact and Result

    • Info-Tech’s methodology moves you away from the traditional budgeting approach to building a budget that is designed to be as dynamic as the business growth model.
    • Collect your organization's requirements and build different budget options to describe how increases and decreases can affect the risk level.
    • Discuss the different budgets with the business to determine what level of funding is needed for the desired level of security.
    • Gain approval of your budget early by preshopping and presenting the budget to individual stakeholders prior to the final budget approval process.

    Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build, optimize, and present a risk-based security budget, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Review requirements for the budget

    Collect and review the required information for your security budget.

    • Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget – Phase 1: Review Requirements for the Budget

    2. Build the budget

    Take your requirements and build a risk-based security budget.

    • Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget – Phase 2: Build the Budget
    • Security Budgeting Tool

    3. Present the budget

    Gain approval from business stakeholders by presenting the budget.

    • Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget – Phase 3: Present the Budget
    • Preshopping Security Budget Presentation Template
    • Final Security Budget Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build, Optimize, and Present a Risk-Based Security Budget

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Review Requirements for the Budget

    The Purpose

    Understand your organization’s security requirements.

    Collect and review the requirements.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Requirements are gathered and understood, and they will provide priorities for the security budget.

    Activities

    1.1 Define the scope and boundaries of the security budget.

    1.2 Review the security strategy.

    1.3 Review other requirements as needed, such as the mitigation effectiveness assessment or risk tolerance level.

    Outputs

    Defined scope and boundaries of the security budget

    2 Build the Budget

    The Purpose

    Map business capabilities to security controls.

    Create a budget that represents how risk can affect the organization.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Finalized security budget that presents three different options to account for risk and mitigations.

    Activities

    2.1 Identify major business capabilities.

    2.2 Map capabilities to IT systems and security controls.

    2.3 Categorize security controls by bare minimum, standard practice, and ideal.

    2.4 Input all security controls.

    2.5 Input all other expenses related to security.

    2.6 Review the different budget options.

    2.7 Optimize the budget through defense-in-depth options.

    2.8 Finalize the budget.

    Outputs

    Identified major business capabilities, mapped to the IT systems and controls

    Completed security budget providing three different options based on risk associated

    Optimized security budget

    3 Present the Budget

    The Purpose

    Prepare a presentation to speak with stakeholders early and build support prior to budget approvals.

    Present a pilot presentation and incorporate any feedback.

    Prepare for the final budget presentation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Final presentations in which to present the completed budget and gain stakeholder feedback.

    Activities

    3.1 Begin developing a communication strategy.

    3.2 Build the preshopping report.

    3.3 Practice the presentation.

    3.4 Conduct preshopping discussions with stakeholders.

    3.5 Collect initial feedback and incorporate into the budget.

    3.6 Prepare for the final budget presentation.

    Outputs

    Preshopping Report

    Final Budget Presentation

    Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process

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    • Parent Category Name: Enterprise Integration
    • Parent Category Link: /enterprise-integration
    • Organizations undergoing growth, either organically or through M&A, tend to develop integration capabilities in a piecemeal and short-sighted fashion to preserve their view of agility.
    • Integration strategies that are focused solely on technological solutions are likely to complicate rather than simplify, as not enough consideration is given to how other systems and processes will be impacted.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Define a path for your EI strategy. Establish the more pressing goal of enterprise integration: improving operational integrity or adding business intelligence/predictive analytics capability.
    • Combine multiple views of integration for a comprehensive EI strategy. Assess business process, applications, and data in tandem to understand where enterprise integration will fit in your organization.
    • Don’t start by boiling the ocean and get bogged down in mapping out the entire organization. For the purposes of the strategy, narrow your focus to a set of related high-value processes to identify ways to improve integration.

    Impact and Result

    • Begin your enterprise strategy formation by identifying if your organization places emphasis on enabling operational excellence or predictive modeling/analytics.
    • Enterprise integration needs to bring together business process, applications, and data, in that order. Kick-start the process of identifying opportunities for improvement by creating business process maps that incorporate how applications and data are coordinated to support business activities.
    • Revisit the corporate drivers after integration mapping activities to identify the primary use cases for improvement.
    • Prepare for the next steps of carrying out the strategy by reviewing a variety of solution options.
    • Develop a compelling business case by consolidating the outputs of your mapping activities, establishing metrics for a specific process (or set of processes), and quantifying the benefits.

    Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should create an enterprise integration strategy; review Info-Tech’s methodology that encompasses business process, applications, and data; and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Position enterprise integration within the organization

    Begin strategy development by assigning roles and responsibilities for the team and establishing the initial direction for the strategy.

    • Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 1: Position Enterprise Integration Within Your Organization
    • Chief Enterprise Integration Officer
    • Enterprise Integration Strategy Drivers Assessment

    2. Explore the lenses of enterprise integration

    Create business process maps that incorporate how applications and data are coordinated to support business activities.

    • Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 2: Explore the Lenses of Enterprise Integration
    • Enterprise Integration Process Mapping Tool

    3. Develop the enterprise integration strategy

    Review your integration map to identify improvement opportunities, explore integration solutions, and consolidate activity outputs into a strategy presentation.

    • Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 3: Develop the Enterprise Integration Strategy
    • Enterprise Integration Strategy Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Position Enterprise Integration

    The Purpose

    Discuss the general approach for creating a holistic enterprise integration strategy.

    Define the initial direction and drivers.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Strategy development team with responsibilities identified.

    Clear initial direction for the strategy based on senior stakeholder input.

    Activities

    1.1 Define the driving statements for your EI strategy.

    1.2 Develop a RACI chart.

    1.3 Discuss the current state of enterprise integration.

    1.4 Establish the initial direction of your strategy by surveying senior stakeholders.

    Outputs

    Vision, mission, and values for enterprise integration

    RACI chart for strategy development

    Documentation of past integration projects

    Chief Enterprise Integration Officer job description template

    2 Explore the Lenses of Enterprise Integration

    The Purpose

    Build a comprehensive map of what integration looks like for your target business processes.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Clear documentation of the integration environment, encompassing process, data, and applications.

    Activities

    2.1 Develop level-0 and level-1 business capability diagrams.

    2.2 Identify the business processes of focus, based on relevance to overall corporate drivers.

    2.3 Complete process flow diagrams.

    2.4 Begin identifying the applications that are involved in each step of your process.

    2.5 Detail the connections/interactions between the applications in your business processes.

    2.6 Draw a current state diagram for application integration.

    2.7 Identify the data elements created, used, and stored throughout the processes, as well as systems of record.

    Outputs

    Business capability maps

    Business process flow diagrams

    Current state integration diagram

    Completed integration map

    3 Develop the Enterprise Integration Strategy

    The Purpose

    Review the outputs of the integration mapping activities.

    Educate strategy team on the potential integration solutions.

    Consolidate the findings of the activities into a compelling strategy presentation.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Integration improvement opportunities are identified.

    Direction and drivers for enterprise integration are finalized.

    Understanding of the benefits and limitations of some integration solutions.

    Activities

    3.1 Discuss the observations/challenges and opportunities for improvement.

    3.2 Refine the focus of the strategy by conducting a more detailed stakeholder survey.

    3.3 Review the most common integration solutions for process, applications, and data.

    3.4 Create a future state integration architecture diagram.

    3.5 Define the IT and business critical success factors for EI.

    3.6 Articulate the risks with pursuing (and not pursuing) an EI strategy.

    3.7 Quantify the monetary benefits of the EI strategy.

    3.8 Discuss best practices for presenting the strategy and organize the presentation content.

    Outputs

    Critical success factors and risks for enterprise integration

    Monetary benefits of enterprise integration

    Completed enterprise integration strategy presentation

    Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

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    • Parent Category Name: Security Processes & Operations
    • Parent Category Link: /security-processes-and-operations
    • Most organizations do not have a clear understanding of their current security posture, their security goals, and the specific security services they require. Without a clear understanding of their needs, organizations may struggle to identify a partner that can meet their requirements.
    • Breakdowns and lack of communication can be a significant obstacle, especially when clear lines of communication with partners, including regular check-ins, reporting, and incident response protocols, have not been clearly established.
    • Ensuring that security partners’ systems and processes integrate seamlessly with existing systems can be a challenge for most organizations in addition to making sure that security partners have the necessary access and permissions to perform their services effectively.
    • Adhering to security policies is rarely a priority to users as compliance often feels like an interference to daily workflow. For a lot of organizations, security policies are not having the desired effect.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • You can outsource your responsibilities but not your accountability.
    • Be aware that in most cases, the traditional approach is more profitable to MSSPs, and they may push you toward one, so make sure you get the service you want, not what they prescribe.

    Impact and Result

    • Determine which security responsibilities can be outsourced and which should be insourced and the right procedure to outsourcing to gain cost savings, improve resource allocation, and boost your overall security posture.

    Select a Security Outsourcing Partner Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Select a Security Outsourcing Partner Storyboard – A guide to help you determine your requirements and select and manage your security outsourcing partner.

    Our systematic approach will ensure that the correct procedure for selecting a security outsourcing partner is implemented. This blueprint will help you build and implement your security policy program by following our three-phase methodology: determine what to outsource, select the right MSSP, and manage your MSSP.

    • Select a Security Outsourcing Partner – Phases 1-3

    2. MSSP RFP Template – A customizable template to help you choose the right security service provider.

    This modifiable template is designed to introduce consistency and outline key requirements during the request for proposal phase of selecting an MSSP.

    • MSSP RFP Template

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

    Outsource the right functions to secure your business.

    Analyst Perspective

    Understanding your security needs and remaining accountable is the key to selecting the right partner.

    The need for specialized security services is fast becoming a necessity to most organizations. However, resource challenges will always mean that organizations will still have to take practical measures to ensure that the time, quality, and service that they require from outsourcing partners have been carefully crafted and packaged to elicit the right services that cover all their needs and requirements.

    Organizations must ensure that security partners are aligned not only with their needs and requirements, but also with the corporate culture. Rather than introducing hindrances to daily operations, security partners must support business goals and protect the organization’s interests at all times.

    And as always, outsource only your responsibilities and do not outsource your accountability, as that will cost you in the long run.

    Photo of Danny Hammond
    Danny Hammond
    Research Analyst
    Security, Risk, Privacy & Compliance Practice
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    A lack of high-skill labor increases the cost of internal security, making outsourcing more appealing.

    A lack of time and resources prevents your organization from being able to enable security internally.

    Due to a lack of key information on the subject, you are unsure which functions should be outsourced versus which functions should remain in-house.

    Having 24/7/365 monitoring in-house is not feasible for most firms.

    There is difficulty measuring the effectiveness of managed security service providers (MSSPs).

    Common Obstacles

    InfoSec leaders will struggle to select the right outsourcing partner without knowing what the organization needs, such as:

    • How to start the process to select the right service provider that will cover your security needs. With so many service providers and technology tools in this field, who is the right partner?
    • Where to obtain guidance on externalization of resources or maintaining internal posture to enable to you confidently select an outsourcing partner.

    InfoSec leaders must understand the business environment and their own internal security needs before they can select an outsourcing partner that fits.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    Info-Tech’s Select a Security Outsourcing Partner takes a multi-faceted approach to the problem that incorporates foundational technical elements, compliance considerations, and supporting processes:

    • Determine which security responsibilities can be insourced and which should be outsourced, and the right procedure to outsourcing in order to gain cost savings, improve resource allocation, and boost your overall security posture.
    • Understand the current landscape of MSSPs that are available today and the features they offer.
    • Highlight the future financial obligations of outsourcing vs. insourcing to explain which method is the most cost-effective.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Mitigate security risks by developing an end-to-end process that ensures you are outsourcing your responsibilities and not your accountability.

    Your Challenge

    This research is designed to help organizations select an effective security outsourcing partner.

    • A security outsourcing partner is a third-party service provider that offers security services on a contractual basis depending on client needs and requirements.
    • An effective outsourcing partner can help an organization improve its security posture by providing access to more specialized security experts, tools, and technologies.
    • One of the main challenges with selecting a security outsourcing partner is finding a partner that is a good fit for the organization's unique security needs and requirements.
    • Security outsourcing partners typically have access to sensitive information and systems, so proper controls and safeguards must be in place to protect all sensitive assets.
    • Without careful evaluation and due diligence to ensure that the partner is a good fit for the organization's security needs and requirements, it can be challenging to select an outsourcing partner.

    Outsourcing is effective, but only if done right

    • 83% of decision makers with in-house cybersecurity teams are considering outsourcing to an MSP (Syntax, 2021).
    • 77% of IT leaders said cyberattacks were more frequent (Syntax, 2021).
    • 51% of businesses suffered a data breach caused by a third party (Ponemon, 2021).

    Common Obstacles

    The problem with selecting an outsourcing partner isn’t a lack of qualified partners, it’s the lack of clarity about an organization's specific security needs.

    • Most organizations do not have a clear understanding of their current security posture, their security goals, and the specific security services they require. Without a clear understanding of their needs, organizations may struggle to identify a partner that can meet their requirements.
    • Breakdowns and lack of communication can be a significant obstacle, especially when clear lines of communication with partners, including regular check-ins, reporting, and incident response protocols, have not been clearly established.
    • Ensuring that security partner's systems and processes integrate seamlessly with existing systems can be a challenge for most organizations. This is in addition to making sure that security partners have the necessary access and permissions to perform their services effectively.
    • Adhering to security policies is rarely a priority to users, as compliance often feels like an interference to daily workflow. For a lot of organizations, security policies are not having the desired effect.

    A diagram that shows Average cost of a data breach from 2019 to 2022.
    Source: IBM, 2022 Cost of a Data Breach; N=537.


    Reaching an all-time high, the cost of a data breach averaged US$4.35 million in 2022. This figure represents a 2.6% increase from 2021, when the average cost of a breach was US$4.24 million. The average cost has climbed 12.7% since 2020.

    Info-Tech’s methodology for selecting a security outsourcing partner

    Determine your responsibilities

    Determine what responsibilities you can outsource to a service partner. Analyze which responsibilities you should outsource versus keep in-house? Do you require a service partner based on identified responsibilities?

    Scope your requirements

    Refine the list of role-based requirements, variables, and features you will require. Use a well-known list of critical security controls as a framework to determine these activities and send out RFPs to pick the best candidate for your organization.

    Manage your outsourcing program

    Adopt a program to manage your third-party service security outsourcing. Trust your managed security service providers (MSSP) but verify their results to ensure you get the service level you were promised.

    Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

    A diagram that shows your organization responsibilities & accountabilities, framework for selecting a security outsourcing partner, and benefits.

    Blueprint benefits

    IT/InfoSec Benefits

    Reduces complexity within the MSSP selection process by highlighting all the key steps to a successful selection program.

    Introduces a roadmap to clearly educate about the do’s and don’ts of MSSP selection.

    Reduces costs and efforts related to managing MSSPs and other security partners.

    Business Benefits

    Assists with selecting outsourcing partners that are essential to your organization’s objectives.

    Integrates outsourcing into corporate culture, leveraging organizational requirements while maximizing value of outsourcing.

    Reduces security outsourcing risk.

    Insight summary

    Overarching insight: You can outsource your responsibilities but not your accountability.

    Determine what to outsource: Assess your responsibilities to determine which ones you can outsource. It is vital that an understanding of how outsourcing will affect the organization, and what cost savings, if any, to expect from outsourcing is clear in order to generate a list of responsibilities that can/should be outsourced.

    Select the right partner: Create a list of variables to evaluate the MSSPs and determine which features are important to you. Evaluate all potential MSSPs and determine which one is right for your organization

    Manage your MSSP: Align the MSSP to your organization. Adopt a program to monitor the MSSP which includes a long-term strategy to manage the MSSP.

    Identifying security needs and requirements = Effective outsourcing program: Understanding your own security needs and requirements is key. Ensure your RFP covers the entire scope of your requirements; work with your identified partner on updates and adaptation, where necessary; and always monitor alignment to business objectives.

    Measure the value of this blueprint

    Phase

    Purpose

    Measured Value

    Determine what to outsource Understand the value in outsourcing and determining what responsibilities can be outsourced. Cost of determining what you can/should outsource:
    • 120 FTE hours at $90K per year = $5,400
    Cost of determining the savings from outsourcing vs. insourcing:
    • 120 FTE hours at $90K per year = $5,400
    Select the right partner Select an outsourcing partner that will have the right skill set and solution to identified requirements. Cost of ranking and selecting your MSSPs:
    • 160 FTE hours at $90K per year = $7,200
    Cost of creating and distributing RFPs:
    • 200 FTE hours at $90K per year = $9,000
    Manage your third-party service security outsourcing Use Info-Tech’s methodology and best practices to manage the MSSP to get the best value. Cost of creating and implementing a metrics program to manage the MSSP:
    • 80 FTE hours at $90K per year = $3,600

    After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

    Overall Impact: 8.9 /10

    Overall Average Cost Saved: $22,950

    Overall Average Days Saved: 9

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit
    "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

    Guided Implementation
    "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

    Workshop
    "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

    Consulting
    "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

    Get Started With Customer Advocacy

    • Buy Link or Shortcode: {j2store}565|cart{/j2store}
    • member rating overall impact (scale of 10): N/A
    • member rating average dollars saved: N/A
    • member rating average days saved: N/A
    • Parent Category Name: Marketing Solutions
    • Parent Category Link: /marketing-solutions

    Getting started with customer advocacy (CA) is no easy task. Many customer success professionals carry out ad hoc customer advocacy activities to address immediate needs but lack a more strategic approach.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Customer success leaders must reposition their CA program around growth; the recognition that customer advocacy is a strategic growth initiative is necessary to succeed in today’s competitive market.
    • Get key stakeholders on board early – especially Sales!
    • Always link your CA efforts back to retention and growth.
    • Make building genuine relationships with your advocates the cornerstone of your CA program.

    Impact and Result

    • Enable the organization to identify and develop meaningful relationships with top customers and advocates.
    • Understand the concepts and benefits of CA and how CA can be used to improve marketing and sales and fuel growth and competitiveness.
    • Follow SoftwareReviews’ methodology to identify where to start to apply CA within the organization.
    • Develop a customer advocacy proof of concept/pilot program to gain stakeholder approval and funding to get started with or expand efforts around customer advocacy.

    Get Started With Customer Advocacy Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Get Started With Customer Advocacy Executive Brief – An overview of why customer advocacy is critical to your organization and the recommended approach for getting started with a pilot program.

    Understand the strategic benefits and process for building a formal customer advocacy program. To be successful, you must reposition CA as a strategic growth initiative and continually link any CA efforts back to growth.

    • Get Started With Customer Advocacy Storyboard

    2. Define Your Advocacy Requirements – Assess your current customer advocacy efforts, identify gaps, and define your program requirements.

    With the assessment tool and steps outlined in the storyboard, you will be able to understand the gaps and pain points, where and how to improve your efforts, and how to establish program requirements.

    • Customer Advocacy Maturity Assessment Tool

    3. Win Executive Approval and Launch Pilot – Develop goals, success metrics, and timelines, and gain approval for your customer advocacy pilot.

    Align on pilot goals, key milestones, and program elements using the template and storyboard to effectively communicate with stakeholders and gain executive buy-in for your customer advocacy pilot.

    • Get Started With Customer Advocacy Executive Presentation Template

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Get Started With Customer Advocacy

    Develop a customer advocacy program to transform customer satisfaction into revenue growth.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst perspective

    Customer advocacy is critical to driving revenue growth

    The image contains a picture of Emily Wright.

    Customer advocacy puts the customer at the center of everything your organization does. By cultivating a deep understanding of customer needs and how they define value and by delivering positive experiences throughout the customer journey, organizations inspire and empower customers to become evangelists for their brands or products. Both the client and solution provider enjoy satisfying and ongoing business outcomes as a result.

    Focusing on customer advocacy is critical for software solutions providers. Business-to-business (B2B) buyers are increasingly looking to their peers and third-party resources to arm themselves with information on solutions they feel they can trust before they choose to engage with solution providers. Your satisfied customers are now your most trusted and powerful resource.

    Customer advocacy helps build strong relationships with your customers, nurtures brand advocacy, gives your marketing messaging credibility, and differentiates your company from the competition; it’s critical to driving revenue growth. Companies that develop mature advocacy programs can increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by 16% (Wharton Business School, 2009), increase customer retention by 35% (Deloitte, 2011), and give themselves a strong competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

    Emily Wright
    Senior Research Analyst, Advisory
    SoftwareReviews

    Executive summary

    Your Challenge

    Ad hoc customer advocacy (CA) efforts and reference programs, while still useful, are not enough to drive growth. Providers increase their chance for success by assessing if they face the following challenges:

    • Lack of referenceable customers that can turn into passionate advocates, or a limited pool that is at risk of burnout.
    • Lack of references for all key customer types, verticals, etc., especially in new growth segments or those that are hard to recruit.
    • Lack of a consistent program for gathering customer feedback and input to make improvements and increase customer satisfaction.
    • Lack of executive and stakeholder (e.g. Sales, Customer Success, channel partners, etc.) buy-in for the importance and value of customer advocacy.

    Building a strong customer advocacy program must be a high priority for customer service/success leaders in today’s highly competitive software markets.

    Common Obstacles

    Getting started with customer advocacy is no easy task. Many customer success professionals carry out ad hoc customer advocacy activities to address immediate needs but lack a more strategic approach. What separates them from success are several nagging obstacles:

    • Efforts lack funding and buy-in from stakeholders.
    • Senior management doesn’t fully understand the business value of a customer advocacy program.
    • Duplicate efforts are taking place between Sales, Marketing, product teams, etc., because ownership, roles, and responsibilities have not been determined.
    • Relationships are guarded/hoarded by those who feel they own the relationship (e.g. Sales, Customer Success, channel partners, etc.).
    • Customer-facing staff often lack the necessary skills to foster customer advocacy.

    SoftwareReviews’ Approach

    This blueprint will help leaders of customer advocacy programs get started with developing a formalized pilot program that will demonstrate the value of customer advocacy and lay a strong foundation to justify rollout. Through SoftwareReviews’ approach, customer advocacy leaders will:

    • Enable the organization to identify and develop meaningful relationships with top customers and advocates.
    • Understand the concepts and benefits of CA and how CA can be used to improve marketing and sales and fuel growth and competitiveness.
    • Follow SoftwareReviews’ methodology to identify where to start to apply CA within the organization.
    • Develop a customer advocacy proof of concept/pilot program to gain stakeholder approval and funding to get started with or expand efforts around customer advocacy.

    What is customer advocacy?

    “Customer advocacy is the act of putting customer needs first and working to deliver solution-based assistance through your products and services." – Testimonial Hero, 2021

    Customer advocacy is designed to keep customers loyal through customer engagement and advocacy marketing campaigns. Successful customer advocacy leaders experience decreased churn while increasing return on investment (ROI) through retention, acquisition, and cost savings.

    Businesses that implement customer advocacy throughout their organizations find new ways of supporting customers, provide additional customer value, and ensure their brands stand unique among the competition.

    Customer Advocacy Is…

    • An integral part of any marketing and/or business strategy.
    • Essential to improving and maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.
    • Focused on delivering value to customers.
    • Not only a set of actions, but a mindset that should be fostered and reinforced through a customer-centric culture.
    • Mutually beneficial relationships for both company and customer.

    Customer Advocacy Is Not…

    • Only referrals and testimonials.
    • Solely about what you can get from your advocates.
    • Brand advocacy. Brand advocacy is the desired outcome of customer advocacy.
    • Transactional. Brand advocates must be engaged.
    • A nice-to-have.
    • Solved entirely by software. Think about what you want to achieve and how a software solution can you help you reach those goals.

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    Customer advocacy has evolved into being a valued company asset versus a simple referral program – success requires an organization-wide customer-first mindset and the recognition that customer advocacy is a strategic growth initiative necessary to succeed in today’s competitive market.

    Customer advocacy: Essential to high retention

    When customers advocate for your company and products, they are eager to retain the value they receive

    • Customer acts of advocacy correlate to high retention.
    • Acts of advocacy won’t happen unless customers feel their interests are placed ahead of your company’s, thereby increasing satisfaction and customer success. That’s the definition of a customer-centric culture.
    • And yet your company does receive significant benefits from customer advocacy:
      • When customers advocate and renew, your costs go down and margins rise because it costs less to keep a happy customer than it does to bring a new customer onboard.
      • When renewal rates are high, customer lifetime value increases, also increasing profitability.

    Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer (Huify, 2018).

    Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95% (Bain & Company, cited in Harvard Business Review, 2014).

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    Don’t overlook the value of customer advocacy to retention! Despite the common knowledge that it’s far easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to sell to a new prospect, most companies fail to leverage their customer advocacy programs and continue to put pressure on Marketing to focus their budgets on customer acquisition.

    Customer advocacy can also be your ultimate growth strategy

    In your marketing and sales messaging, acts of advocacy serve as excellent proof points for value delivered.

    Forty-five percent of businesses rank online reviews as a top source of information for selecting software during this (top of funnel) stage, followed closely by recommendations and referrals at 42%. These sources are topped only by company websites at 54% (Clutch, 2020).

    With referrals coming from customer advocates to prospects via your lead gen engine and through seller talk tracks, customer advocacy is central to sales, marketing, and customer experience success.

    ✓ Advocates can help your new customers learn your solution and ensure higher adoption and satisfaction.
    ✓ Advocates can provide valuable, honest feedback on new updates and features.

    The image contains a picture to demonstrate the cycle of customer advocacy. The image has four circles, with one big circle in the middle and three circles surrounding with arrows pointing in both directions in between them. The middle circle is labelled customer advocacy. The three circles are labelled: sales, customer success, marketing.

    “A customer advocacy program is not just a fancy buzz word or a marketing tool that’s nice to have. It’s a core discipline that every major brand needs to integrate into their overall marketing, sales and customer success strategies if they expect to survive in this trust economy. Customer advocacy arguably is the common asset that runs throughout all marketing, sales and customer success activities regardless of the stage of the buyer’s journey and ties it all together.” – RO Innovation, 2017

    Positive experience drives acts of advocacy

    More than price or product, experience now leads the way in customer advocacy and retention

    Advocacy happens when customers recommend your product. Our research shows that the biggest drivers of likeliness to recommend and acts of customer advocacy are the positive experiences customers have with vendors and their products, not product features or cost savings. Customers want to feel that:

    1. Their productivity and performance is enhanced and the vendor is helping them to innovate and grow as a company.
    2. Their vendor inspires them and helps them to continually improve.
    3. They can rely on the vendor and the product they purchased.
    4. They are respected by the vendor.
    5. They can trust that the vendor will be on their side and save them time.

    The image contains a graph to demonstrate the correlation of likeliness to recommend a satisfaction driver. Where anything above a 0.5 indicates a strong driver of satisfaction.

    Note that anything above 0.5 indicates a strong driver of satisfaction.
    Source: SoftwareReviews buyer reviews (based on 82,560 unique reviews).

    SoftwareReviews Insight

    True customer satisfaction comes from helping customers innovate, enhancing their performance, inspiring them to continually improve, and being reliable, respectful, trustworthy, and conscious of their time. These true drivers of satisfaction should be considered in your customer advocacy and retention efforts. The experience customers have with your product and brand is what will differentiate your brand from competitors, drive advocacy, and ultimately, power business growth. Talk to a SoftwareReviews advisor to learn how users rate your product on these satisfaction drivers in the SoftwareReviews Emotional Footprint Report.

    Yet challenges exist for customer advocacy program leaders

    Customer success leaders without a strong customer advocacy program feel numerous avoidable pains:

    • Lack of compelling stories and proof points for the sales team, causing long sales cycles.
    • Heavy reliance on a small pool of worn-out references.
    • Lack of references for all needed customer types, verticals, etc.
    • Lack of a reliable customer feedback process for solution improvements.
    • Overspending on acquiring new customers due to a lack of customer proof points.
    • Missed opportunities that could grow the business (customer lifetime value, upsell/cross-sell, etc.).

    Marketing, customer success, and sales teams experiencing any one of the above challenges must consider getting started with a more formalized customer advocacy program.

    Obstacles to customer advocacy programs

    Leaders must overcome several barriers in developing a customer advocacy program:

    • Stakeholders are often unclear on the value customer advocacy programs can bring and require proof of benefits to invest.
    • Efforts are duplicated among sales, marketing, product, and customer success teams, given ownership and collaboration practices are ill-defined or nonexistent.
    • There is a culture of guarding or hoarding customer relationships by those who feel they own the relationship, or there’s high turnover among employees who own the customer relationships.
    • The governance, technology, people, skills, and/or processes to take customer advocacy to the next level are lacking.
    • Leaders don’t know where to start with customer advocacy, what needs to be improved, or what to focus on first.

    A lack of customer centricity hurts organizations

    12% of people believe when a company says they put customers first. (Source: HubSpot, 2019)

    Brands struggle to follow through on brand promises, and a mismatch between expectations and lived experience emerges. Customer advocacy can help close this gap and help companies live up to their customer-first messaging.

    42% of companies don’t conduct any customer surveys or collect feedback. (Source: HubSpot, 2019)

    Too many companies are not truly listening to their customers. Companies that don’t collect feedback aren’t going to know what to change to improve customer satisfaction. Customer advocacy will orient companies around their customer and create a reliable feedback loop that informs product and service enhancements.

    Customer advocacy is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity for solution providers

    B2B buyers increasingly turn to peers to learn about solutions:

    “84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral.” (Source: Influitive, Gainsight & Pendo, 2020)

    “46% of B2B buyers rely on customer references for information before purchasing.” (Source: RO Innovation, 2017)

    “91% of B2B purchasers’ buying decisions are influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations.” (Source: ReferralRock, 2022)

    “76% of individuals admit that they’re more likely to trust content shared by ‘normal’ people than content shared by brands.” (Source: TrustPilot, 2020)

    By ignoring the importance of customer advocacy, companies and brands are risking stagnation and missing out on opportunities to gain competitive advantage and achieve growth.

    Getting Started With Customer Advocacy: SoftwareReviews' Approach

    1 BUILD
    Build the business case
    Identify your key stakeholders, steering committee, and working team, understand key customer advocacy principles, and note success barriers and ways to overcome them as your first steps.

    2 DEVELOP
    Develop your advocacy requirements
    Assess your current customer advocacy maturity, identify gaps in your current efforts, and develop your ideal advocate profile.

    3 WIN
    Win executive approval and implement pilot
    Determine goals and success metrics for the pilot, establish a timeline and key project milestones, create advocate communication materials, and finally gain executive buy-in and implement the pilot.

    SoftwareReviews Insight
    Building and implementing a customer advocacy pilot will help lay the foundation for a full program and demonstrate to executives and key stakeholders the impact on revenue, retention, and CLV that can be achieved through coordinated and well-planned customer advocacy efforts.

    Customer advocacy benefits

    Our research benefits customer advocacy program managers by enabling them to:

    • Explain why having a centralized, proactive customer advocacy program is important.
    • Clearly communicate the benefits and business case for having a formalized customer advocacy program.
    • Develop a customer advocacy pilot to provide a proof of concept (POC) and demonstrate the value of customer advocacy.
    • Assess the maturity of your current customer advocacy efforts and identify what to improve and how to improve to grow your customer advocacy function.

    "Advocacy is the currency for business and the fuel for explosive growth. Successful marketing executives who understand this make advocacy programs an essential part of their go-to-market strategy. They also know that advocacy isn't something you simply 'turn on': ... ultimately, it's about making human connections and building relationships that have enduring value for everyone involved."
    - Dan Cote, Influitive, Dec. 2021

    Case Study: Advocate impact on sales at Genesys

    Genesys' Goal

    Provide sales team with compelling customer reviews, quotes, stories, videos, and references.

    Approach to Advocacy

    • Customers were able to share their stories through Genesys' customer hub GCAP as quotes, reviews, etc., and could sign up to host reference forum sessions for prospective customers.
    • Content was developed that demonstrated ROI with using Genesys' solutions, including "top-tier logos, inspiring quotes, and reference forums featuring some of their top advocates" (Influitive, 2021).
    • Leveraged customer advocacy-specific software solution integration with the CRM to easily identify reference recommendations for Sales.

    Advocate Impact on Sales

    According to Influitive (2021), the impacts were:

    • 386% increase in revenue influences from references calls
    • 82% of revenue has been influence by reference calls
    • 78 reference calls resulted in closed-won opportunities
    • 250 customers and prospects attended 7 reference forums
    • 112 reference slides created for sales enablement
    • 100+ quotes were collect and transformed into 78 quote slides

    Who benefits from getting started with customer advocacy?

    This Research Is Designed for:

    • Customer advocacy leaders and marketers who are looking to:
      • Take a more strategic, proactive, and structured approach to customer advocacy.
      • Find a more effective and reliable way to gather customer feedback and input on products and services.
      • Develop and nurture a customer-oriented mindset throughout the organization.
      • Improve marketing credibility both within the company and outside to prospective customers.

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Explain why having a centralized, proactive customer advocacy program is important.
    • Clearly communicate the benefits and business case for having a formalized customer advocacy program.
    • Develop a customer advocacy pilot to provide a proof of concept (POC) and demonstrate the value of customer advocacy.
    • Assess the maturity of your current customer advocacy efforts and identify what to improve and how to improve to grow your customer advocacy function.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • Customer success leaders and sales directors who are responsible for:
      • Gathering customer references and testimonials.
      • Referral or voice of the customer (VoC) programs.

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Align stakeholders on an overall program of identifying ideal advocates.
    • Coordinate customer advocacy efforts and actions.
    • Gather and make use of customer feedback to improve products, solutions, and service provided.
    • Provide an amazing customer experience throughout the entirety of the customer journey.

    SoftwareReviews’ methodology for getting started with customer advocacy

    Phase Steps

    1. Build the business case

    1. Identify your key stakeholders, steering committee, and working team
    2. Understand the concepts and benefits of customer advocacy as they apply to your organization
    3. Outline barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics

    2. Develop your advocacy requirements

    1. Assess your customer advocacy maturity using the SoftwareReviews CA Maturity Assessment Tool
    2. Identify gaps/pains in current CA efforts and add tasks to your action plan
    3. Develop ideal advocate profile/identify target advocate segment(s)

    3. Create implementation plan and pitch CA pilot

    1. Determine pilot goals and success metrics
    2. Establish timeline and create advocate communication materials
    3. Gain executive buy-in and implement pilot

    Phase Outcomes

    1. Common understanding of CA concepts and benefits
    2. Buy-in from CEO and head of Sales
    3. List of opportunities, risks, and risk mitigation tactics
    1. Identification of gaps in current customer advocacy efforts and/or activities
    2. Understanding customer advocacy readiness
    3. Identification of ideal advocate profile/target segment
    4. Basic actions to bridge gaps in CA efforts
    1. Clear objective for CA pilot
    2. Key metrics for program success
    3. Pilot timelines and milestones
    4. Executive presentation with business case for CA

    Insight summary

    Customer advocacy is a critical strategic growth initiative
    Customer advocacy (CA) has evolved into being a highly valued company asset as opposed to a simple referral program, but not everyone in the organization sees it that way. Customer success leaders must reposition their CA program around growth instead of focusing solely on retention and communicate this to key stakeholders. The recognition that customer advocacy is a strategic growth initiative is necessary to succeed in today’s competitive market.

    Get key stakeholders on board early – especially Sales!
    Work to bring the CEO and the head of Sales on your side early. Sales is the gatekeeper – they need to open the door to customers to turn them into advocates. Clearly reposition CA for growth and communicate that to the CEO and head of Sales; wider buy-in will follow.

    Identify the highest priority segment for generating acts of advocacy
    By focusing on the highest priority segment, you accomplish a number of things: generating growth in a critical customer segment, proving the value of customer advocacy to key stakeholders (especially Sales), and setting a strong foundation for customer advocacy to build upon and expand the program out to other segments.

    Always link your CA efforts back to retention and growth
    By clearly demonstrating the impact that customer advocacy has on not only retention but also overall growth, marketers will gain buy-in from key stakeholders, secure funding for a full CA program, and gain the resources needed to expand customer advocacy efforts.

    Focus on providing value to advocates
    Many organizations take a transactional approach to customer advocacy, focusing on what their advocates can do for them. To truly succeed with CA, focus on providing your advocates with value first and put them in the spotlight.

    Make building genuine relationships with your advocates the cornerstone of your CA program
    "57% of small businesses say that having a relationship with their consumers is the primary driver of repeat business" (Factory360).

    Guided Implementation

    What does our GI on getting started with building customer advocacy look like?

    Build the Business Case

    Call #1: Identify key stakeholders. Map out motivations and anticipate any concerns or objections. Determine steering committee and working team. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #2: Discuss concepts and benefits of customer advocacy as they apply to organizational goals. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #3: Discuss barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #4: Finalize CA goals, opportunities, and risks and develop business case. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

    Develop Your Advocacy Requirements

    Call #5: Review the SoftwareReviews CA Maturity Assessment Tool. Assess your current level of customer advocacy maturity. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Call #6: Review gaps and pains in current CA efforts. Discuss tactics and possible CA pilot program goals. Begin adding tasks to action plan. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

    Call #7: Discuss ideal advocate profile and target segments. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

    Call #8: Validate and finalize ideal advocate profile. Plan next call – 1 week.

    Win Executive Approval and Implement Pilot

    Call #9: Discuss CA pilot scope. Discuss performance metrics and KPIs. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #10: Determine timeline and key milestones. Plan next call –2 weeks.

    Call #11: Develop advocate communication materials. Plan next call – 3 days.

    Call #12: Review final business case and coach on executive presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.

    A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with a SoftwareReviews Advisory analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. For guidance on marketing applications, we can arrange a discussion with an Info-Tech analyst. Your engagement managers will work with you to schedule analyst calls.


    Customer Advocacy Workshop

    Pre-Workshop Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Post-Workshop
    Activities Identify Stakeholders & CA Pilot Team Build the Business Case Assess Current CA Efforts Develop Advocacy Goals & Ideal Advocate Profile Develop Project Timelines, Materials, and Exec Presentation Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite) Pitch CA Pilot
    0.1 Identify key stakeholders to involve in customer advocacy pilot and workshop; understand their motivations and anticipate possible concerns. 1.1 Review key CA concepts and identify benefits of CA for the organization.
    1.2 Outline barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics.
    2.1 Assess your customer advocacy maturity using the SoftwareReviews CA Maturity Assessment Tool.
    2.2 Identify gaps/pains in current CA efforts.
    2.3 Prioritize gaps from diagnostic and any other critical pain points.
    3.1 Identify and document the ideal advocate profile and target customer segment for pilot.
    3.2 Determine goal(s) and success metrics for program pilot.
    4.1 Develop pilot timelines and key milestones.
    4.2 Outline materials needed and possible messaging.
    4.3 Build the executive buy-in presentation.
    5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from the previous four days. 6.1 Present to executive team and stakeholders.
    6.2 Gain executive buy-in and key stakeholder approval.
    6.3 Execute CA pilot.
    Deliverables
    1. Rationale for CA pilot; clear benefits, and how they apply to the organization.
    2. Documented barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics.
    1. CA Maturity Assessment results.
    2. Identification of gaps in current customer advocacy efforts and/or activities.
    1. Documented ideal advocate profile/target customer segment.
    2. Clear goal(s) and success metrics for CA pilot.
    1. Documented pilot timelines and key milestones.
    2. Draft/outlines of advocate materials.
    3. Draft executive presentation with business case for CA.
    1. Finalized implementation plan for CA pilot.
    2. Finalized executive presentation with business case for CA.
    1. Buy-in from decision makers and key stakeholders.

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    workshops@infotech.com
    1-888-670-8889

    Get started!

    Know your target market and audience, deploy well-designed strategies based on shared values, and make meaningful connections with people.

    Phase 1
    Build the Business Case

    Phase 2
    Develop Your Advocacy Requirements

    Phase 3
    Win Executive Approval and Implement Pilot

    Phase 1: Build the Business Case

    Steps
    1.1 Identify your key stakeholders, steering committee, and working team
    1.2 Understand the concepts and benefits of customer advocacy as they apply to your organization
    1.3 Outline barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics

    Phase Outcome

    • Common understanding of CA concepts and benefits
    • Buy-in from CEO and head of Sales
    • List of barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics

    Build the business case

    Step 1.1 Identify your key stakeholders, steering committee, and working team

    Total duration: 2.5-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Identify, document, and finalize your key stakeholders to know who to involve and how to get them onboard by truly understanding the forces of influence.

    Output

    • Robust stakeholder list with key stakeholders identified.
    • Steering committee and working team decided.

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Identified stakeholders
    • Workstream leads

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    1.1.1 Identify Stakeholders
    (60-120 min.)

    Identify
    Using the guidance on slide 28, identify all stakeholders who would be involved or impacted by your customer advocacy pilot by entering names and titles into columns A and B on slide 27 "Stakeholder List Worksheet."

    Document
    Document as much information about each stakeholder as possible in columns C, D, E, and F into the table on slide 27.

    1.1.2 Select Steering Committee & Working Team
    (60-90 min.)

    Select
    Using the guidance on slides 28 and 29 and the information collected in the table on slide 27, identify the stakeholders that are steering committee members, functional workstream leads, or operations; document in column G on slide 27.

    Document
    Open the Executive Presentation Template to slides 5 and 6 and document your final steering committee and working team selections. Be sure to note the Executive Sponsor and Program Manager on slide 5.

    Tips & Reminders

    1. It is critical to identify "key stakeholders"; a single missed key stakeholder can disrupt an initiative. A good way to ensure that nobody is missed is to first uncover as many stakeholders as possible and later decide how important they are.
    2. Ensure steering committee representation from each department this initiative would impact or that may need to be involved in decision-making or problem-solving endeavors.

    Consult Info-Tech's Manage Stakeholder Relations blueprint for additional guidance on identifying and managing stakeholders, or contact one of our analysts for more personalized assistance and guidance.

    Stakeholder List Worksheet

    *Possible Roles
    Executive Sponsor
    Program Manager
    Workstream Lead
    Functional Lead
    Steering Committee
    Operations
    A B C D E F G
    Name Position Decision Involvement
    (Driver / Approver / Contributor / Informe
    Direct Benefit?
    (Yes / No)
    Motivation Concerns *Role in Customer Advocacy Pilot
    E.g. Jane Doe VP, Customer Success A N
    • Increase customer retention
    • Customer advocate burnout
    Workstream Lead

    Customer advocacy stakeholders

    What to consider when identifying stakeholders required for CA:
    Customer advocacy should be done as a part of a cross-functional company initiative. When identifying stakeholders, consider:

    • Who can make the ultimate decision on approving the CA program?
    • Who are the senior leadership members you need buy-in from?
    • Who do you need to support the CA program?
    • Who is affected by the CA program?
    • Who will help you build the CA program?
    • Where and among who is there enthusiasm for customer advocacy?
    • Consider stakeholders from Customer Success, Marketing, Sales, Product, PR & Social, etc.
    Key Roles Supporting an Effective Customer Advocacy Pilot
    Executive Sponsor
    • Owns the function at the management/C-suite level
    • Responsible for breaking down barriers and ensuring alignment with organizational strategy
    • CMO, VP of Marketing, and in SMB providers, the CEO
    Program Manager
    • Typically, a senior member of the marketing team
    • Responsible for organizing the customer advocacy pilot, preparing summary executive-level communications, and approval requests
    • Program manages the customer advocacy pilot, and in many cases, the continued formal program
    • Product Marketing Director, or other Marketing Director, who has strong program management skills, has run large-scale marketing or product programs, and is familiar with the stakeholder roles and enabling technologies
    Functional / Workstream Leads
    • Works alongside the Program Manager on planning and implementing the customer advocacy pilot and ensures functional workstreams are aligned with pilot objectives
    • Typical customer advocacy pilots will have a team comprised of representatives from Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success
    Steering Committee
    • Comprised of C-suite/management-level individuals that guide key decisions, approve requests, and mitigate any functional conflicts
    • Responsible for validating goals and priorities, enabling adequate resourcing, and critical decision making
    • CMO, CRO/Head of Sales, Head of Customer Success
    Operations
    • Comprised of individuals whose application and tech tools knowledge and skills support integration of customer advocacy functions into existing tech stack/CRM (e.g. adding custom fields into CRM)
    • Responsible for helping select technology that enables customer advocacy program activities
    • CRM, Marketing Applications, and Analytics Managers, IT Managers

    Customer advocacy working team

    Consider the skills and knowledge required for planning and executing a customer advocacy pilot.

    Workstream leads should have strong project management and collaboration skills and deep understanding of both product and customers (persona, journeys, satisfaction, etc.).

    Required Skills Suggested Functions
    • Project management
    • CRM knowledge
    • Marketing automation experience
    • MarTech knowledge
    • Understanding of buyer persona and journey
    • Product knowledge
    • Understanding of executive-level goals for the pilot
    • Content creation
    • Customer advocacy experience, if possible
    • Customer satisfaction
    • Email and event marketing experience
    • Customer Success
    • Marketing
    • Sales
    • Product
    • PR/Corporate Comms.

    Build the business case

    Step 1.2 Understand key concepts and benefits of customer advocacy

    Total duration: 2.0-4.0 hours

    Objective
    Understand customer advocacy and what benefits you seek from your customer advocacy program, and get set up to best communicate them to executives and decision makers.

    Output

    • Documented customer advocacy benefits

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    1.2.1 Discuss Key Concepts
    (60-120 min.)

    Envision
    Schedule a visioning session with key stakeholders and share the Get Started With Customer Advocacy Executive Brief (slides 3-23 in this deck).

    Discuss how key customer advocacy concepts can apply to your organization and how CA can contribute to organizational growth.

    Document
    Determine the top benefits sought from the customer advocacy program pilot and record them on slides 4 and 12 in the Executive Presentation Template.

    Finalize
    Work with the Executive Sponsor to finalize the "Message from the CMO" on slide 4 in the Executive Presentation Template.

    Tips & Reminders

    Keep in mind that while we're starting off broadly, the pilot for your customer advocacy program should be narrow and focused in scope.

    Build the business case

    Step 1.3 Understand barriers to success, risks, and risk mitigation tactics

    Total duration: 2.0-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Anticipate threats to pilot success; identify barriers to success, any possible risks, and what can be done to reduce the chances of a negative pilot outcome.

    Output

    • Awareness of barriers
    • Tactics to mitigate risk

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    1.3.1 Brainstorm Barriers to Success & Possible Risks
    (60-120 min.)

    Identify
    Using slide 7 of the Executive Presentation Template, brainstorm any barriers to success that may exist and risks to the customer advocacy program pilot success. Consider the people, processes, and technology that may be required.

    Document
    Document all information on slide 7 of the Executive Presentation Template.

    1.3.2 Develop Risk Mitigation Tactics
    (60-300 min.)

    Develop
    Brainstorm different ways to address any of the identified barriers to success and reduce any risks. Consider the people, processes, and technology that may be required.

    Document
    Document all risk mitigation tactics on slide 7 of the Executive Presentation Template.

    Tips & Reminders
    There are several types of risk to explore. Consider the following when brainstorming possible risks:

    • Damage to brand (if advocate guidance not provided)
    • Legal (compliance with regulations and laws around contact, incentives, etc.)
    • Advocate burnout
    • Negative advocate feedback

    Phase 2: Develop Your Advocacy Requirements

    Steps
    2.1 Assess your customer advocacy maturity
    2.2 Identify and document gaps and pain points
    2.3 Develop your ideal advocate profile

    Phase Outcome

    • Identification of gaps in current customer advocacy efforts or activities
    • Understanding of customer advocacy readiness and maturity
    • Identification of ideal advocate profile/target segment
    • Basic actions to bridge gaps in CA efforts

    Develop your advocacy requirements

    Step 2.1 Assess your customer advocacy maturity

    Total duration: 2.0-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Use the Customer Advocacy Maturity Assessment Tool to understand your organization's current level of customer advocacy maturity and what to prioritize in the program pilot.

    Output

    • Current level of customer advocacy maturity
    • Know areas to focus on in program pilot

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    2.1.1 Diagnose Current Customer Advocacy Maturity
    (60-120 min.)

    Diagnose
    Begin on tab 1 of the Customer Advocacy Maturity Assessment Tool and read all instructions.

    Navigate to tab 2. Considering the current state of customer advocacy efforts, answer the diagnostic questions in the Diagnostic tab of the Customer Advocacy Maturity Assessment Tool.

    After completing the questions, you will receive a diagnostic result on tab 3 that will identify areas of strength and weakness and make high-level recommendations for your customer advocacy program pilot.

    2.1.2 Discuss Results
    (60-300 min.)

    Discuss
    Schedule a call to discuss your customer advocacy maturity diagnostic results with a SoftwareReviews Advisor.

    Prioritize the recommendations from the diagnostic, noting which will be included in the program pilot and which require funding and resources to advance.

    Transfer
    Transfer results into slides 8 and 11 of the Executive Presentation Template.

    Tips & Reminders
    Complete the diagnostic with a handful of key stakeholders identified in the previous phase. This will help provide a more balanced and accurate assessment of your organization’s current level of customer advocacy maturity.

    Develop your advocacy requirements

    Step 2.2 Identify and document gaps and pain points

    Total duration: 2.5-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Understand the current pain points within key customer-related processes and within any current customer advocacy efforts taking place.

    Output

    • Prioritized list of pain points that could be addressed by a customer advocacy program.

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    2.2.1 Identify Pain Points
    (60-120 min.)

    Identify
    Identify and list current pain points being experienced around customer advocacy efforts and processes around sales, marketing, customer success, and product feedback.

    Add any gaps identified in the diagnostic to the list.

    Transfer
    Transfer key information into slide 9 of Executive Presentation Template.

    2.2.2 Prioritize Pain Points
    (60-300 min.)

    Prioritize
    Indicate which pains are the most important and that a customer advocacy program could help improve.

    Schedule a call to discuss the outputs of this step with a SoftwareReviews Advisor.

    Document
    Document priorities on slide 9 of Executive Presentation Template.

    Tips & Reminders

    Customer advocacy won't solve for everything; it's important to be clear about what pain points can and can't be addressed through a customer advocacy program.

    Develop your advocacy requirements

    Step 2.3 Develop your ideal advocate profile

    Total duration: 3.0-9.0 hours

    Objective
    Develop an ideal advocate persona profile that can be used to identify potential advocates, guide campaign messaging, and facilitate advocate engagement.

    Output

    • Ideal advocate persona profile

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders
    • Sales lead
    • Marketing lead
    • Customer Success lead
    • Product lead

    MarTech
    May require the use of:

    • CRM or marketing automation platform
    • Available and up-to-date customer database

    Tools

    2.3.1 Brainstorm Session Around Ideal Advocate Persona
    (60-150 min.)

    Brainstorm
    Lead the team to prioritize an initial, single, most important persona and to collaborate to complete the template.

    Choose your ideal advocate for the pilot based on your most important audience. Start with firmographics like company size, industry, and geography.

    Next, consider satisfaction levels and behavioral attributes, such as renewals, engagement, usage, and satisfaction scores.

    Identify motivations and possible incentives for advocate activities.

    Document
    Use slide 10 of the Executive Presentation Template to complete this exercise.

    2.3.2 Review and Refine Advocate Persona
    (60-300 min.)

    Review & Refine
    Place the Executive Presentation Template in a shared drive for team collaboration. Encourage the team to share persona knowledge within the shared drive version.

    Hold any necessary follow-up sessions to further refine persona.

    Validate
    Interview advocates that best represent your ideal advocate profile on their type of preferred involvement with your company, their role and needs when it comes to your solution, ways they'd be willing to advocate, and rewards sought.

    Confirm
    Incorporate feedback and inputs into slide 10 of the Executive Presentation Template. Ensure everyone agrees on persona developed.

    Tips & Reminders

    1. When identifying potential advocates, choose based on your most important audience.
    2. Ensure you're selecting those with the highest satisfaction scores.
    3. Ideally, select candidates that have, on their own, advocated previously such as in social posts, who may have acted as a reference, or who have been highly visible as a positive influence at customer events.
    4. Knowing motivations will determine the type of acts of advocacy they would be most willing to perform and the incentives for participating in the program.

    Consider the following criteria when identifying advocates and developing your ideal advocate persona:

    Demographics Firmographics Satisfaction & Needs/Value Sought Behavior Motivation
    Role - user, decision-maker, etc. Company size: # of employees Satisfaction score Purchase frequency & repeat purchases (renewals), upgrades Career building/promotion
    Department Company size: revenue NPS score Usage Collaboration with peers
    Geography CLV score Engagement (e.g. email opens, response, meetings) Educate others
    Industry Value delivered (outcomes, occasions used, etc.) Social media interaction, posts Influence (on product, service)
    Tenure as client Benefits sought
    Account size ($) Minimal and resolved service tickets, escalations
    1. When identifying potential advocates, choose based on your most important audience/segments. 2. Ensure you're selecting those with the highest satisfaction, NPS, and CLV scores. 3. When identifying potential advocates, choose based on high engagement and interaction, regular renewals, and high usage. 4. Knowing motivations will determine the type of acts of advocacy they would be most willing to perform and incentives for participating in the program.

    Phase 3: Win Executive Approval and Implement Pilot

    Steps
    3.1 Determine pilot goals and success metrics
    3.2 Establish timeline and create advocate communication materials
    3.3 Gain executive buy-in and implement pilot

    Phase Outcome

    • Clear objective for CA pilot
    • Key metrics for program success
    • Pilot timelines and milestones
    • Executive presentation with business case for CA

    Win executive approval and implement pilot

    Step 3.1 Determine pilot goals and success metrics

    Total duration: 2.0-4.0 hours

    Objective
    Set goals and determine the scope for the customer advocacy program pilot.

    Output

    • Documented business objectives for the pilot
    • Documented success metrics

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders
    • Sales lead
    • Marketing lead
    • Customer Success lead
    • Product lead

    MarTech
    May require to use, set up, or install platforms like:

    • Register to a survey platform
    • CRM or marketing automation platform

    Tools

    3.1.1 Establish Pilot Goals
    (60-120 min.)

    Set
    Organize a meeting with department heads and review organizational and individual department goals.

    Using the Venn diagram on slide 39 in this deck, identify customer advocacy goals that align with business goals. Select the highest priority goal for the pilot.

    Check that the goal aligns with benefits sought or addresses pain points identified in the previous phase.

    Document
    Document the goals on slides 9 and 16 of the Executive Presentation Template.

    3.1.2 Establish Pilot Success Metrics
    (60-120 min.)

    Decide
    Decide how you will measure the success of your program pilot using slide 40 in this document.

    Document
    Document metrics on slide 16 of the Executive Presentation Template.

    Tips & Reminders

    1. Don't boil the ocean. Pick the most important goal that can be achieved through the customer advocacy pilot to gain executive buy-in and support or resources for a formal customer advocacy program. Once successfully completed, you'll be able to tackle new goals and expand the program.
    2. Keep your metrics simple, few in number, and relatively easy to track

    Connect customer advocacy goals with organizational goals

    List possible customer advocacy goals, identifying areas of overlap with organizational goals by taking the following steps:

    1. List organizational/departmental goals in the green oval.
    2. List possible customer advocacy program goals in the purple oval.
    3. Enter goals that are covered in both the Organizational Goals and Customer Advocacy Goals sections into the Shared Goals section in the center.
    4. Highlight the highest priority goal for the customer advocacy program pilot to tackle.
    Organizational Goals Shared Goals Customer Advocacy Goals
    Example Example: Gain customer references to help advance sales and improve win rates Example: Develop pool of customer references
    [insert goal] [insert goal] Example: Gather customer feedback
    [insert goal] [insert goal] [insert goal]
    [insert goal] [insert goal] [insert goal]

    Customer advocacy success metrics for consideration

    This table provides a starting point for measuring the success of your customer advocacy pilot depending on the goals you've set.

    This list is by no means exhaustive; the metrics here can be used, or new metrics that would better capture success measurement can be created and tracked.

    Metric
    Revenue influenced by reference calls ($ / % increase)
    # of reference calls resulting in closed-won opportunities
    # of quotes collected
    % of community growth YoY
    # of pieces of product feedback collected
    # of acts of advocacy
    % membership growth
    % product usage amongst community members
    # of social shares, clicks
    CSAT score for community members
    % of registered qualified leads
    # of leads registered
    # of member sign-ups
    # of net-new referenceable customers
    % growth rate of products used by members
    % engagement rate
    # of published third-party reviews
    % increase in fulfilled RFPs

    When selecting metrics, remember:
    When choosing metrics for your customer advocacy pilot, be sure to align them to your specific goals. If possible, try to connect your advocacy efforts back to retention, growth, or revenue.

    Do not choose too many metrics; one per goal should suffice.

    Ensure that you can track the metrics you select to measure - the data is available and measuring won't be overly manual or time-consuming.

    Win executive approval and implement pilot

    Step 3.2 Establish timeline and create advocate communication materials

    Total duration: 2.5-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Outline who will be involved in what roles and capacities and what tasks and activities need to completed.

    Output

    • Timeline and milestones
    • Advocate program materials

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Key stakeholders
    • Sales lead
    • Marketing lead
    • Customer Success lead
    • Product lead

    MarTech
    None

    Tools

    3.2.1 Establish Timeline & Milestones
    (30-60 min.)

    List & Assign
    List all key tasks, phases, and milestones on slides 13, 14, and 15 in the Executive Presentation Template.

    Include any activities that help close gaps or address pain points from slide 9 in the Executive Presentation Template.

    Assign workstream leads on slide 15 in the Executive Presentation Template.

    Finalize all tasks and activities with working team.

    3.2.2 Design & Build Advocate Program Materials
    (180-300 min.)

    Decide
    Determine materials needed to recruit advocates and explain the program to advocate candidates.

    Determine the types of acts of advocacy you are looking for.

    Determine incentives/rewards that will be provided to advocates, such as access to new products or services.

    Build
    Build out all communication materials.

    Obtain incentives.

    Tips & Reminders

    1. When determining incentives, use the validated ideal advocate profile for guidance (i.e. what motivates your advocates?).
    2. Ensure to leave a buffer in the timeline if the need to adjust course arises.

    Win executive approval and implement pilot

    Step 3.3 Implement pilot and gain executive buy-in

    Total duration: 2.5-8.0 hours

    Objective
    Successfully implement the customer advocacy pilot program and communicate results to gain approval for full-fledged program.

    Output

    • Deliver Executive Presentation
    • Successful customer advocacy pilot
    • Provide regular updates to stakeholders, executives

    Participants

    • Customer advocacy lead
    • Workstream leads

    MarTech
    May require the use of:

    • CRM or Marketing Automation Platform
    • Available and up-to-date customer database

    Tools

    3.3.1 Complete & Deliver Executive Presentation
    (60-120 min.)

    Present
    Finalize the Executive Presentation.

    Hold stakeholder meeting and introduce the program pilot.

    3.3.2 Gain Executive Buy-in
    (60-300 min.)

    Pitch
    Present the final results of the customer advocacy pilot using the Executive Presentation Template and gain approval.

    3.3.3 Implement the Customer Advocacy Program Pilot
    (30-60 min.)

    Launch
    Launch the customer advocacy program pilot. Follow the timelines and activities outlined in the Executive Presentation Template. Track/document all advocate outreach, activity, and progress against success metrics.

    Communicate
    Establish a regular cadence to communicate with steering committee, stakeholders. Use the Executive Presentation Template to present progress and resolve roadblocks if/as they arise.

    Tips & Reminders

    1. Continually collect feedback and input from advocates and stakeholders throughout the process.
    2. Don't be afraid to make changes on the go if it helps to achieve the end goal of your pilot.
    3. If the pilot program was successful, consider scaling it up and rolling it out to more customers.

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Mission Accomplished

    • You successfully launched your customer advocacy program pilot and demonstrated clear benefits and ROI. By identifying the needs of the business and aligning those needs with key customer advocacy activities, marketers and customer advocacy leaders can prioritize the most important tasks for the pilot while also identifying potential opportunities for expansion pending executive approval.
    • SoftwareReviews' comprehensive and tactical approach takes you through the steps to build the foundation for a strategic customer advocacy program. Our methodology ensures that a customer advocacy pilot is developed to deliver the desired outcomes and ROI, increasing stakeholder buy-in and setting up your organization for customer advocacy success.

    If you would like additional support, contact us and we'll make sure you get the professional expertise you need.

    Contact your account representative for more information.
    info@softwarereviews.com
    1-888-670-8889

    Related SoftwareReviews Research

    Measure and Manage the Customer Satisfaction Metrics That Matter the Most
    Understand what truly keeps your customer satisfied. Measure what matters to improve customer experience and increase satisfaction and advocacy.

    • Understand the true drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among your customer segments.
    • Establish process and cadence for effective satisfaction measurement and monitoring.
    • Know where resources are needed most to improve satisfaction levels and increase retention.

    Develop the Right Message to Engage Buyers
    Sixty percent of marketers find it hard to produce high-quality content consistently. SaaS marketers have an even more difficult job due to the technical nature of content production.

    • Create more compelling and relevant content that aligns with a buyer's needs and journey.
    • Shrink marketing and sales cycles.
    • Increase the pace of content production.

    Create a Buyer Persona and Journey
    Get deeper buyer understanding and achieve product-market fit, with easier access to market and sales.

    • Reduce time and resources wasted chasing the wrong prospects.
    • Increase open and click-through rates.
    • Perform more effective sales discovery.
    • Increase win rate.

    Bibliography

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    "Advocacy Marketing." Influitive, June 2016. Accessed 26 Oct. 2021.

    Andrews, Marcus. "42% of Companies Don’t Listen to their Customers. Yikes." HubSpot, June 2019. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.

    "Before you leap! Webcast." Point of Reference, Sept. 2019. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.

    "Brand Loyalty: 5 Interesting Statistics." Factory360, Jan. 2016. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.

    Brenner, Michael. "The Data Driven Guide to Customer Advocacy." Marketing Insider Group, Sept. 2021. Accessed 3 Feb. 2022.

    Carroll, Brian. "Why Customer Advocacy Should Be at the Heart of Your Marketing." Marketing Insider Group, Sept. 2017. Accessed 3 Feb. 2022.

    Cote, Dan. "Advocacy Blooms and Business Booms When Customers and Employees Engage." Influitive, Dec. 2021. Accessed 3 Feb. 2022.

    "Customer Success Strategy Guide." ON24, Jan. 2021. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.

    Dalao, Kat. "Customer Advocacy: The Revenue-Driving Secret Weapon." ReferralRock, June 2017. Accessed 7 Dec. 2021.

    Frichou, Flora. "Your guide to customer advocacy: What is it, and why is it important?" TrustPilot, Jan. 2020. Accessed 26 Oct. 2021.

    Gallo, Amy. "The Value of Keeping the Right Customers." Harvard Business Review, Oct. 2014. Accessed 10 March 2022.

    Huhn, Jessica. "61 B2B Referral Marketing Statistics and Quotes." ReferralRock, March 2022. Accessed 10 March 2022.

    Kemper, Grayson. "B2B Buying Process: How Businesses Purchase B2B Services and Software." Clutch, Feb. 2020. Accessed 6 Jan. 2022.

    Kettner, Kyle. "The Evolution of Ambassador Marketing." BrandChamp.io, Oct. 2018. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.

    Landis, Taylor. "Customer Retention Marketing vs. Customer Acquisition Marketing." OutboundEngine, April 2022. Accessed 23 April 2022.

    Miels, Emily. "What is customer advocacy? Definition and strategies." Zendesk Blog, June 2021. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

    Mohammad, Qasim. "The 5 Biggest Obstacles to Implementing a Successful B2B Customer Advocacy Program." HubSpot, June 2018. Accessed 6 Jan. 2022.

    Murphy, Brandon. "Brand Advocacy and Social Media - 2009 GMA Conference." Deloitte, Dec. 2009. Accessed 8 June 2023.

    Patel, Neil. "Why SaaS Brand Advocacy is More Important than Ever in 2021." Neil Patel, Feb. 2021. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.

    Pieri, Carl. "The Plain-English Guide to Customer Advocacy." HubSpot, Apr. 2020. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

    Schmitt, Philipp; Skiera, Bernd; Van den Bulte, Christophe. "Referral Programs and Customer Value." Wharton Journal of Marketing, Jan. 2011. Accessed 8 June 2023.

    "The Complete Guide to Customer Advocacy." Gray Group International, 2020. Accessed 15 Oct. 2021.

    "The Customer-powered Enterprise: Playbook." Influitive, Gainsight & Pendo. 2020. Accessed 26 Oct. 2021.

    "The Winning Case for a Customer Advocacy Solution." RO Innovation, 2017. Accessed 26 Oct. 2021.

    Tidey, Will. "Acquisition vs. Retention: The Importance of Customer Lifetime Value." Huify, Feb. 2018. Accessed 10 Mar. 2022.

    "What a Brand Advocate Is and Why Your Company Needs One." RockContent, Jan. 2021. Accessed 7 Feb. 2022.

    "What is Customer Advocacy? A Definition and Strategies to Implement It." Testimonial Hero, Oct. 2021. Accessed 26 Jan. 2022.

    Social Media Management Software Selection Guide

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    • Social media has changed the way businesses interact with their customers. It is essential to engage with your customers regularly and in a timely manner.
    • Businesses must stay on top of the latest news and update the public regarding the status of downtime or any mishaps.
    • Customers are present in multiple social media platforms, and it is important for businesses to engage with all audiences without alienating one group.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • There are many social media platforms, and any post, image, or other content must be uploaded on all the platforms with minimal delay.
    • It is often difficult to manage replies and responses to all social media platforms promptly.
    • Measuring key performance metrics is crucial to obtain targeted ROI. Calculating ROI across multiple platforms with various audiences is a challenge.

    Impact and Result

    • A business’ social media presence is an extension of the organization, and the social media management strategy must align with the organization's values.
    • Choose a social media management platform that is right for you by aligning your needs without falling for bells and whistles. Vendors offer a lot of features that are not helpful for most day-to-day activities.
    • Ensure the social media management platform has support and integrations for all the platforms that you require.

    Social Media Management Software Selection Guide Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Social Media Management Software Selection Guide – A deck outlining the features of SMMP tools and top vendors in the marketspace.

    This research offers insight into web analytic tools, key trends in the marketspace, and advanced web analytics techniques. It also provides an overview of the ten top vendors in the marketspace.

    • Social Media Management Software Selection Guide Storyboard
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    Social Media Management Software Selection Guide

    Identify the best tools for your social media management needs.

    Analyst Perspective

    Connecting through social media is an essential way to understand and engage with your customers.

    Social media management platforms (SMMP) allow businesses to engage with customers more efficiently. Ten years ago, Facebook and Twitter dominated the social media space, but many alternatives have emerged that attract a wide variety of audiences today. Every social media platform has a unique demographic; for instance, LinkedIn attracts an audience looking to develop their professional career, while Snapchat attracts those who want to share their everyday casual experience.

    It is important for businesses and brands to engage with all kinds of audiences without alienating a certain group. Domino's, for example, can sell pizzas to business professionals and teenagers alike, so connecting with both customer segments via personalized and meaningful posts in their preferred platform is a great way to grow their business.

    To successfully implement a social media management platform, organizations need to ensure they have their requirements and business needs shortlisted and choose vendors that ensure the best return on investment (ROI).

    An image of Sai Krishna Rajaramagopalan
    Sai Krishna Rajaramagopalan
    Research Specialist, Customer Experience & Application Insights
    Info-Tech Research Group

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    • Social media has changed the way businesses interact with customers. It is essential to engage with your them regularly and in a timely manner.
    • Businesses must stay on top of the latest news and update the public regarding any downtime or mishaps.
    • Customers are present on multiple social media platforms, and businesses need to engage all audiences without neglecting or alienating any one group.

    Common Obstacles

    • There are many social media platforms, and any post, image, or other content must be uploaded on every platform with minimal delay.
    • It is often difficult to manage audience interaction on all social media platforms in a timely manner.
    • Measuring key performance metrics is crucial to obtaining the targeted ROI. Calculating ROI across multiple platforms with varying audiences is a challenge.

    Info-Tech's Approach

    • Social media presence is an extension of the organization, and the social media management strategy must align with organizational values.
    • Understand your feature requirements and don't for bells and whistles. Vendors offer many features that are not helpful during 80% of day-to-day activities. Choose the SMMP that is right for your organization's needs.
    • Ensure the SMMP has support and integrations for all the platforms that you require.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Choosing a good SMMP is only the first step. Having great social media managers who understand their audience is essential in maintaining a healthy relationship with your audience.

    Guided Implementation

    What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

    Phase 1 Phase 2

    Call #1: Understand what a social media management platform (SMMP) is.
    Call #2: Build the business case to select an SMMP.

    Call #3: Define your key SMMP requirements.
    Call #4: Build procurement items, such as a request for proposal (RFP).
    Call #5: Evaluate the SMMP solution landscape and shortlist viable options.

    A Guided implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

    The SMMP selection process should be broken into segments:

    1. SMMP shortlisting with this buyer's guide
    2. Structured approach to selection
    3. Contract review

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

    What exactly is an SMMP platform?

    A social media management platform is a software solution that enables businesses and brands to manage multiple social media accounts. It facilitates making posts, monitoring metrics, and engaging with your audience.

    An SMMP platform offers many key features, including but not limited to the following capabilities:

    • Integrate with popular social media platforms
    • Post images, text, videos on multiple platforms at once
    • Schedule posts
    • Track and monitor activity on social media accounts
    • Send replies and view likes and comments across all accounts
    • Reporting and analytics
    • Send alerts and notifications regarding key events
    • Multilingual support and translation

    Info-Tech Insight

    Social media management platforms have continuously expanded their features list. It is, however, essential not to get lost in endless features to remain competitive and ensure the best ROI.

    Key trends – short-form videos drive the most engagement

    Short-form videos

    Short-form videos are defined as videos less than two minutes long. Shorter videos take substantially less time and effort to consume, making them very attractive for marketing brands to end users. According to a study conducted by Vidyard, more than 50% of viewers end up watching an entire video if it's less than one minute. Another study finds that over 93% of the surveyed brands sold their product or service to a customer through a social media video.

    Popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube etc. have caught on to this trend and introduced short-form videos, more commonly called "shorts". It's also common for content creators and brands to cut and upload short clips from longer videos to drive more engagement with viewers.

    Key Trends

    Short-form videos have higher viewership and view time compared to long videos.

    58%

    About 58% of viewers watch the video to the end if it’s under one minute long. A two-minute video manages to keep around 50% of its viewers till the end.
    Source: Oberlo, 2020

    30%

    Short-form videos have the highest ROI of any social media marketing at 30%.
    Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2023

    Key trends – influencer marketing

    Influencer marketing

    Influencer marketing is the collaboration of brands with online influencers and content creators across various social media platforms to market their products and services. Influencers are not necessarily celebrities; they can be any individual with a dedicated community. This makes influencers abundant. For instance, compare the number of popular football players with the number of YouTubers on the planet.

    Unlike traditional marketing methods, influencer marketing is effective across different budget levels. This is because the engagement level of small influencers with 10,000 followers is higher than the engagement level of large influencers with millions of followers. If a brand is budget conscious, working with smaller influencers still gives a good ROI. For every dollar spent on influencer marketing, the average ROI is $5.78.

    Key Trends

    61%

    A recent study by Matter found that 61% of consumers trust influencers' recommendations over branded social media content.
    Source: Shopify, 2022

    According to data gathered by Statista, the influencer marketing industry has more than doubled since 2019. It was worth $16.4 billion in 2022.
    Source: Statista, 2023

    Executive Brief Case Study

    INDUSTRY: Retail
    SOURCE: "5 Influencer Marketing Case Studies," HubSpot

    H&M

    H&M was looking to build awareness and desirability around the brand to drive clothing sales during the holiday season. They decided to partner with influencers and align content with each celebrity's personality and lifestyle to create authentic content and messaging for H&M. H&M selected four lesser-known celebrities with highly engaged and devoted social media followings: Tyler Posey, Peyton List, Jana Kramer, and Hannah Simone.

    They posted teaser clips across various platforms to create buzz about the campaign a couple of days before the full, one-minute videos were released. Presenting the content two different times enabled H&M to appeal to more viewers and increase the campaign's visibility. Two of the celebrities, List and Kramer, garnered more views and engagement on the short clip than the full video, highlighting that a great short clip can be more effective than long-form content.

    Results

    The campaign achieved 12 million views on YouTube, 1.3 million likes, 14,000 comments, and 19,000 shares. The average engagement with consumers across all four celebrities was 10%.

    A screenshot of Tyler Posey's sponsored video.

    Tyler Posey's sponsored video achieved:

    • 25% engagement rate on Instagram
    • 14% engagement rate across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

    Key trends – social commerce is the future of e-commerce

    Social commerce

    Social commerce is the selling of goods and services through social media. This may involve standalone stores on social media platforms or promotions on these platforms which link to traditional e-commerce platforms.

    Social media platforms contain more data about consumers than traditional platforms, which allows more accurate targeting of ads and promotions. Additionally, social commerce can place ads on popular influencer stories and posts, taking advantage of influencer marketing without directly involving the influencers.

    Popular platforms have opened their own built-in stores. Facebook created Marketplace and Facebook Shops. TikTok soon followed with the TikTok Shopping suite. These stores allow platforms to lower third-party costs and have more control over which products are featured. This also creates a transactional call to action without leaving social media.

    Key Trends

    2020 saw a sizable increase in social commerce occurring on social media networks, with users making purchases directly from their social accounts.

    30.8%

    Sales through social commerce are expected to grow about 30.8% per year from 2020 to 2025. The growth rate is expected to increase to 35% in 2026.
    Source: Oberlo, 2020

    46%

    China has the highest social commerce adoption rate in the world, with 46% of all internet users making at least one purchase. The US is second with a 36% adoption rate.
    Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, 2022

    Executive Brief Case Study

    BestBuy

    The Twitter Shop Module allows select brands to showcase products at the top of Twitter business profiles. Users can scroll through a carousel of products on a brand's profile and tap on individual products to read more and make purchases without leaving the platform.

    While the results of Twitter's Shop Module experiment are still pending, brands aren't waiting around to sell on the platform. Best Buy and others continue to link to well-formatted product pages directly in their Tweets.

    Clear, direct calls to action such as "Pick yours up today" encourage interested audiences to click through, learn more, and review options for purchase. In this social commerce example, Best Buy also makes optimal use of a Tweet's character limit. In just a few words, the brand offers significant savings for a high-quality product, then doubles down with a promotional trade-in offer. Strong imagery is the icing on the cake.

    INDUSTRY: Retail
    SOURCE: "5 genius social commerce examples," Sprout Social, 2021

    Image shows a social media post by Best Buy.

    Key trends – social media risk management is crucial

    Crisis management

    Crisis management is the necessary intervention from an organization when negative news spreads across social media platforms. With how interconnected people are due to social media, news can quickly spread across different platforms.

    Organizations must be prepared for difficult situations such as negative feedback for a product or service, site outages, real-world catastrophes or disasters, and negative comments toward the social media handle. There are tools that organizations can use to receive real-time updates and be prepared for extreme situations.

    While the causes are often beyond control, organizations can prepare by setting up a well-constructed crisis management strategy.

    Key Trends

    75%

    75% of respondents to PwC's Global Crisis Survey said technology has facilitated the coordination of their organization's crisis response team.
    Source: PwC, 2021

    69%

    69% of business leaders reported experiencing a crisis over a period of five years, with the average number of crises being three.
    Source: PwC, 2019

    Executive Brief Case Study

    INDUSTRY: Apparel
    SOURCE: “Social Media Crisis Management 3 Examples Done Right,” Synthesio

    Nike

    On February 20, 2019, Zion Williamson, a star player from Duke University, suffered a knee injury when a malfunctioning Nike shoe fell apart. This accident happened less than a minute into a highly anticipated game against North Carolina. Media outlets and social media users quickly began talking. ESPN had broadcast the game nationally. On Twitter, former President Barack Obama, who was watching the game courtside, expressed his well-wishes to Williamson, as did NBA giants like LeBron James.

    This accident was so high profile that Nike stock dropped 1.7% the following day. Nike soon released a statement expressing its concern and well-wishes for Williamson. The footwear megabrand reassured the world that its teams were "working to identify the issue." The following day, Nike sent a team to Durham, North Carolina, where the game took place. This team then visited Nike's manufacturing site in China and returned with numerous suggestions.

    About a month later, Williamson returned to the court with custom shoes, which he told reporters were "incredible." He thanked Nike for creating them.

    An image of a post by Time about Zion Williamson's injury.

    Get to know the key players in the SMMP landscape

    These next slides provide a top-level overview of the popular players you will encounter in the SMMP shortlisting process.

    A collection of the logos for the SMPP key players, discussed later in this blueprint.

    Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

    SoftwareReviews

    An Image of SoftwareReviews data quadrant analysis

    The data quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions.
    Vendors are ranked by their composite score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.

    An image of SoftwareReviews Emotional Footprint.

    The emotional footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.
    Vendors are ranked by their customer experience (CX) score, which combines the overall emotional footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

    Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

    SoftwareReviews

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    We collect and analyze the most detailed reviews on enterprise software from real users to give you an unprecedented view into the product and vendor before you buy.

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    The logo for HubSpot

    Est. 2006 | MA, USA | NYSE: HUBS

    bio

    From attracting visitors to closing customers, HubSpot brings the entire marketing funnel together for less hassle, more control, and an inbound marketing strategy.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for HubSpot

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Extensive functionality
    • Great for midmarket and large enterprises
    • Offers free trial

    Areas to improve:

    • Comparatively expensive
    • Steep price increase between various tiers of offering

    The logo for HubSpot

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    HubSpot offers a robust social media management platform that enables organizations to run all social media campaigns from a central location. HubSpot is suitable for a range of midmarket and enterprise use cases. HubSpot offers a free base version of the platform that freelancers and start-ups can take advantage of. The free version can also be used to trial the product prior to deciding on purchase.

    However, HubSpot is relatively expensive compared to its competitors. The free tools are not sustainable for growing businesses and some essential features are locked behind professional pricing. The price increase from one tier to another – specifically from starter to professional – is steep, which may discourage organizations looking for a "cheap and cheerful" product.

    History

    An image of the timeline for HubSpot

    Starter

    • Starts at $45
    • Per month
    • Small businesses

    Professional

    • Starts at $800
    • Per month
    • Medium/large businesses

    Enterprise

    • Starts at $3600
    • Per month
    • Large enterprises

    The logo for Sprout Social

    Est. 2010 | IL, USA | NASDAQ: SPT

    bio

    People increasingly turn to social media to engage with your business. Sprout Social provides powerful tools to personally connect with customers, solve issues, and create brand advocates.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Sprout Social

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Automated response feature
    • Great price for base offering

    Areas to improve:

    • Advanced features are very expensive
    • No free trial offered

    The logo for Sprout Social

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Sprout Social offers strong social feed management and social customer service capabilities. It also provides powerful analytical tools to monitor multiple social media accounts. The listening functionality helps discover trends and identify gaps and opportunities. It is also one of the very few platforms to provide automated responses to incoming communications, easing the process of managing large and popular brands.

    Although the starting price of each tier is competitive, advanced analytics and listening come at a steep additional cost. Adding one additional user to the professional tier costs $299 which is a 75% increase in cost. Sprout Social does not offer a free tier for small businesses to trial.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Sprout Social

    Standard

    • Starts at $249
    • Per month
    • Small businesses
    • Five social profiles

    Professional

    • Starts at $399
    • Per month
    • Medium/large businesses

    Advanced

    • Starts at $499
    • Per month
    • Medium/large businesses

    Enterprise

    • Opaque pricing
    • Request a quote
    • Large enterprises

    The logo for Hootsuite

    Est. 2008 | BC, CANADA |PRIVATE

    bio

    Manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, and measure ROI right from the dashboard.

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Automatic scheduling functionality
    • Competitor analysis
    • 30-day free trial

    Areas to improve:

    • Advanced functionalities require additional purchase and are expensive

    The logo for Hootsuite

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Hootsuite is one of the largest players in the social media management space with over 18 million users. The solution has great functionality covering all the popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. One popular and well-received feature is the platform’s ability to schedule posts in bulk. Hootsuite also provides an automatic scheduling feature that uses algorithms to determine the optimal time to post to maximize viewership and engagement. Additionally, the platform can pull analytics for all competitors in the same marketspace as the user to compare performance.

    Hootsuite offers buyers a 30-day free trial to familiarize with the platform and provides unlimited post scheduling across all their plans. Features like social listening, employee advocacy, and ROI reporting, however, are not included in these plans and require additional purchase.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Hootsuite

    Professional

    • Starts at $49*
    • Per month
    • 1 user and 10 social accounts

    Team

    • Starts at $249*
    • Per month
    • 3 users and 20 social accounts

    Business

    • Starts at $739*
    • Per month
    • 5 users and 35 social accounts

    Enterprise

    • Custom built and priced
    • Starts at 5 users and 50 social accounts

    The logo for Sprinklr

    Est. 2009 | NY, USA | NYSE: CXM

    bio

    With social engagement & sales, you can deliver a positive experience that's true to your brand - no matter where your customers are digitally - from a single, unified platform.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Sprinklr

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • Extensive social analytics functionality
    • Advertising and sales capabilities

    Areas to improve:

    • Not suitable for small to medium businesses
    • Opaque pricing

    The logo for Sprinklr

    Sprinklr is a vendor focused on enterprise-grade capabilities that offers a comprehensive unified customer experience management (CXM) platform.

    Their product portfolio offers an all-in-one solution set with an extensive list of features to accommodate all marketing and communication needs. Sprinklr comes integrated with products consisting of advertising, marketing, engagement, and sales capabilities. Some of the key functionality specific to social media includes sentiment analysis, social reporting, advanced data filtering, alerts and notifications, competitor analysis, post performance, and hashtag analysis.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Sprinklr

    Sprinklr – Opaque Pricing:
    "Request a Demo"

    The logo for Zoho Social

    Est. 1996 | TN, INDIA | PRIVATE

    bio

    Zoho Social is a complete social media management tool for growing businesses & agencies. It helps schedule posts, monitor mentions, create unlimited reports, and more. Zoho Social is from Zoho.com—a suite of 40+ products trusted by 30+ million users.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Zoho Social” data-verified=

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths:

    • Provides integration capabilities with other Zoho products
    • Competitive pricing

    Areas to improve:

    • Base functionality is limited
    • The two starting tiers are limited to one user

    The logo for Zoho Social

    *Pricing correct as of August 2021. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Zoho differentiates itself from competitors by highlighting integration with other products under the Zoho umbrella – their adjacent tool sets allow organizations to manage emails, projects, accounts, and webinars. Zoho also offers the choice of purchasing their social media management tool without any of the augmented CRM capabilities, which is priced quite competitively.

    The social media management tools are offered in three plans. Each plan allows the ability to publish and schedule posts across nine platforms, access summary reports and analytics, and access a Bit.ly integration & URL shortener. The standard and professional plans are limited to one brand and one team member, with the option to add team members or social channels for an additional cost.

    YouTube support is exclusive to the premium offering.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Zoho Social

    Standard

    • Starts at $10*
    • Per month, billed annually
    • 9 channels and 1 team member

    Professional

    • Starts at $30*
    • Per month, billed annually
    • Option to add team members for additional cost

    Premium

    • Starts at $40*
    • Per month, billed annually
    • Starts at 10 channels and 3 team members

    The logo for MavSocial

    Est. 2012 | CA, USA | PRIVATE

    bio

    MavSocial is a multi-award-winning, fully integrated social media management & advertising solution for brands and agencies.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for MavSocial

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • Content management capabilities
    • Offers millions of stock free images

    Areas to improve:

    • Limited market footprint compared to competitors
    • Not ideal for large enterprises

    The logo for MavSocial

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    In addition to social media management, MavSocial is also an excellent content management tool. A centralized platform is offered that can store many photos, videos, infographics, and more, which can be accessed anytime. The solution comes with millions of free stock images to use. MavSocial is a great hybrid social media and content management solution for small and mid-sized businesses and larger brands that have dedicated teams to manage their social media. MavSocial also offers campaign planning and management, scheduling, and social inbox functionality. The entry-level plan starts at $78 per month for three users and 30 profiles. The enterprise plan offers fully configurable and state-of-the-art social media management tools, including the ability to manage Facebook ads.

    History

    An image of the timeline for MavSocial

    Pro

    • Starts at $78*
    • Per month
    • Max. 3 users and 30 Profiles

    Business

    • Starts at $249*
    • Per month
    • 5 users, 40 profiles
    • Ability to expand users and profiles

    Enterprise

    • Starts at $499*
    • Per month
    • Fully customized

    The logo for Khoros

    Est. 2019 | TX, USA | PRIVATE

    bio

    Use the Khoros platform (formerly Spredfast + Lithium) to deliver an all-ways connected experience your customers deserve.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Khoros

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • Offers a dedicated social strategic service team
    • Extensive functionality

    Areas to improve:

    • Opaque pricing
    • Not suitable for small or medium businesses

    The logo for Khoros

    Khoros is the result of the merger between two social marketing platforms - Spredfast and Lithium. The parent companies have over a decade of experience offering social management tools. Khoros is widely used among many large brands such as StarHub and Randstad. Khoros is another vendor that is primarily focused on large enterprises and does not offer plans for small/medium businesses. Khoros offers a broad range of functionality such as social media marketing, customer engagement, and brand protection with visibility and controls over social media presence. Khoros also offers a social strategic services team to manage content strategy, brand love, reporting, trend tracking, moderation, crisis and community management; this team can be full service or a special ops extension of your in-house crew.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Khoros

    Khoros – Opaque Pricing:
    "Request a Demo"

    The logo for Sendible

    Est. 2009 | UK | PRIVATE

    bio

    Sendible allows you to manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, and measure ROI right from one easy-to-use dashboard.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Sendible

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • Great integration capabilities
    • Competitive pricing
    • Scheduling functionality

    Areas to improve:

    • Limited footprint compared to competitors
    • Better suited for agencies

    The logo for Sendible

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Sendible primarily markets itself to agencies rather than individual brands or businesses. Sendible's key value proposition is its integration capabilities. It can integrate with 17 different tools including Meta, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business (GMB), YouTube, WordPress, Canva, Google Analytics, and Google Drive. In addition to normal reporting functionality, the Google Analytics integration allows customers to track clickthrough and user behavior for traffic coming from social media channels.

    All plans include the functionality to schedule at least ten posts. Sendible offers excellent collaboration tools, allowing teams to work on assigned tasks and have content approved before they are scheduled to ensure quality control. Sendible offers four plans, with the option to save an additional 15% by signing up for annual payments.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Sendible

    Creator

    • Starts at $29
    • Price per month
    • For freelancers
    • One brand

    Traction

    • Starts at $89
    • Price per month
    • Start-up agencies & brands. 4+ brands

    Scale

    • Starts at $199
    • Price per month
    • For growing agencies & brands

    Custom

    • Opaque pricing
    • Request a quote
    • For large teams & agencies

    The logo for Agorapulse

    Est. 2010 | FRANCE | PRIVATE

    bio

    Agorapulse is an affordable social media dashboard that helps businesses and agencies easily publish content and manage their most important conversations on their social networks.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Agorapulse

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • ROI calculation for Facebook
    • Competitor analysis
    • Social inbox functionality

    Areas to improve:

    • Targeted toward agencies
    • Advanced features can't be purchased under lower tier plans

    The logo for Agorapulse

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Although Agorapulse offers the solution for both agencies and business, they primarily focus on agencies. In addition to the standard social media management functionality, Agorapulse also offers features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at an affordable price point. They also offer social inbox functionality, allowing the ability to manage the inbox and reply to any message or comment across all social profiles through a single platform.

    The solution is offered in three plans. The pro plan allows ten social profiles and two users. Additional social profiles and users can only be purchased under the premium plan. All plans include ROI calculation for Facebook, but if you want this functionality for other platforms, that's exclusive to the enterprise plan.

    History

    An image of the timeline for Agorapulse

    Pro

    • Starts at $79
    • Price per month
    • 10 social profiles and 2 users

    Premium

    • Starts at $199
    • Price per month
    • 20 social profiles and 2 brands

    Enterprise

    • Opaque pricing
    • 40+ social profiles and 8+ users

    The logo for Buffer

    Est. 2010 | CA, USA | PRIVATE

    bio

    A better way to manage social media for your business. Buffer makes it easy to manage your business' social media accounts. Schedule posts, analyze performance, and collaborate with your team — all in one place.

    An image of SoftwareReviews analysis for Buffer

    SoftwareReviews' SMMP Rankings

    Strengths

    • Competitive pricing
    • Scheduling functionality
    • Mobile app

    Areas to improve:

    • Not suited for medium to large enterprises
    • Limited functionality

    The logo for Buffer

    *Pricing correct as of November 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
    See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

    Buffer is a social media platform targeted toward small businesses. It is a great cost-effective option for those who want to manage a few social media profiles, with a free plan that lets one user access three social channels. At $5 per month, it's a great entry point for smaller companies to invest in social media management tools, offering functionality like post scheduling and link shortening and optimization tools for hashtags, tags, and mentions across platforms. All plans provide a browser extension, access to a mobile app, two-factor authentication, social media and email support, and access to the Buffer community. Customers can also trial any of the plans for 14 days before purchasing.

    history

    An image of the timeline for Buffer

    Essentials

    • Starts at $5
    • Per month per channel
    • Basic functionality

    Team

    • Starts at $10
    • Per month per channel
    • Adds reporting capabilities

    Agency

    • Starts at $100
    • Per month per channel

    Leverage Info-Tech's research to plan and execute your SMMP implementation

    Use Info-Tech Research Group's three-phase implementation process to guide your own planning.

    • Assess
    • Prepare
    • Govern & Course Correct

    An image of the title page for Info-Tech's governance and management of enterprise software implementation

    Establish and execute an end-to-end, Agile framework to succeed with the implementation of a major enterprise application.

    Visit this link

    Ensure your implementation team has a high degree of trust and communication

    If external partners are needed, dedicate an internal resource to managing vendor and partner relationships.

    Communication

    Teams must have a communication strategy. This can be broken into:

    • Regularity: Having a set time each day to communicate progress and a set day to conduct retrospectives.
    • Ceremonies: Introducing awards and continually emphasizing delivery of value can encourage relationship building and constructive motivation.
    • Escalation: Voicing any concerns and having someone responsible for addressing those concerns.

    Proximity

    Distributed teams create complexity as communication can break down. This can be mitigated by:

    • Location: Placing teams in proximity can close the barrier of geographical distance and time zone differences.
    • Inclusion: Making a deliberate attempt to pull remote team members into discussions and ceremonies.
    • Communication tools: Having the right technology (e.g. video conference) can help bring teams closer together virtually.

    Trust

    Members should trust other members to contribute to the project and complete required tasks on time. Trust can be developed and maintained by:

    • Accountability: Having frequent quality reviews and feedback sessions. As work becomes more transparent, people become more accountable.
    • Role clarity: Having a clear definition of everyone's role.

    Summary of Accomplishment

    Knowledge Gained

    • What a social media management platform (SMMP) is
    • The history of SMMP
    • The future of SMMP
    • Key trends in SMMP

    Processes Optimized

    • Requirements gathering
    • Requests for proposal (RFPs) and contract reviews
    • SMMP vendor selection
    • SMMP implementation

    SMMP Vendors Analyzed

    • Sprout Social
    • HubSpot
    • Zoho Social
    • Khoros
    • Agorapulse
    • Hootsuite
    • Sprinklr
    • MavSocial
    • Sendible
    • Buffer

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Select and Implement a Social Media Management Platform

    • SMMPs reduce complexity and increase the results of enterprise social media initiatives.

    Social Media

    • The Social Media workshop provides clear, measurable improvements to your social media strategy.

    Improve Requirements Gathering

    • An improvement in requirements analysis will strengthen the relationship between business and IT, as more and more applications satisfy stakeholder needs. More importantly, the applications delivered by IT will meet all the must-have and at least some of the nice-to-have requirements, allowing end users to successfully execute their day-to-day responsibilities.

    Bibliography

    "30+ Influencer Marketing Statistics You Should Know (2022)." Shopify, www.shopify.com/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics.
    "A Brief History of Hootsuite." BrainStation®, 2015, https://brainstation.io/magazine/a-brief-history-of-hootsuite#:~:text=In%202008%2C%20Vancouver%2Dbased%20digital,accounts%20from%20a%20single%20interface.&text=In%202009%2C%20BrightKit's%20name%20changed,a%20capital%20%E2%80%9CS%E2%80%9D).
    "About Us." Sprout Social, https://sproutsocial.com/about/#history
    "About Zoho - Our Story, List of Products." Zoho, www.zoho.com/aboutus.html.
    Adam Rowe, et al. "Sprout Social vs Hootsuite - Which Is Best?: Tech.co 2022." Tech.co, 15 Nov. 2022, https://tech.co/digital-marketing/sprout-social-vs-hootsuite
    "Agorapulse Customer Story: Twilio Segment." Segment, https://segment.com/customers/agorapulse/
    "Agorapulse - Funding, Financials, Valuation & Investors." Crunchbase, www.crunchbase.com/organization/agorapulse/company_financials.
    "Agorapulse Release Notes." Agorapulse Release Notes, https://agorapulse.releasenotes.io/
    "Buffer - Funding, Financials, Valuation & Investors." Crunchbase, www.crunchbase.com/organization/buffer/company_financials.
    Burton, Shannon. "5 Genius Social Commerce Examples You Can Learn From." Sprout Social, 28 Oct. 2021, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-commerce-examples/ .
    Chris Gillespie. "How Long Should a Video Be." Vidyard, 17 May 2022, www.vidyard.com/blog/video-length/.
    "Consumers Continue to Seek Influencers Who Keep It Real." Matter Communications, 22 Feb 2023. https://www.matternow.com/blog/consumers-seek-influencers-who-keep-it-real/
    "Contact Center, Communities, & Social Media Software." Khoros, https://khoros.com/about.
    Fennell, Kylie, et al. "Blog." MavSocial, https://mavsocial.com/blog/.
    Fuchs, Jay. "24 Stats That Prove Why You Need a Crisis Management Strategy in 2022." HubSpot Blog, HubSpot, 16 Mar. 2022, https://blog.hubspot.com/service/crisis-management-stats
    Geyser, Werner. "Key Social Commerce Statistics You Should Know in 2022." Influencer Marketing Hub, http://influencermarketinghub.com/social-commerce-stats/
    "Global Crisis Survey 2021: Building resilience for the next normal." PwC, 2021. https://www.pwc.com/ia/es/prensa/pdfs/Global-Crisis-Survey-FINAL-March-18.pdf
    "Global Influencer Marketing Value 2016-2022." Statista, 6 Jan 2023, www.statista.com/statistics/1092819/global-influencer-market-size/.
    "Key Social Commerce Statistics You Should Know in 2023." Influencer Marketing Hub, December 29, 2022. https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-commerce-stats/
    "Khoros - Funding, Financials, Valuation & Investors." Crunchbase, www.crunchbase.com/organization/spredfast/company_financials.
    Lin, Ying. "Social Commerce Market Size (2020–2026) ", Oberlo, Oberlo, www.oberlo.com/statistics/social-commerce-market-size#:~:text=Social%20commerce%20statistics%20show%20that,fastest%20and%20slowest%20growth%20rates.
    Mediakix, "5 Influencer Marketing Case Studies." HubSpot, n.d. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/505330/Influencer-Marketing-5-Case-Studies-Ebook.pdf.
    "Our Story: HubSpot - Internet Marketing Company." HubSpot, www.hubspot.com/our-story .
    PricewaterhouseCoopers. "69% Of Business Leaders Have Experienced a Corporate Crisis in the Last Five Years Yet 29% of Companies Have No Staff Dedicated to Crisis Preparedness." PwC, 2019. www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2019/global-crisis-survey.html.
    Ferris, Robert. "Duke Player Zion Williamson Injured When Nike Shoe Blows Apart during Game." CNBC, CNBC, 21 Feb. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/duke-player-zion-williamson-injured-when-nike-shoe-blows-apart-in-game.html.
    "Social Engagement & Sales Platform." Sprinklr, www.sprinklr.com/social-engagement/.
    "Social Media Analytics & Reporting for Growing Brands." Buffer, https://buffer.com/analyze
    "Social Media Management and Advertising Tool." MavSocial, 30 July 2022, https://mavsocial.com/
    "Social Media Management Software." HubSpot, www.hubspot.com/products/marketing/social-inbox.
    "Social Media Management Software - Zoho Social." Zoho, www.zoho.com/social/
    "Social Media Management Tool for Agencies & Brands." Sendible, www.sendible.com/.
    "Social Media Management Tools." Sprout Social, 6 Sept. 2022, https://sproutsocial.com/social-media-management/
    "Social Media Marketing & Management Platform For Enterprises." Khoros, khoros.com/platform/social-media-management.
    "Social Media Monitoring Tool." Agorapulse, www.agorapulse.com/features/social-media-monitoring/.
    "Top 12 Moments in SPRINKLR's History." Sprinklr, www.sprinklr.com/blog/12-moments-sprinklr-history/.
    Twitter, BestBuy, https://twitter.com/BestBuyCanada
    "The Ultimate Guide to Hootsuite." Backlinko, 10 Oct. 2022, https://backlinko.com/hub/content/hootsuite
    Widrich, Leo. "From 0 to 1,000,000 Users: The Journey and Statistics of Buffer." Buffer Resources, Buffer Resources, 8 Dec. 2022, buffer.com/resources/from-0-to-1000000-users-the-journey-and-statistics-of-buffer/.
    Yeung, Carmen. "Social Media Crisis Management 3 Examples Done Right." Synthesio, 19 Nov. 2021, www.synthesio.com/blog/social-media-crisis-management/.

    Automate Testing to Get More Done

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    • Parent Category Name: Testing, Deployment & QA
    • Parent Category Link: /testing-deployment-and-qa
    • Today’s rapidly changing software products and operational processes create mounting pressure on software delivery teams to release new features and changes quickly while meeting high and demanding quality standards.
    • Most organizations see automated testing as a solution to meet this demand alongside their continuous delivery pipeline. However, they often lack the critical foundations, skills, and practices that are imperative for success.
    • The technology is available to enable automated testing for many scenarios and systems, but industry noise and an expansive tooling marketplace create confusion for those interested in adopting this technology.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Good automated testing improves development throughput. No matter how quickly you put changes into production, end users will not accept them if they do not meet quality standards. Escaped defects, refactoring, and technical debt can significantly hinder your team’s ability to deliver software on time and on budget. In fact, 65% of organizations saw a reduction of test cycle time and 62% saw reductions in test costs with automated testing (Sogeti, World Quality Report 2020–21).
    • Start automation with unit and functional tests. Automated testing has a sharp learning curve, due to either the technical skills to implement and operate it or the test cases you are asked to automate. Unit tests and functional tests are ideal starting points in your automation journey because of the available tools and knowledge in the industry, the contained nature of the tests you are asked to execute, and the repeated use of the artifacts in more complicated tests (such as performance and integration tests). After all, you want to make sure the application works before stressing it.
    • Automated testing is a cross-functional practice, not a silo. A core component of successful software delivery throughput is recognizing and addressing defects, bugs, and other system issues early and throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). This involves having all software delivery roles collaborate on and participate in automated test case design, configure and orchestrate testing tools with other delivery tools, and proactively prepare the necessary test data and environments for test types.

    Impact and Result

    • Bring the right people to the table. Automated testing involves significant people, process and technology changes across multiple software delivery roles. These roles will help guide how automated testing will compliment and enhance their responsibilities.
    • Build a foundation. Review your current circumstances to understand the challenges blocking automated testing. Establish a strong base of good practices to support the gradually adoption of automated testing across all test types.
    • Start with one application. Verify and validate the automated testing practices used in one application and their fit for other applications and systems. Develop a reference guide to assist new teams.

    Automate Testing to Get More Done Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should automate testing, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    2. Adopt good automated testing practices

    Develop and implement practices that mature your automated testing capabilities.

    • Automated Testing Quick Reference Template

    Infographic

    Workshop: Automate Testing to Get More Done

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Adopt Good Automated Testing Practices

    The Purpose

    Understand the goals of and your vision for your automated testing practice.

    Develop your automated testing foundational practices.

    Adopt good practices for each test type.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Level set automated testing expectations and objectives.

    Learn the key practices needed to mature and streamline your automated testing across all test types.

    Activities

    1.1 Build a foundation.

    1.2 Automate your test types.

    Outputs

    Automated testing vision, expectations, and metrics

    Current state of your automated testing practice

    Ownership of the implementation and execution of automated testing foundations

    List of practices to introduce automation to for each test type

    Build an Application Department Strategy

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    • Parent Category Name: Architecture & Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /architecture-and-strategy
    • Application delivery has modernized. There are increasing expectations on departments to deliver on organizational and product objectives with increasing velocity.
    • Application departments produce many diverse, divergent products, applications, and services with expectations of frequent updates and changes based on rapidly changing landscapes

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • There is no such thing as a universal “applications department.” Unlike other domains of IT, there are no widely accepted frameworks that clearly outline universal best practices of application delivery and management.
    • Different software needs and delivery orientations demand a tailored structure and set of processes, especially when managing a mixed portfolio or multiple delivery methods.

    Impact and Result

    Understand what your department’s purpose is through articulating its strategy in three steps:

    • Determining your application department’s values, principles, and orientation.
    • Laying out the goals, objectives, metrics, and priorities of the department.
    • Building a communication plan to communicate your overall department strategy.

    Build an Application Department Strategy Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build an application department strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Take stock of who you are

    Consider and record your department’s values, principles, orientation, and capabilities.

    • Build an Application Department Strategy – Phase 1: Take Stock of Who You Are
    • Application Department Strategy Supporting Workbook

    2. Articulate your strategy

    Define your department’s strategy through your understanding of your department combined with everything that you do and are working to do.

    • Build an Application Department Strategy – Phase 2: Articulate Your Strategy
    • Application Department Strategy Template

    3. Communicate your strategy

    Communicate your department’s strategy to your key stakeholders.

    • Build an Application Department Strategy – Phase 3: Communicate Your Strategy

    Infographic

    Workshop: Build an Application Department Strategy

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Take Stock of Who You Are

    The Purpose

    Understand what makes up your application department beyond the applications and services provided.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Articulating your guiding principles, values, capabilities, and orientation provides a foundation for expressing your department strategy.

    Activities

    1.1 Identify your team’s values and guiding principles.

    1.2 Define your department’s orientation.

    Outputs

    A summary of your department’s values and guiding principles

    A clear view of your department’s orientation and supporting capabilities

    2 Articulate Your Strategy

    The Purpose

    Lay out all the details that make up your application department strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A completed application department strategy canvas containing everything you need to communicate your strategy.

    Activities

    2.1 Write your application department vision statement.

    2.2 Define your application department goals and metrics.

    2.3 Specify your department capabilities and orientation.

    2.4 Prioritize what is most important to your department.

    Outputs

    Your department vision

    Your department’s goals and metrics that contribute to achieving your department’s vision

    Your department’s capabilities and orientation

    A prioritized roadmap for your department

    3 Communicate Your Strategy

    The Purpose

    Lay out your strategy’s communication plan.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Your application department strategy presentation ready to be presented to your stakeholders.

    Activities

    3.1 Identify your stakeholders.

    3.2 Develop a communication plan.

    3.3 Wrap-up and next steps

    Outputs

    List of prioritized stakeholders you want to communicate with

    A plan for what to communicate to each stakeholder

    Communication is only the first step – what comes next?

    Master the Art of Stakeholder Management in Small Enterprise Environments

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    • Parent Category Name: Stakeholder Management
    • Parent Category Link: /stakeholder-management
    • IT hasn’t taken into account critical stakeholders and their concerns and preferences as they plan projects or operate on daily business.
    • It is difficult to tailor communication and messaging to all of the different personal and professional styles and motivations of stakeholders.
    • Access to stakeholders and getting an accurate understanding of their needs and concerns regarding IT can be difficult to obtain.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Small enterprises have an advantage in stakeholder management. Less people and fewer barriers create opportunities for more productive interactions and stronger relationships.
    • The guiding principles for effective stakeholder management are common concepts, but unfortunately not common practice.
    • By stepping back and taking the time to thoughtfully consider the dynamics and needs of important IT stakeholders, you will be better able to position yourself and your department.

    Impact and Result

    • Info-Tech’s guiding principles provide clear and feasible recommendations for how to incorporate stakeholder management into daily interactions.
    • This blueprint’s guidance will enable IT leaders to tailor communication and interactions that will enable them to build stronger and more meaningful relationships with stakeholders.
    • Following this approach and its guiding principles will make IT projects be more successful by reducing their risk of failure due to issues of buy-in, misunderstanding of priorities, or a lack of support from critical stakeholders.

    Master the Art of Stakeholder Management in Small Enterprise Environments Research & Tools

    Executive Overview

    Use Info-Tech’s approach to stakeholder management to guide you in building stronger and more beneficial relationships, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Master the Art of Stakeholder Management in Small Enterprise Environments Storyboard
    • None
    • None

    1. Identify stakeholders

    Determine the stakeholders for an IT department of a singular initiative.

    • Stakeholder Management Analysis Tool

    2. Analyze stakeholders

    Use the guidance of this section to analyze stakeholders on both a professional and personal level.

    3. Manage stakeholders

    Use Info-Tech’s guiding principles of stakeholder management to direct how to best engage key stakeholders.

    4. Review case studies

    Use real-life experiences from Info-Tech’s analysts to understand how to use and apply stakeholder management techniques.

    [infographic]

    Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively

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    • Parent Category Name: Development
    • Parent Category Link: /development
    • Your organization wants to implement (or revamp existing) software delivery metrics to monitor performance as well as achieve its goals.
    • You know that metrics can be a powerful tool for managing team behavior.
    • You also know that all metrics are prone to misuse and mismanagement, which can lead to unintended consequences that will harm your organization.
    • You need an approach for selecting and using effective software development lifecycle (SDLC) metrics that will help your organization to achieve its goals while minimizing the risk of unintended consequences.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Metrics are powerful, dangerous, and often mismanaged, particularly when they are tied to reward or punishment. To use SDLC metrics effectively, know the dangers, understand good practices, and then follow Info-Tech‘s TAG (team-oriented, adaptive, and goal-focused) approach to minimize risk and maximize impact.

    Impact and Result

    • Begin by understanding the risks of metrics.
    • Then understand good practices associated with metrics use.
    • Lastly, follow Info-Tech’s TAG approach to select and use SDLC metrics effectively.

    Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Understand both the dangers and good practices related to metrics, along with Info-Tech’s TAG approach to the selection and use of SDLC metrics.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Understand the dangers of metrics

    Explore the significant risks associated with metrics selection so that you can avoid them.

    • Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively – Phase 1: Understand the Risks of Metrics

    2. Know good practices related to metrics

    Learn about good practices related to metrics and how to apply them in your organization, then identify your team’s business-aligned goals to be used in SDLC metric selection.

    • Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively – Phase 2: Know Good Practices Related to Metrics
    • SDLC Metrics Evaluation and Selection Tool

    3. Rank and select effective SDLC metrics for your team

    Follow Info-Tech’s TAG approach to selecting effective SDLC metrics for your team, create a communication deck to inform your organization about your selected SDLC metrics, and plan to review and revise these metrics over time.

    • Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively – Phase 3: Rank and Select Effective SDLC Metrics for Your Team
    • SDLC Metrics Rollout and Communication Deck
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Select and Use SDLC Metrics Effectively

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Understand the Dangers of Metrics

    The Purpose

    Learn that metrics are often misused and mismanaged.

    Understand the four risk areas associated with metrics: Productivity loss Gaming behavior Ambivalence Unintended consequences

    Productivity loss

    Gaming behavior

    Ambivalence

    Unintended consequences

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An appreciation of the dangers associated with metrics.

    An understanding of the need to select and manage SDLC metrics carefully to avoid the associated risks.

    Development of critical thinking skills related to metric selection and use.

    Activities

    1.1 Examine the dangers associated with metric use.

    1.2 Share real-life examples of poor metrics and their impact.

    1.3 Practice identifying and mitigating metrics-related risk.

    Outputs

    Establish understanding and appreciation of metrics-related risks.

    Solidify understanding of metrics-related risks and their impact on an organization.

    Develop the skills needed to critically analyze a potential metric and reduce associated risk.

    2 Understand Good Practices Related to Metrics

    The Purpose

    Develop an understanding of good practices related to metric selection and use.

    Introduce Info-Tech’s TAG approach to metric selection and use.

    Identify your team’s business-aligned goals for SDLC metrics.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Understanding of good practices for metric selection and use.

    Document your team’s prioritized business-aligned goals.

    Activities

    2.1 Examine good practices and introduce Info-Tech’s TAG approach.

    2.2 Identify and prioritize your team’s business-aligned goals.

    Outputs

    Understanding of Info-Tech’s TAG approach.

    Prioritized team goals (aligned to the business) that will inform your SDLC metric selection.

    3 Rank and Select Your SDLC Metrics

    The Purpose

    Apply Info-Tech’s TAG approach to rank and select your team’s SDLC metrics.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Identification of potential SDLC metrics for use by your team.

    Collaborative scoring/ranking of potential SDLC metrics based on their specific pros and cons.

    Finalize list of SDLC metrics that will support goals and minimize risk while maximizing impact.

    Activities

    3.1 Select your list of potential SDLC metrics.

    3.2 Score each potential metric’s pros and cons against objectives using a five-point scale.

    3.3 Collaboratively select your team’s first set of SDLC metrics.

    Outputs

    A list of potential SDLC metrics to be scored.

    A ranked list of potential SDLC metrics.

    Your team’s first set of goal-aligned SDLC metrics.

    4 Create a Communication and Rollout Plan

    The Purpose

    Develop a rollout plan for your SDLC metrics.

    Develop a communication plan.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    SDLC metrics.

    A plan to review and adjust your SDLC metrics periodically in the future.

    Communication material to be shared with the organization.

    Activities

    4.1 Identify rollout dates and responsible individuals for each SDLC metric.

    4.2 Identify your next SDLC metric review cycle.

    4.3 Create a communication deck.

    Outputs

    SDLC metrics rollout plan

    SDLC metrics review plan

    SDLC metrics communication deck

    Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy

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    • Parent Category Name: Data Management
    • Parent Category Link: /data-management
    • The volume and variety of data that organizations have been collecting and producing have been growing exponentially and show no sign of slowing down.
    • At the same time, business landscapes and models are evolving, and users and stakeholders are becoming more and more data centric, with maturing expectations and demands.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • As the CDO or equivalent data leader in your organization, a robust and comprehensive data strategy is the number one tool in your toolkit for delivering on your mandate of creating measurable business value from data.
    • A data strategy should never be formulated disjointed from the business. Ensure the data strategy aligns with the business strategy and supports the business architecture.
    • Building and fostering a data-driven culture will accelerate and sustain adoption of, appetite for, and appreciation for data and hence drive the ROI on your various data investments.

    Impact and Result

    • Formulate a data strategy that stitches all of the pieces together to better position you to unlock the value in your data:
      • Establish the business context and value: Identify key business drivers for executing on an optimized data strategy, build compelling and relevant use cases, understand your organization’s culture and appetite for data, and ensure you have well-articulated vision, principles, and goals for your data strategy
      • Ensure you have a solid data foundation: Understand your current data environment, data management enablers, people, skill sets, roles, and structure. Know your strengths and weakness so you can optimize appropriately.
      • Formulate a sustainable data strategy: Round off your strategy with effective change management and communication for building and fostering a data-driven culture.

    Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Data Strategy Research – A step-by-step document to facilitate the formulation of a data strategy that brings together the business context, data management foundation, people, and culture.

    Data should be at the foundation of your organization’s evolution. The transformational insights that executives and decision makers are constantly seeking to leverage can be unlocked with a data strategy that makes high-quality, trusted, and relevant data readily available to the users who need it.

    • Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy – Phases 1-3

    2. Data Strategy Stakeholder Interview Guide and Findings – A template to support you in your meetings or interviews with key stakeholders as you work on understanding the value of data within the various lines of business.

    This template will help you gather insights around stakeholder business goals and objectives, current data consumption practices, the types or domains of data that are important to them in supporting their business capabilities and initiatives, the challenges they face, and opportunities for data from their perspective.

    • Data Strategy Stakeholder Interview Guide and Findings

    3. Data Strategy Use Case Template – An exemplar template to demonstrate the business value of your data strategy.

    Data strategy optimization anchored in a value proposition will ensure that the data strategy focuses on driving the most valuable and critical outcomes in support of the organization’s enterprise strategy. The template will help you facilitate deep-dive sessions with key stakeholders for building use cases that are of demonstrable value not only to their relevant lines of business but also to the wider organization.

    • Data Strategy Use Case Template

    4. Chief Data Officer – A job description template that includes a detailed explication of the responsibilities and expectations of a CDO.

    Bring data to the C-suite by creating the Chief Data Officer role. This position is designed to bridge the gap between the business and IT by serving as a representative for the organization's data management practices and identifying how the organization can leverage data as a competitive advantage or corporate asset.

    • Chief Data Officer

    5. Data Strategy Document Template – A structured template to plan and document your data strategy outputs.

    Use this template to document and formulate your data strategy. Follow along with the sections of the blueprint Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy and complete the template as you progress.

    • Data Strategy Document Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Establish Business Context and Value: Understand the Current Business Environment

    The Purpose

    Establish the business context for the business strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Substantiates the “why” of the data strategy.

    Highlights the organization’s goals, objectives, and strategic direction the data must align with.

    Activities

    1.1 Data Strategy 101

    1.2 Intro to Tech’s Data Strategy Framework

    1.3 Data Strategy Value Proposition: Understand stakeholder’s strategic priorities and the alignment with data

    1.4 Discuss the importance of vision, mission, and guiding principles of the organization’s data strategy

    1.5 Understand the organization’s data culture – discuss Data Culture Survey results

    1.6 Examine Core Value Streams of Business Architecture

    Outputs

    Business context; strategic drivers

    Data strategy guiding principles

    Sample vision and mission statements

    Data Culture Diagnostic Results Analysis

    2 Business-Data Needs Discovery: Key Business Stakeholder Interviews

    The Purpose

    Build use cases of demonstrable value and understand the current environment.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    An understanding of the current maturity level of key capabilities.

    Use cases that represent areas of concern and/or high value and therefore need to be addressed.

    Activities

    2.1 Conduct key business stakeholder interviews to initiate the build of high-value business-data cases

    Outputs

    Initialized high-value business-data cases

    3 Understand the Current Data Environment & Practice: Analyze Data Capability and Practice Gaps and Develop Alignment Strategies

    The Purpose

    Build out a future state plan that is aimed at filling prioritized gaps and that informs a scalable roadmap for moving forward on treating data as an asset.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A target state plan, formulated with input from key stakeholders, for addressing gaps and for maturing capabilities necessary to strategically manage data.

    Activities

    3.1 Understand the current data environment: data capability assessment

    3.2 Understand the current data practice: key data roles, skill sets; operating model, organization structure

    3.3 Plan target state data environment and data practice

    Outputs

    Data capability assessment and roadmapping tool

    4 Align Business Needs with Data Implications: Initiate Roadmap Planning and Strategy Formulation

    The Purpose

    Consolidate business and data needs with consideration of external factors as well as internal barriers and enablers to the success of the data strategy. Bring all the outputs together for crafting a robust and comprehensive data strategy.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    A consolidated view of business and data needs and the environment in which the data strategy will be operationalized.

    An analysis of the feasibility and potential risks to the success of the data strategy.

    Activities

    4.1 Analyze gaps between current- and target-state

    4.2 Initiate initiative, milestone and RACI planning

    4.3 Working session with Data Strategy Owner

    Outputs

    Data Strategy Next Steps Action Plan

    Relevant data strategy related templates (example: data practice patterns, data role patterns)

    Initialized Data Strategy on-a-Page

    Further reading

    Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy

    Key to building and fostering a data-driven culture.

    ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

    Data Strategy: Key to helping drive organizational innovation and transformation

    "In the dynamic environment in which we operate today, where we are constantly juggling disruptive forces, a well-formulated data strategy will prove to be a key asset in supporting business growth and sustainability, innovation, and transformation.

    Your data strategy must align with the organization’s business strategy, and it is foundational to building and fostering an enterprise-wide data-driven culture."

    Crystal Singh,

    Director – Research and Advisory

    Info-Tech Research Group

    Our understanding of the problem

    This Research is Designed For:

    • Chief data officers (CDOs), chief architects, VPs, and digital transformation directors and CIOs who are accountable for ensuring data can be leveraged as a strategic asset of the organization.

    This Research Will Help You:

    • Put a strategy in place to ensure data is available, accessible, well integrated, secured, of acceptable quality, and suitably visualized to fuel decision making by the organizations’ executives.
    • Align data management plans and investments with business requirements and the organization’s strategic plans.
    • Define the relevant roles for operationalizing your data strategy.

    This Research Will Also Assist:

    • Data architects and enterprise architects who have been tasked with supporting the formulation or optimization of the organization’s data strategy.
    • Business leaders creating plans for leveraging data in their strategic planning and business processes.
    • IT professionals looking to improve the environment that manages and delivers data.

    This Research Will Help Them:

    • Get a handle on the current situation of data within the organization.
    • Understand how the data strategy and its resulting initiatives will affect the operations, integration, and provisioning of data within the enterprise.

    Executive Summary

    Situation

    • The volume and variety of data that organizations have been collecting and producing have been growing exponentially and show no sign of slowing down. At the same time, business landscapes and models are evolving, and users and stakeholders are becoming more and more data centric, with maturing and demanding expectations.

    Complication

    • As organizations pivot in response to industry disruptions and changing landscapes, a reactive and piecemeal approach leads to data architectures and designs that fail to deliver real and measurable value to the business.
    • Despite the growing focus on data, many organizations struggle to develop a cohesive business-driven strategy for effectively managing and leveraging their data assets.

    Resolution

    Formulate a data strategy that stitches all of the pieces together to better position you to unlock the value in your data:

    • Establish the business context and value: Identify key business drivers for executing on an optimized data strategy, build compelling and relevant use cases, understand your organization’s culture and appetite for data, and ensure you have well-articulated vision, principles, and goals for your data strategy.
    • Ensure you have a solid data foundation: Understand your current data environment, data management enablers, people, skill sets, roles, and structure. Know your strengths and weakness so you can optimize appropriately.
    • Formulate a sustainable data strategy: Round off your strategy with effective change management and communication for building and fostering a data-driven culture.

    Info-Tech Insight

    1. As the CDO or equivalent data leader in your organization, a robust and comprehensive data strategy is the number one tool in your toolkit for delivering on your mandate of creating measurable business value from data.
    2. A data strategy should never be formulated disjointed from the business. Ensure the data strategy aligns with the business strategy and supports the business architecture.
    3. Building and fostering a data-driven culture will accelerate and sustain adoption of, appetite for, and appreciation for data and hence drive the ROI on your various data investments.

    Why do you need a data strategy?

    Your data strategy is the vehicle for ensuring data is poised to support your organization’s strategic objectives.

    The dynamic marketplace of today requires organizations to be responsive in order to gain or maintain their competitive edge and place in their industry.

    Organizations need to have that 360-degree view of what’s going on and what’s likely to happen.

    Disruptive forces often lead to changes in business models and require organizations to have a level of adaptability to remain relevant.

    To respond, organizations need to make decisions and should be able to turn to their data to gain insights for informing their decisions.

    A well-formulated and robust data strategy will ensure that your data investments bring you the returns by meeting your organization’s strategic objectives.

    Organizations need to be in a position where they know what’s going on with their stakeholders and anticipate what their stakeholders’ needs are going to be.

    Data cannot be fully leveraged without a cohesive strategy

    Most organizations today will likely have some form of data management in place, supported by some of the common roles such as DBAs and data analysts.

    Most will likely have a data architecture that supports some form of reporting.

    Some may even have a chief data officer (CDO), a senior executive who has a seat at the C-suite table.

    These are all great assets as a starting point BUT without a cohesive data strategy that stitches the pieces together and:

    • Effectively leverages these existing assets
    • Augments them with additional and relevant key roles and skills sets
    • Optimizes and fills in the gaps around your current data management enablers and capabilities for the growing volume and variety of data you’re collecting
    • Fully caters to real, high-value strategic organizational business needs

    you’re missing the mark – you are not fully leveraging the incredible value of your data.

    Cross-industry studies show that on average, less than half of an organization’s structured data is actively used in making decisions

    And, less than 1% of its unstructured data is analyzed or used at all. Furthermore, 80% of analysts' time is spent simply discovering and preparing, data with over 70% of employees having access to data they should not. Source: HBR, 2017

    Organizational drivers for a data strategy

    Your data strategy needs to align with your organizational strategy.

    Main Organizational Strategic Drivers:

    1. Stakeholder Engagement/Service Excellence
    2. Product and Service Innovations
    3. Operational Excellence
    4. Privacy, Risk, and Compliance Management

    “The companies who will survive and thrive in the future are the ones who will outlearn and out-innovate everyone else. It is no longer ‘survival of the fittest’ but ‘survival of the smartest.’ Data is the element that both inspires and enables this new form of rapid innovation.– Joel Semeniuk, 2016

    A sound data strategy is the key to unlocking the value in your organization’s data.

    Data should be at the foundation of your organization’s evolution.

    The transformational insights that executives are constantly seeking to leverage can be unlocked with a data strategy that makes high-quality, well-integrated, trustworthy, relevant data readily available to the business users who need it.

    Whether hoping to gain a better understanding of your business, trying to become an innovator in your industry, or having a compliance and regulatory mandate that needs to be met, any organization can get value from its data through a well-formulated, robust, and cohesive data strategy.

    According to a leading North American bank, “More than one petabyte of new data, equivalent to about 1 million gigabytes” is entering the bank’s systems every month. – The Wall Street Journal, 2019

    “Although businesses are at many different stages in unlocking the power of data, they share a common conviction that it can make or break an enterprise.”– Jim Love, ITWC CIO and Chief Digital Officer, IT World Canada, 2018

    Data is a strategic organizational asset and should be treated as such

    The expression “Data is an asset” or any other similar sentiment has long been heard.

    With such hype, you would have expected data to have gotten more attention in the boardrooms. You would have expected to see its value reflected on financial statements as a result of its impact in driving things like acquisition, retention, product and service development and innovation, market growth, stakeholder satisfaction, relationships with partners, and overall strategic success of the organization.

    The time has surely come for data to be treated as the asset it is.

    “Paradoxically, “data” appear everywhere but on the balance sheet and income statement.”– HBR, 2018

    “… data has traditionally been perceived as just one aspect of a technology project; it has not been treated as a corporate asset.”– “5 Essential Components of a Data Strategy,” SAS

    According to Anil Chakravarthy, who is the CEO of Informatica and has a strong vantage point on how companies across industries leverage data for better business decisions, “what distinguishes the most successful businesses … is that they have developed the ability to manage data as an asset across the whole enterprise.”– McKinsey & Company, 2019

    How data is perceived in today’s marketplace

    Data is being touted as the oil of the digital era…

    But just like oil, if left unrefined, it cannot really be used.

    "Data is the new oil." – Clive Humby, Chief Data Scientist

    Source: Joel Semeniuk, 2016

    Enter your data strategy.

    Data is being perceived as that key strategic asset in your organization for fueling innovation and transformation.

    Your data strategy is what allows you to effectively mine, refine, and use this resource.

    “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.”– The Economist, 2017

    “Modern innovation is now dependent upon this data.”– Joel Semeniuk, 2016

    “The better the data, the better the resulting innovation and impact.”– Joel Semeniuk, 2016

    What is it in it for you? What opportunities can data help you leverage?

    GOVERNMENT

    Leveraging data as a strategic asset for the benefit of citizens.

    • The strategic use of data can enable governments to provide higher-quality services.
    • Direct resources appropriately and harness opportunities to improve impact.
    • Make better evidence-informed decisions and better understand the impact of programs so that funds can be directed to where they are most likely to deliver the best results.
    • Maintain legitimacy and credibility in an increasingly complex society.
    • Help workers adapt and be competitive in a changing labor market.
    • A data strategy would help protect citizens from the misuse of their data.

    Source: Privy Council Office, Government of Canada, 2018

    What is it in it for you? What opportunities can data help you leverage?

    FINANCIAL

    Leveraging data to boost traditional profit and loss levers, find new sources of growth, and deliver the digital bank.

    • One bank used credit card transactional data (from its own terminals and those of other banks) to develop offers that gave customers incentives to make regular purchases from one of the bank’s merchants. This boosted the bank’s commissions, added revenue for its merchants, and provided more value to the customer (McKinsey & Company, 2017).
    • In terms of enhancing productivity, a bank used “new algorithms to predict the cash required at each of its ATMs across the country and then combined this with route-optimization techniques to save money” (McKinsey & Company, 2017).

    A European bank “turned to machine-learning algorithms that predict which currently active customers are likely to reduce their business with the bank.” The resulting understanding “gave rise to a targeted campaign that reduced churn by 15 percent” (McKinsey & Company, 2017).

    A leading Canadian bank has built a marketplace around their data – they have launched a data marketplace where they have productized the bank’s data. They are providing data – as a product – to other units within the bank. These other business units essentially represent internal customers who are leveraging the product, which is data.

    Through the use of data and advanced analytics, “a top bank in Asia discovered unsuspected similarities that allowed it to define 15,000 microsegments in its customer base. It then built a next-product-to-buy model that increased the likelihood to buy three times over.” Several sets of big data were explored, including “customer demographics and key characteristics, products held, credit-card statements, transaction and point-of-sale data, online and mobile transfers and payments, and credit-bureau data” (McKinsey & Company, 2017).

    What is it in it for you? What opportunities can data help you leverage?

    HEALTHCARE

    Leveraging data and analytics to prevent deadly infections

    The fifth-largest health system in the US and the largest hospital provider in California uses a big data and advanced analytics platform to predict potential sepsis cases at the earliest stages, when intervention is most helpful.

    Using the Sepsis Bio-Surveillance Program, this hospital provider monitors 120,000 lives per month in 34 hospitals and manages 7,500 patients with potential sepsis per month.

    Collecting data from the electronic medical records of all patients in its facilities, the solution uses natural language processing (NLP) and a rules engine to continually monitor factors that could indicate a sepsis infection. In high-probability cases, the system sends an alarm to the primary nurse or physician.

    Since implementing the big data and predictive analytics system, this hospital provider has seen a significant improvement in the mortality and the length of stay in ICU for sepsis patients.

    At 28 of the hospitals which have been on the program, sepsis mortality rates have dropped an average of 5%.

    With patients spending less time in the ICU, cost savings were also realized. This is significant, as sepsis is the costliest condition billed to Medicare, the second costliest billed to Medicaid and the uninsured, and the fourth costliest billed to private insurance.

    Source: SAS, 2019

    What is it in it for you? What opportunities can data help you leverage?

    RETAIL

    Leveraging data to better understand customer preferences, predict purchasing, drive customer experience, and optimize supply and demand planning.

    Netflix is an example of a big brand that uses big data analytics for targeted advertising. With over 100 million subscribers, the company collects large amounts of data. If you are a subscriber, you are likely familiar with their suggestions messages of the next series or movie you should catch up on. These suggestions are based on your past search data and watch data. This data provides Netflix with insights into your interests and preferences for viewing (Mentionlytics, 2018).

    “For the retail industry, big data means a greater understanding of consumer shopping habits and how to attract new customers.”– Ron Barasch, Envestnet | Yodlee, 2019

    The business case for data – moving from platitudes to practicality

    When building your business case, consider the following:

    • What is the most effective way to communicate the business case to executives?
    • How can CDOs and other data leaders use data to advance their organizations’ corporate strategy?
    • What does your data estate look like? Are you looking to leverage and drive value from your semi-structured and unstructured data assets?
    • Does your current organizational culture support a data-driven one? Does the organization have a history of managing change effectively?
    • How do changing privacy and security expectations alter the way businesses harvest, save, use, and exchange data?

    “We’re the converted … We see the value in data. The battle is getting executive teams to see it our way.”– Ted Maulucci, President of SmartONE Solutions Inc. IT World Canada, 2018

    Where do you stack up? What is your current data management maturity?

    Info-Tech’s IT Maturity Ladder denotes the different levels of maturity for an IT department and its different functions. What is the current state of your data management capability?

    Innovator - Transforms the Business. Business Partner - Expands the Business. Trusted Operator - Optimizes the Business. Firefighter - Supports the Business. Unstable - Struggles to Support.

    Info-Tech Insight

    You are best positioned to successfully execute on a data strategy if you are currently at or above the Trusted Operator level. If you find yourself still at the Unstable or Firefighter stage, your efforts are best spent on ensuring you can fulfill your day-to-day data and data management demands. Improving this capability will help build a strong data management foundation.

    Guiding principles of a data strategy

    Value of Clearly Defined Data Principles

    • Guiding principles help define the culture and characteristics of your practice by describing your beliefs and philosophy.
    • Guiding principles act as the heart of your data strategy, helping to shape initiative plans and day-to-day behaviors related to the use and treatment of the organization’s data assets.

    “Organizational culture can accelerate the application of analytics, amplify its power, and steer companies away from risky outcomes.”– McKinsey, 2018

    Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy

    Business Strategy and Current Environment connect with the Data Strategy. Data Strategy includes: Organizational Drivers and Data Value, Data Strategy Objectives and Guiding Principles, Data Strategy Vision and Mission, Data Strategy Roadmap, People: Roles and Organizational Structure, Data Culture and Data Literacy, Data Management and Tools, Risk and Feasibility.

    Follow Info-Tech’s methodology for effectively leveraging the value out of your data

    Some say it’s the new oil. Or the currency of the new business landscape. Others describe it as the fuel of the digital economy. But we don’t need platitudes — we need real ways to extract the value from our data. – Jim Love, CIO and Chief Digital Officer, IT World Canada, 2018

    1. Business Context. 2. Data and Resources Foundation. 3. Effective Data Strategy

    Our practical step-by-step approach helps you to formulate a data strategy that delivers business value.

    1. Establish Business Context and Value: In this phase, you will determine and substantiate the business drivers for optimizing the data strategy. You will identify the business drivers that necessitate the data strategy optimization and examine your current organizational data culture. This will be key to ensuring the fruits of your optimization efforts are being used. You will also define the vision, mission, and guiding principles and build high-value use cases for the data strategy.
    2. Ensure You Have a Solid Data and Resources Foundation: This phase will help you ensure you have a solid data and resources foundation for operationalizing your data strategy. You will gain an understanding of your current environment in terms of data management enablers and the required resources portfolio of key people, roles, and skill sets.
    3. Formulate a Sustainable Data Strategy: In this phase, you will bring the pieces together for formulating an effective data strategy. You will evaluate and prioritize the use cases built in Phase 1, which summarize the alignment of organizational goals with data needs. You will also create your strategic plan, considering change management and communication.

    Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

    DIY Toolkit

    “Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

    Guided Implementation

    “Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

    Workshop

    “We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

    Consulting

    “Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

    Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

    Design a Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Program

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    • Parent Category Name: Threat Intelligence & Incident Response
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    • Businesses prioritize speed to market over secure coding and testing practices in the development lifecycle. As a result, vulnerabilities exist naturally in software.
    • To improve overall system security, organizations are leveraging external security researchers to identify and remedy vulnerabilities, so as to mitigate the overall security risk.
    • A primary challenge to developing a coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) program is designing repeatable procedures and scoping the program to the organization’s technical capacity.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Having a coordinated vulnerability disclosure program is likely to be tomorrow’s law. With pressures from federal government agencies and recommendations from best-practice frameworks, it is likely that a CVD will be mandated in the future to encourage organizations to be equipped and prepared to respond to externally disclosed vulnerabilities.
    • CVD programs such as bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure programs (VDPs) may reward differently, but they have the same underlying goals. As a result, you don't need dramatically different process documentation.

    Impact and Result

    • Design a coordinated vulnerability disclosure program that reflects business, customer, and regulatory obligations.
    • Develop a program that aligns your resources with the scale of the coordinated vulnerability disclosure program.
    • Follow Info-Tech’s vulnerability disclosure methodology by leveraging our policy, procedure, and workflow templates to get you started.

    Design a Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Program Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should design a coordinated vulnerability disclosure program, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Assess goals

    Define the business, customer, and compliance alignment for the coordinated vulnerability disclosure program.

    • Design a Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Program – Phase 1: Assess Goals
    • Information Security Requirements Gathering Tool

    2. Formalize the program

    Equip your organization for coordinated vulnerability disclosure with formal documentation of policies and processes.

    • Design a Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Program – Phase 2: Formalize the Program
    • Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Policy
    • Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Plan
    • Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Workflow (Visio)
    • Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Workflow (PDF)
    [infographic]

    Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence

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    • Parent Category Name: Optimization
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    • Processes pertaining to managing the application are inconsistent and do not drive excellence.
    • There is a lack of interdepartmental collaboration between different teams pertaining to the application.
    • There are no formalized roles and responsibilities for governance and support around enterprise applications.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Scale the Center of Excellence (CoE) based on business needs. There is flexibility in how extensively the CoE methodology is applied and rigidity in how consistently it should be used.
    • The CoE is a refinery. It takes raw inputs from the business and produces an enhanced product, removing waste and isolating it from re-entering day-to-day operations.
    • Excellence is about people as much as it is about process. Documented best practices should include competencies, key resources, and identified champions to advocate the CoE practice.

    Impact and Result

    • Formalize roles and responsibilities for all application initiatives.
    • Develop a standard process of governance and oversight surrounding the application.
    • Develop a comprehensive support network that consists of IT, the business, and external stakeholders to address issues and problem areas surrounding the application.

    Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence Research & Tools

    Start here – read the Executive Brief

    Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should establish a Center of Excellence for your enterprise application, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Create a vision for the CoE

    Understand the importance of developing an enterprise application CoE, define its scope, and identify key stakeholders.

    • Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence – Phase 1: Create a Vision for the Center of Excellence
    • Enterprise Application Center of Excellence Project Charter

    2. Design the CoE future state

    Gather high-level requirements to determine the ideal future state.

    • Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence – Phase 2: Design the Center of Excellence Future State
    • Center of Excellence Refinery Model Template

    3. Develop a CoE roadmap

    Assess the required capabilities to reach the ideal state CoE.

    • Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence – Phase 3: Develop a Center of Excellence Roadmap
    • Center of Excellence Exceptions Report
    • Track and Measure Benefits Tool
    • Enterprise Application Center of Excellence Stakeholder Presentation Template
    [infographic]

    Workshop: Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Create a Vision for the CoE

    The Purpose

    Understand the importance of developing a CoE for enterprise applications.

    Determine how to best align the CoE mandate with business objectives.

    Complete a CoE project charter to gain buy-in, build a project team, and track project success. 

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Key stakeholders identified.

    Project team created with defined roles and responsibilities.

    Project charter finalized to gain buy-in.

    Activities

    1.1 Evaluate business needs and priorities.

    1.2 Identify key stakeholders and the project team.

    1.3 Align CoE with business priorities.

    1.4 Map current state CoE.

    Outputs

    Project vision

    Defined roles and responsibilities

    Strategic alignment of CoE and the business

    CoE current state schematic

    2 Design the CoE Future State

    The Purpose

    Gain a thorough understanding of pains related to the lack of application governance.

    Identify and recycle existing CoE practices.

    Visualize the CoE enhancement process.

    Visualize your ideal state CoE. 

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Requirements to strengthen the case for the enterprise application CoE.

    CoE value-add refinery.

    Future potential of the CoE.

    Activities

    2.1 Gather requirements.

    2.2 Map the CoE enhancement process.

    2.3 Sketch future state CoE.

    Outputs

    Classified pains, opportunities, and existing practices

    CoE refinery model

    Future state CoE sketch

    3 Develop a CoE Roadmap

    The Purpose

    Assess required capabilities and resourcing.

    List and prioritize CoE initiatives.

    Track and monitor CoE performance. 

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Next steps for the enterprise application CoE.

    CoE resourcing plan.

    CoE benefits realization tracking.

    Activities

    3.1 Build CoE capabilities.

    3.2 Identify risks and mitigation efforts.

    3.3 Prioritize and track CoE initiatives.

    3.4 Finalize stakeholder presentation.

    Outputs

    CoE potential capabilities

    Risk management plan

    CoE initiatives roadmap

    CoE stakeholder presentation

    Improve Incident and Problem Management

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    • IT infrastructure managers have conflicting accountabilities. It can be difficult to fight fires as they appear while engaging in systematic fire prevention.
    • Repetitive interruptions erode faith in IT. If incidents recur consistently, why should the business trust IT to resolve them?

    Continue reading

    IBM i Migration Considerations

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    IBM i remains a vital platform and now many CIOs, CTOs, and IT leaders are faced with the same IBM i challenges regardless of industry focus: how do you evaluate the future viability of this platform, assess the future fit and purpose, develop strategies, and determine the future of this platform for your organization?

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    For organizations that are struggling with the iSeries/IBM i platform, resourcing challenges are typically the culprit. An aging population of RPG programmers and system administrators means organizations need to be more pro-active in maintaining in-house expertise. Migrating off the iSeries/IBM i platform is a difficult option for most organizations due to complexity, switching costs in the short term, and a higher long-term TCO.

    Impact and Result

    The most common tactic is for the organization to better understand their IBM i options and adopt some level of outsourcing for the non-commodity platform retaining the application support/development in-house. To make the evident, obvious; the options here for the non-commodity are not as broad as with commodity server platforms. Options include co-location, onsite outsourcing, managed and public cloud services.

    IBM i Migration Considerations Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. IBM i Migration Considerations – A brief deck that outlines key migration options for the IBM i platforms.

    This project will help you evaluate the future viability of this platform; assess the fit, purpose, and price; develop strategies for overcoming potential challenges; and determine the future of this platform for your organization.

    • IBM i Migration Considerations Storyboard

    2. Infrastructure Outsourcing IBM i Scoring Tool – A tool to collect vendor responses and score each vendor.

    Use this scoring sheet to help you define and evaluate IBM i vendor responses.

    • Infrastructure Outsourcing IBM i Scoring Tool
    [infographic]

    Further reading

    IBM i Migration Considerations

    Don’t be overwhelmed by IBM i migration options.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    IBM i remains a vital platform and now many CIO, CTO, and IT leaders are faced with the same IBM i challenges regardless of industry focus; how do you evaluate the future viability of this platform, assess the future fit and purpose, develop strategies, and determine the future of this platform for your organization?

    Common Obstacles

    For organizations that are struggling with the iSeries/IBM i platform, resourcing challenges are typically the culprit. An aging population of RPG programmers and system administrators means organizations need to be more proactive in maintaining in-house expertise. Migrating off the iSeries/IBM i platform is a difficult option for most organizations due to complexity, switching costs in the short term, and a higher long-term TCO.

    Info-Tech Approach

    The most common tactic is for the organization to better understand its IBM i options and adopt some level of outsourcing for the non-commodity platform, retaining the application support/development in-house. To make the evident, obvious: the options here for the non-commodity are not as broad as with commodity server platforms. Options include co-location, onsite outsourcing, managed hosting, and public cloud services.

    Info-Tech Insight

    “For over twenty years, IBM was ‘king,’ dominating the large computer market. By the 1980s, the world had woken up to the fact that the IBM mainframe was expensive and difficult, taking a long time and a lot of work to get anything done. Eager for a new solution, tech professionals turned to the brave new concept of distributed systems for a more efficient alternative. On June 21, 1988, IBM announced the launch of the AS/400, their answer to distributed computing.” (Dale Perkins)

    Review

    We help IT leaders make the most of their IBM i environment.

    Problem Statement:

    The IBM i remains a vital platform for many businesses and continues to deliver exceptional reliability and performance and play a key role in the enterprise. With the limited resources at hand, CIOs and the like must continually review and understand their migration path with the same regard as any other distributed system roadmap.

    This research is designed for:

    • IT strategic direction decision makers
    • IT managers responsible for an existing iSeries or IBM i platform
    • Organizations evaluating platforms for mission-critical applications

    This research will help you:

    1. Evaluate the future viability of this platform.
    2. Assess the fit, purpose, and price.
    3. Develop strategies for overcoming potential challenges.
    4. Determine the future of this platform for your organization.

    The “fit for purpose” plot

    Thought Model

    We will investigate the aspect of different IBM i scenarios as they impact business, what that means, and how that can guide the questions that you are asking as you move to an aligned IBM i IT strategy. Our model considers:

    • Importance to Business Outcomes
      • Important to strategic objectives
      • Provides competitive advantage
      • Non-commodity IT service or process
      • Specialized in-house knowledge required
    • Vendor’s Performance Advantage
      • Talent or access to skills
      • Economies of scale or lower cost at scale
      • Access to technology

    Info-Tech Insights

    With multiple control points to be addressed, care must be taken in simplifying your options while addressing all concerns to ease operational load.

    Map different 'IBM i' scenarios with axes 'Importance to Business Outcomes - Low to High' and 'Vendor’s Performance Advantage - Low to High'. Quadrant labels are '[LI/LA] Potentially Outsource: Service management, Help desk, desk-side support, Asset management', '[LI/HA] Outsource: Application & Infra Support, Web Hosting, SAP Support, Email Services, Infrastructure', '[HI/LA] Insource (For Now): Application development tech support', and '[HI/HA] Potentially Outsource: Onshore or offshore application maintenance'.

    IBM i environments are challenging

    “The IBM i Reality” – Darin Stahl

    Most members relying on business applications/workloads running on non-commodity platforms (zSeries, IBM i, Solaris, AIX, etc.) are first motivated to get out from under the perceived higher costs for the hardware platform.

    An additional challenge for non-commodity platforms is that from an IT Operations Management perspective they become an island with a diminishing number of integrated operations skills and solutions such as backup/restore and monitoring tools.

    The most common tactic is for the organization to adopt some level of outsourcing for the non-commodity platform, retaining the application support and development in-house.

    Key challenges with current IBM i environments:
    1. DR Requirements
      Understand what the business needs are and where users and resources are located.
    2. Market Lack of Expertise
      Skilled team members are hard to find.
    3. Cost Management
      There is a perceived cost disadvantage to managing on-prem solutions.
    4. Aging Support Teams
      Current support teams are aging with little backfill in skill and experience.

    Understand your options

    Co-Location

    A customer transitions their hardware environment to a provider’s data center. The provider can then manage the hardware and “system.”

    Onsite Outsourcing

    A provider will support the hardware/system environment at the client’s site.

    Managed Hosting

    A customer transitions their legacy application environment to an off-prem hosted, multi-tenanted environment.

    Public Cloud

    A customer can “re-platform” the non-commodity workload into public cloud offerings or in a few offerings “re-host.”

    Co-Location

    Provider manages the data center hardware environment.

    Abstract

    Here a provider manages the system data center environment and hardware; however, the client’s in-house IBM i team manages the IBM i hardware environment and the system applications. The client manages all of the licenses associated with the platform as well as the hardware asset management considerations. This is typically part of a larger services or application transformation. This effectively outsources the data center management while maintaining all IBM i technical operations in-house.

    Advantages

    • On-demand bandwidth
    • Cost effective
    • Secure and compliant environment
    • On-demand remote “hands and feet” services
    • Improved IT DR services
    • Data center compliance

    Considerations

    • Application transformation
    • CapEx cost
    • Fluctuating network bandwidth costs
    • Secure connectivity
    • Disaster recovery and availability of vendor
    • Company IT DR and BC planning
    • Remote system maintenance (HW)

    Info-Tech Insights

    This model is extremely attractive for organizations looking to reduce their data center management footprint. Idea for the SMB.

    Onsite Sourcing

    A provider will support the hardware/system environment at the client’s site.

    Abstract

    Here a provider will support and manage the hardware/system environment at the client’s site. The provider may acquire the customer’s hardware and provide software licenses. This could also include hiring or “rebadging” staff supporting the platform. This type of arrangement is typically part of a larger services or application transformation. While low risk, it is not as cost-effective as other deployment models.

    Advantages

    • Managed environment within company premises
    • Cost effective (OpEx expense)
    • Economies of scale
    • On-demand “as-a-service” model
    • Improved IT DR staffing services
    • 24x7 monitoring and support

    Considerations

    • Outsourced IT talent
    • Terms and contract conditions
    • IT staff attrition
    • Increased liability
    • Modified technical support and engagement
    • Secure connectivity and communication
    • Internal problem and change management

    Info-Tech Insights

    Depending on the application lifecycle and viability, in-house skill and technical depth is a key consideration when developing your IBM i strategy.

    Managed Hosting

    Transition legacy application environment to an off-prem hosted multi-tenanted environment.

    Abstract

    This type of arrangement is typically part of an application migration or transformation. In this model, a client can “re-platform” the application into an off-premises-hosted provider platform. This would yield many of the cloud benefits however in a different scaling capacity as experienced with commodity workloads (e.g. Windows, Linux) and the associated application.

    Advantages

    • Turns CapEx into OpEx
    • Reduces in-house need for diminishing or scarce human resources
    • Allows the enterprise to focus on the value of the IBM i platform through the reduction of system administrative toil
    • Improved IT DR services
    • Data center compliance

    Considerations

    • Application transformation
    • Network bandwidth
    • Contract terms and conditions
    • Modified technical support and engagement
    • Secure connectivity and communication
    • Technical security and compliance
    • Limited providers; reduced options

    Info-Tech Insights

    There is a difference between a “re-host” and “re-platform” migration strategy. Determine which solution aligns to the application requirements.

    Public Cloud

    Leverage “public cloud” alternatives with AWS, Google, or Microsoft AZURE.

    Abstract

    This type of arrangement is typically part of a larger migration or application transformation. While low risk, it is not as cost-effective as other deployment models. In this model, client can “re-platform” the non-commodity workload into public cloud offerings or in a few offerings “re-host.” This would yield many of the cloud benefits however in a different scaling capacity as experienced with commodity workloads (e.g. Windows, Linux).

    Advantages

    • Remote workforce accessibility
    • OpEx expense model
    • Improved IT DR services
    • Reduced infrastructure and system administration
    • Vendor management
    • 24x7 monitoring and support

    Considerations

    • Contract terms and conditions
    • Modified technical support and engagement
    • Secure connectivity and communication
    • Technical security and compliance
    • Limited providers; reduced options
    • Vendor/cloud lock-in
    • Application migration/”re-platform”
    • Application and system performance

    Info-Tech Insights

    This model is extremely attractive for organizations that consume primarily cloud services and have a large remote workforce.

    Understand your vendors

    • To best understand your options, you need to understand what IBM i services are provided by the industry vendors.
    • Within the following slides, you will find a defined activity with a working template that will create “vendor profiles” for each vendor.
    • As a working example, you can review the following partners:
    • Connectria (United States)
    • Rowton IT Solutions Ltd (United Kingdom)
    • Mid-Range (Canada)

    Info-Tech Insights

    Creating vendor profiles will help quickly filter the solution providers that directly meet your IBM i needs.

    Vendor Profile #1

    Rowton IT

    Summary of Vendor

    “Rowton IT thrive on creating robust and simple solutions to today's complex IT problems. We have a highly skilled and motivated workforce that will guarantee the right solution.

    Working with select business partners, we can offer competitive and cost effective packages tailored to suit your budget and/or business requirements.

    Our knowledge and experience cover vast areas of IT including technical design, provision and installation of hardware (Wintel and IBM Midrange), technical engineering services, support services, IT project management, application testing, documentation and training.”

    IBM i Services

    • ✔ IBM Power Hardware Sales
    • ✔ Co-Managed Services
    • ✔ DR/High Available Config
    • ✔ Full Managed Services
    • ✖ Co-Location Services
    • ✔ Public Cloud Services (AWS)

    URL
    rowtonit.com

    Regional Coverage:
    United Kingdom

    Logo for RowtonIT.com.

    Vendor Profile #2

    Connectria

    Summary of Vendor

    “Every journey starts with a single step and for Connectria, that step happened to be with the world’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank. Followed quickly by our second client, IBM. Since then, we have added over 1,000 clients worldwide. For 25 years, each customer, large or small, has relied on Connectria to deliver on promises made to make it easy to do business with us through flexible terms, scalable solutions, and straightforward pricing. Join us on our journey.”

    IBM i Services

    • ✔ IBM Power Hardware Sales
    • ✔ Co-Managed Services
    • ✔ DR/High Available Config
    • ✔ Full Managed Services
    • ✔ Co-Location Services
    • ✔ Public Cloud Services (AWS)

    URL
    connectria.com

    Regional Coverage:
    United States

    Logo for Connectria.

    Vendor Profile #3

    Mid-Range

    Summary of Vendor

    “Founded in 1988 and profitable throughout all of those 31 years, we have a solid track record of success. At Mid-Range, we use our expertise to assess your unique needs, in order to proactively develop the most effective IT solution for your requirements. Our full-service approach to technology and our diverse and in-depth industry expertise keep our clients coming back year after year.

    Serving clients across North America in a variety of industries, from small and emerging organizations to large, established enterprises – we’ve seen it all. Whether you need hardware or software solutions, disaster recovery and high availability, managed services or hosting or full ERP services with our JD Edwards offerings – we have the methods and expertise to help.”

    IBM i Services

    • ✔ IBM Power Hardware Sales
    • ✔ Co-Managed Services
    • ✔ DR/High Available Config
    • ✔ Full Managed Services
    • ✔ Co-Location Services
    • ✔ Public Cloud Services (AWS)

    URL
    midrange.ca

    Regional Coverage:
    Canada

    Logo for Mid-Range.

    Activity

    Understand your vendor options

    Activities:
    1. Create your vendor profiles
    2. Score vendor responses
    3. Develop and manage your vendor agenda

    This activity involves the following participants:

    • IT strategic direction decision makers
    • IT managers responsible for an existing iSeries or IBM i platform

    Outcomes of this step:

    • Vendor Profile Template
    • Completed IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Scoring Tool

    Info-Tech Insights

    This check-point process creates transparency around agreement costs with the business and gives the business an opportunity to re-evaluate its requirements for a potentially leaner agreement.

    1. Create your vendor profiles

    Define what you are looking for:

    • Create a vendor profile for every vendor of interest.
    • Leverage our starting list and template to track and record the advantages of each vendor.

    Mindshift

    First National Technology Solutions

    Key Information Systems

    MainLine

    Direct Systems Support

    T-Systems

    Horizon Computer Solutions Inc.

    Vendor Profile Template

    [Vendor Name]

    Summary of Vendor

    [Vendor Summary]
    *Detail the Vendor Services as a Summary*

    IBM i Services

    • ✔ IBM Power Hardware Sales
    • ✔ Co-Managed Services
    • ✔ DR/High Available Config
    • ✔ Full Managed Services
    • ✔ Co-Location Services
    • ✔ Public Cloud Services (AWS)
    *Itemize the Vendor Services specific to your requirements*

    URL
    https://www.url.com/
    *Insert the Vendor URL*

    Regional Coverage:
    [Country\Region]
    *Insert the Vendor Coverage & Locations*

    *Insert the Vendor Logo*

    2. Score your vendor responses

    Use the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Scoring Tool to manage vendor responses.
    Use Info-Tech’s IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Scoring Tool to systematically score your vendor responses.

    The overall quality of the IBM i questions can help you understand what it might be like to work with the vendor.

    Consider the following questions:

    • Is the vendor clear about what it’s able to offer? Is its response transparent?
    • How much effort did the vendor put into answering the questions?
    • Does the vendor seem like someone you would want to work with?

    Once you have the vendor responses, you will select two or three vendors to continue assessing in more depth leading to an eventual final selection.

    Screenshot of the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Scoring Tool's Scoring Sheet. There are three tables: 'Scoring Scale', 'Results', and one with 'RFP Questions'. Note on Results table says 'Top Scoring Vendors', and note on questions table says 'List your IBM i questions (requirements)'.

    Info-Tech Insights

    Watch out for misleading scores that result from poorly designed criteria weightings.

    3. Develop your vendor agenda

    Vendor Conference Call

    Develop an agenda for the conference call. Here is a sample agenda:
    • Review the vendor questions.
    • Go over answers to written vendor questions previously submitted.
    • Address new vendor questions.

    Commonly Debated Question:
    Should vendors be asked to remain anonymous on the call or should each vendor mention their organization when they join the call?

    Many organizations worry that if vendors can identify each other, they will price fix. However, price fixing is extremely rare due to its consequences and most vendors likely have a good idea which other vendors are participating in the bid. Another thought is that revealing vendors could either result in a higher level of competition or cause some vendors to give up:

    • A vendor that hears its rival is also bidding may increase the competitiveness of its bid and response.
    • A vendor that feels it doesn’t have a chance may put less effort into the process.
    • A vendor that feels it doesn’t have real competition may submit a less competitive or detailed response than it otherwise would have.

    Vendor Workshop

    A vendor workshop day is an interactive way to provide context to your vendors and to better understand the vendors’ offerings. The virtual or in-person interaction also offers a great way to understand what it’s like to work with each vendor and decide whether you could build a partnership with them in the long run.

    The main focus of the workshop is the vendors’ service solution presentation. Here is a sample agenda for a two-day workshop:

    Day 1
    • Meet and greet
    • Welcome presentation with objectives, acquisition strategy, and company overview
    • Overview of the current IT environment, technologies, and company expectations
    • Question and answer session
    • Site walk
    Day 2
    • Review Day 1 activities
    • Vendor presentations and solution framing
    Use the IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Scoring Tool to manage vendor responses.

    Related Info-Tech Research

    Effectively Acquire Infrastructure Services
    Acquiring a service is like buying an experience. Don’t confuse the simplicity of buying hardware with buying an experience.

    Outsource IT Infrastructure to Improve System Availability, Reliability, and Recovery
    There are very few IT infrastructure components you should be housing internally – outsource everything else.

    Build Your Infrastructure Roadmap
    Move beyond alignment: Put yourself in the driver’s seat for true business value.

    Define Your Cloud Vision
    Make the most of cloud for your organization.

    Document Your Cloud Strategy
    Drive consensus by outlining how your organization will use the cloud.

    Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan
    Close the gap between your DR capabilities and service continuity requirements.

    Create a Better RFP Process
    Improve your RFPs to gain leverage and get better results.

    Research Authors

    Photo of Darin Stahl, Principal Research Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group.Darin Stahl, Principal Research Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group

    Principal Research Advisor within the Infrastructure Practice and leveraging 38+ years of experience, his areas of focus include: IT Operations Management, Service Desk, Infrastructure Outsourcing, Managed Services, Cloud Infrastructure, DRP/BCP, Printer Management, Managed Print Services, Application Performance Monitoring (APM), Managed FTP, and non-commodity servers (zSeries, mainframe, IBM i, AIX, Power PC).

    Photo of Troy Cheeseman, Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group.Troy Cheeseman, Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group

    Troy has over 24 years of experience and has championed large, enterprise-wide technology transformation programs, remote/home office collaboration and remote work strategies, BCP, IT DRP, IT Operations and expense management programs, international right placement initiatives, and large technology transformation initiatives (M&A). Additionally, he has deep experience working with IT solution providers and technology (cloud) start-ups.

    Research Contributors

    Photo of Dan Duffy, President & Owner, Mid-Range.Dan Duffy, President & Owner, Mid-Range

    Dan Duffy is the President and Founder of Mid-Range Computer Group Inc., an IBM Platinum Business Partner. Dan and his team have been providing the Canadian and American IBM Power market with IBM infrastructure solutions including private cloud, hosting and disaster recovery, high availability and data center services since 1988. He has served on numerous boards and associations including the Toronto Users Group for Mid-Range Systems (TUG), the IBM Business Partners of the Americas Advisory Council, the Cornell Club of Toronto, and the Notre Dame Club of Toronto. Dan holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University.

    Photo of George Goodall, Executive Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group.George Goodall, Executive Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group

    George Goodall is an Executive Advisor in the Research Executive Services practice at Info-Tech Research Group. George has over 20 years of experience in IT consulting, enterprise software sales, project management, and workshop delivery. His primary focus is the unique challenges and opportunities in organizations with small and constrained IT operations. In his long tenure at Info-Tech, George has covered diverse topics including voice communications, storage, and strategy and governance.

    Bibliography

    “Companies using IBM i (formerly known as i5/OS).” Enlyft, 21 July 2021. Web.

    Connor, Clare. “IBM i and Meeting the Challenges of Modernization.” Ensono, 22 Mar. 2022. Web.

    Huntington, Tom. “60+ IBM i User Groups and Communities to Join?” HelpSystems, 16 Dec. 2021. Web.

    Perkins, Dale. “The Road to Power Cloud: June 21st 1988 to now. The Journey Continues.” Mid-Range, 1 Nov. 2021. Web.

    Prickett Morgan, Timothy. “How IBM STACKS UP POWER8 AGAINST XEON SERVERS.” The Next Platform, 13 Oct. 2015. Web.

    “Why is AS/400 still used? Four reasons to stick with a classic.” NTT, 21 July 2016. Web.

    Appendix

    Public Cloud Provider Notes

    Appendix –
    Cloud
    Providers


    “IBM Power (IBM i and AIX) workloads are also available in the so-called ‘cloud.’” (Darin Stahl)

    AWS

    Appendix –
    Cloud
    Providers



    “IBM Power (IBM i and AIX) workloads are also available in the so-called ‘cloud.’” (Darin Stahl)

    Google

    • Google Cloud console supports IBM Power Systems.
    • This offering provides cloud instances running on IBM Power Systems servers with PowerVM.
    • The service uses a per-day prorated monthly subscription model for cloud instance plans with different capacities of compute, memory, storage, and network. Standard plans are listed below and custom plans are possible.
    • There is no IBM i offering yet that we are aware of.
    • For AIX on Power, this would appear to be a better option than AWS (Converge Enterprise Cloud with IBM Power for Google Cloud).

    Appendix –
    Cloud
    Providers



    “IBM Power (IBM i and AIX) workloads are also available in the so-called ‘cloud.’” (Darin Stahl)

    Azure

    • Azure has partners using the Azure Dedicated Host offerings to deliver “native support for IBM POWER Systems to Azure data centres” (PowerWire).
    • Microsoft has installed Power servers in an couple Azure data centers and Skytap manages the IBM i, AIX, and Linux environments for clients.
    • As far as I am aware there is no ability to install IBM i or AIX within an Azure Dedicated Host via the retail interfaces – these must be worked through a partner like Skytap.
    • The cloud route for IBM i or AIX might be the easiest working with Skytap and Azure. This would appear to be a better option than AWS in my opinion.

    Appendix –
    Cloud
    Providers



    “IBM Power (IBM i and AIX) workloads are also available in the so-called ‘cloud.’” (Darin Stahl)

    IBM

    Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code

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    • Parent Category Name: Architecture & Strategy
    • Parent Category Link: /architecture-and-strategy
    • Your organization decided to invest in digital solutions to support their transition to a digital and automated workplace. They are ready to begin the planning and delivery of these solutions.
    • However, IT capacity is constrained due to the high and aggressive demand to meet business priorities and maintain mission critical applications. Technical experience and skills are difficult to find, and stakeholders are increasing their expectations to deliver technologies faster with high quality using less resources.
    • Stakeholders are interested in low and no code solutions as ways to their software delivery challenges and explore new digital capabilities.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Current software delivery inefficiencies and lack of proper governance and standards impedes the ability to successfully scale and mature low and no code investments and see their full value.
    • Many operating models and culture do not enable or encourage the collaboration needed to evaluate business opportunities and underlying operational systems.This can exacerbate existing shadow IT challenges and promote a negative perception of IT.
    • Low and no code tools bring significant organizational, process, and technical changes that IT and the business may not be prepared or willing to accept and adopt, especially when these tools support business and worker managed applications and services.

    Impact and Result

    • Establish the right expectations. Profile your digital end users and their needs and challenges. Discuss current IT and business software delivery and digital product priorities to determine what to expect from low- and no-code.
    • Build your low- and no-code governance and support. Clarify the roles, processes, and tools needed for low- and no-code delivery and management through IT and business collaboration.
    • Evaluate the fit of low- and no-code and shortlist possible tools. Obtain a thorough view of the business and technical complexities of your use cases. Indicate where and how low- and no-code is expected to generate the most return.

    Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code Research & Tools

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    1. Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code Deck – A step-by-step guide on selecting the appropriate low- and no-code tools and building the right people, processes, and technologies to support them.

    This blueprint helps you develop an approach to understand your low- and no-code challenges and priorities and to shortlist, govern, and manage the right low- and no-code tools.

    • Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code – Phases 1-3

    2. Low- and No-Code Communication Template – Clearly communicate the goal and approach of your low- and no-code implementation in a language your audience understands.

    This template narrates a story to describe the need and expectations of your low- and no-code initiative to get buy-in from stakeholders and interested parties.

    • Low- and No-Code Communication Template

    Infographic

    Workshop: Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code

    Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

    1 Select Your Tools

    The Purpose

    Understand the personas of your low- and no-code users and their needs.

    List the challenges low- and no-code is designed to solve or the opportunities you hope to exploit.

    Identify the low- and no-code tools to address your needs.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Level set expectations on what low- and no-code can deliver.

    Identify areas where low- and no-code can be the most beneficial.

    Select the tools to best address your problem and opportunities.

    Activities

    1.1 Profile your digital end users

    1.2 Set reasonable expectations

    1.3 List your use cases

    1.4 Shortlist your tools

    Outputs

    Digital end-user skills assessment

    Low- and no-code objectives and metrics

    Low- and no-code use case opportunities

    Low- and no-code tooling shortlist

    2 Deliver Your Solution

    The Purpose

    Optimize your product delivery process to accommodate low- and no-code.

    Review and improve your product delivery and management governance model.

    Discuss how to improve your low- and no-code capacities.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Encourage business-IT collaborative practices and improve IT’s reputation.

    Shift the right accountability and ownership to the business.

    Equip digital end users with the right skills and competencies.

    Activities

    2.1 Adapt your delivery process

    2.2 Transform your governance

    2.3 Identify your low- and no-code capacities

    Outputs

    Low- and no-code delivery process and guiding principles

    Low- and no-code governance, including roles and responsibilities, product ownership and guardrails

    List of low- and no-code capacity improvements

    3 Plan Your Adoption

    The Purpose

    Design a CoE and/or CoP to support low- and no-code capabilities.

    Build a roadmap to illustrate key low- and no-code initiatives.

    Key Benefits Achieved

    Ensure coordinated, architected, and planned implementation and adoption of low- and no-code consistently across the organization.

    Reaffirm support for digital end users new to low- and no-code.

    Clearly communicate your approach to low- and no-code.

    Activities

    3.1 Support digital end users and facilitate cross-functional sharing

    3.2 Yield results with a roadmap

    Outputs

    Low- and no-code supportive body design (e.g. center of excellence, community of practice)

    Low- and no-code roadmap

    Integrate IT Risk Into Enterprise Risk

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    • IT risks, when considered, are identified and classified separately from the enterprise-wide perspective.
    • IT is expected to own risks over which they have no authority or oversight.
    • Poor behaviors, such as only considering IT risks when conducting compliance or project due diligence, have been normalized.

    Our Advice

    Critical Insight

    • Stop avoiding risk – integrate it. This provides a holistic view of uncertainty for the organization to drive innovative new approaches to optimize the organization’s ability to respond to risk.

    Impact and Result

    • Understand gaps in the organization’s current approach to risk management practices.
    • Establish a standardized approach for how IT risks impact the enterprise as a whole.
    • Drive a risk-aware organization toward innovation and consider alternative options for how to move forward.
    • Integrate IT risks into the foundational risk practice.

    Integrate IT Risk Into Enterprise Risk Research & Tools

    Integrated Risk Management Capstone – A framework for how IT risks can be integrated into your organization’s enterprise risk management program to enable strategic risk-informed decisions.

    This is a capstone blueprint highlighting the benefits of an integrated risk management program that uses risk information and data to inform strategic decision making. Throughout this research you will gain insight into the five core elements of integrating risk through assessing, governing, defining the program, defining the process, and implementing.

    Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

    • Integrate IT Risk Into Enterprise Risk Capstone
    • Integrated Risk Maturity Assessment
    • Risk Register Tool

    Infographic

    Further reading

    Integrate IT Risk Into Enterprise Risk

    Don’t fear IT risks, integrate them.

    EXECUTIVE BRIEF

    Analyst Perspective

    Having siloed risks is risky business for any enterprise.

    Photo of Valence Howden, Principal Research Director, CIO Practice.
    Valence Howden
    Principal Research Director, CIO Practice
    Photo of Petar Hristov Research Director, Security, Privacy, Risk & Compliance.
    Petar Hristov
    Research Director, Security, Privacy, Risk & Compliance
    Photo of Ian Mulholland Research Director, Security, Risk & Compliance.
    Ian Mulholland
    Research Director, Security, Risk & Compliance
    Photo of Brittany Lutes, Senior Research Analyst, CIO Practice.
    Brittany Lutes
    Senior Research Analyst, CIO Practice
    Photo of Ibrahim Abdel-Kader, Research Analyst, CIO Practice
    Ibrahim Abdel-Kader
    Research Analyst, CIO Practice

    Every organization has a threshold for risk that should not be exceeded, whether that threshold is defined or not.

    In the age of digital, information and technology will undoubtedly continue to expand beyond the confines of the IT department. As such, different areas of the organization cannot address these risks in silos. A siloed approach will produce different ways of identifying, assessing, responding to, and reporting on risk events. Integrated risk management is about embedding IT uncertainty to inform good decision making across the organization.

    When risk is integrated into the organization's enterprise risk management program, it enables a single view of all risks and the potential impact of each risk event. More importantly, it provides a consistent view of the risk event in relation to uncertainty that might have once been seemingly unrelated to IT.

    And all this can be achieved while remaining within the enterprise’s clearly defined risk appetite.

    Executive Summary

    Your Challenge

    Most organizations fail to integrate IT risks into enterprise risks:

    • IT risks, when considered, are identified and classified separately from the enterprise-wide perspective.
    • IT is expected to own risks over which they have no authority or oversight.
    • Poor behaviors, such as only considering IT risks when conducting compliance or project due diligence, have been normalized.

    Common Obstacles

    IT leaders have to overcome these obstacles when it comes to integrating risk:

    • Making business leaders aware of, involved in, and able to respond to all enterprise risks.
    • A lack of data or information being used to support a holistic risk management process.
    • A low level of enterprise risk maturity.
    • A lack of risk management capabilities.

    Info-Tech’s Approach

    By leveraging the Info-Tech Integrated Risk approach, your business can better address and embed risk by:

    • Understanding gaps in the organization’s current approach to risk management practices.
    • Establishing a standardized approach for how IT risks impact the enterprise as a whole.
    • Driving a risk-aware organization toward innovation and considering alternative options for how to move forward.
    • Helping integrate IT risks into the foundational risk practice.

    Info-Tech Insight

    Stop avoiding risk – integrate it. This provides a holistic view of uncertainty for the organization to drive innovative new approaches to optimize its ability to respond to risk.

    What is integrated risk management?

    • Integrated risk management is the process of ensuring all forms of risk information, including information and technology, are considered and included in the enterprise’s risk management strategy.
    • It removes the siloed approach to classifying risks related to specific departments or areas of the organization, recognizing that each of those risks is a threat to the overarching enterprise.
    • Aggregating the different threats or uncertainty that might exist within an organization allows for informed decisions to be made that align to strategic goals and continue to drive value back to the business.
    • By holistically considering the different risks, the organization can make informed decisions on the best course of action that will reduce any negative impacts associated with the uncertainty and increase the overall value.

    Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)

    • IT
    • Security
    • Digital
    • Vendor/Third Party
    • Other

    Enterprise risk management is the practice of identifying and addressing risks to your organization and using risk information to drive better decisions and better opportunities.

    IT risk is enterprise risk

    Multiple types of risk, 'Finance', 'IT', 'People', and 'Digital', funneling into 'ENTERPRISE RISKS'. IT risks have a direct and often aggregated impact on enterprise risks and opportunities in the same way other business risks can. This relationship must be understood and addressed through integrated risk management to ensure a consistent approach to risk.

    Your challenge

    Embedding IT risks into the enterprise risk management program is challenging because:

    • Most organizations classify risks based on the departments or areas of the business where the uncertainty is likely to happen.
    • Unnecessary expectations are placed on the IT department to own risks over which they have no authority or oversight.
    • Risks are often only identified when conducting due diligence for a project or ensuring compliance with regulations and standards.

    Risk-mature organizations have a unique benefit in that they often have established an overarching governance framework and embedded risk awareness into the culture.

    35% — Only 35% of organizations had embraced ERM in 2020. (Source: AICPA and NC State Poole College of Management)

    12% — Only 12% of organizations are leveraging risk as a tool to their strategic advantage. (Source: AICPA and NC State Poole College of Management)

    Common obstacles

    These barriers make integrating IT risks difficult to address for many organizations:

    • IT risks are not seen as enterprise risks.
    • The organization’s culture toward risk is not defined.
    • The organization’s appetite and threshold for risk are not defined.
    • Each area of the organization has a different method of identifying, assessing, and responding to risk events.
    • Access to reliable and informative data to support risk management is difficult to obtain.
    • Leadership does not see the business value of integrating risk into a single management program.
    • The organization’s attitudes and behaviors toward risk contradict the desired and defined risk culture.
    • Skills, training, and resources to support risk management are lacking, let alone those to support integrated risk management.

    Integrating risks has its challenges

    62% — Accessing and disseminating information is the main challenge for 62% of organizations maturing their organizational risk management. (Source: OECD)

    20-28% — Organizations with access to machine learning and analytics to address future risk events have 20 to 28% more satisfaction. (Source: Accenture)

    Integrate Risk and Use It to Your Advantage

    Accelerate and optimize your organization by leveraging meaningful risk data to make intelligent enterprise risk decisions.

    Risk management is more than checking an audit box or demonstrating project due diligence.

    Risk Drivers
    • Audit & compliance
    • Preserve value & avoid loss
    • Previous risk impact driver
    • Major transformation
    • Strategic opportunities
    Arrow pointing right. Only 7% of organizations are in a “leading” or “aspirational” level of risk maturity. (OECD, 2021) 63% of organizations struggle when it comes to defining their appetite toward strategy related risks. (“Global Risk Management Survey,” Deloitte, 2021) Late adopters of risk management were 70% more likely to use instinct over data or facts to inform an efficient process. (Clear Risk, 2020) 55% of organizations have little to no training on ERM to properly implement such practices. (AICPA, NC State Poole College of Management, 2021)
    1. Assess Enterprise Risk Maturity 3. Build a Risk Management Program Plan 4. Establish Risk Management Processes 5. Implement a Risk Management Program
    2. Determine Authority with Governance
    Unfortunately, less than 50% of those in risk focused roles are also in a governance role where they have the authority to provide risk oversight. (Governance Institute of Australia, 2020)
    IT can improve the maturity of the organization’s risk governance and help identify risk owners who have authority and accountability.

    Governance and related decision making is optimized with integrated and aligned risk data.

    List of 'Integrated Risk Maturity Categories': '1. Context & Strategic Direction', '2. Risk Culture and Authority', '3. Risk Management Process', and '4. Risk Program Optimization'. The five types of a risk in Enterprise Risk Management.

    ERM incorporates the different types of risk, including IT, security, digital, vendor, and other risk types.

    The program plan is meant to consider all the major risk types in a unified approach.

    The 'Risk Process' cycle starting with '1. Identify', '2. Assess', '3. Respond', '4. Monitor', '5. Report', and back to the beginning. Implementation of an integrated risk management program requires ongoing access to risk data by those with decision making authority who can take action.

    Integrated Risk Mapping — Downside Risk Focus

    A diagram titled 'Risk and Controls' beginning with 'Possible Sources' and a list of sources, 'Control Activities' to prevent, the 'RISK EVENT', 'Recovery Activities' to recover, and 'Possible Repercussions' with a list of ramifications.

    Integrated Risk Mapping — Downside and Upside Risk

    Third-Party Risk Example

    Example of a third-party risk mapped onto the diagram on the previous slide, but with potential upsides mapped out as well. The central risk event is 'Vendor exposes private customer data'. Possible Sources of the downside are 'External Attack' with likelihood prevention method 'Define security standard requirements for vendor assessment' and 'Exfiltration of data through fourth-party staff' with likelihood prevention method 'Ensure data is properly classified'. Possible Sources of the upside are 'Application rationalization' with likelihood optimization method 'Reduce number of applications in environment' and 'Review vendor assessment practices' with likelihood optimization method 'Improve vendor onboarding'. Possible Repercussions on the downside are 'Organization unable to operate in jurisdiction' with impact minimization method 'Engage in-house risk mitigation responses' and 'Fines levied against organization' with impact minimization method 'Report incident to any regulators'. Possible Repercussions on the upside are 'Easier vendor integration and management' with impact utilization method 'Improved vendor onboarding practices' and 'Able to bid on contracts with these requirements' with impact utilization method 'Vendors must provide attestations (e.g. SOC or CMMC)'.

    Insight Summary

    Overarching insight

    Stop fearing risk – integrate it. Integration leads to opportunities for organizations to embrace innovation and new digital technologies as well as reducing operational costs and simplifying reporting.

    Govern risk strategically

    Governance of risk management for information- and technology-related events is often misplaced. Just because it's classified as an IT risk does not mean it shouldn’t be owned by the board or business executive.

    Assess risk maturity

    Integrating risk requires a baseline of risk maturity at the enterprise level. IT can push integrating risks, but only if the enterprise is willing to adopt the attitudes and behaviors that will drive the integrated risk approach.

    Manage risk

    It is not a strategic decision to have different areas of the organization manage the risks perceived to be in their department. It’s the easy choice, but not the strategic one.

    Implement risk management

    Different areas of an enterprise apply risk management processes differently. Determining a single method for identification, assessment, response, and monitoring can ensure successful implementation of enterprise risk management.

    Tactical insight

    Good risk management will consider both the positives and negatives associated with a risk management program by recognizing both the upside and downside of risk event impact and likelihood.

    Integrated risk benefits

    IT Benefits

    • IT executives have a responsibility but not accountability when it comes to risk. Ensure the right business stakeholders have awareness and ability to make informed risk decisions.
    • Controls and responses to risks that are within the “IT” realm will be funded and provided with sufficient support from the business.
    • The business respects and values the role of IT in supporting the enterprise risk program, elevating its role into business partner.

    Business Benefits

    • Business executives and boards can make informed responses to the various forms of risk, including those often categorized as “IT risks.”
    • The compounding severity of risks can be formally assessed and ideally quantified to provide insight into how risks’ ramifications can change based on scenarios.
    • Risk-informed decisions can be used to optimize the business and drive it toward adopting innovation as a response to risk events.
    • Get your organization insured against cybersecurity threats at the lowest premiums possible.

    Measure the value of integrating risk

    • Reduce Operating Costs

      • Organizations can reduce their risk operating costs by 20 to 30% by adopting enterprise-wide digital risk initiatives (McKinsey & Company).
    • Increase Cybersecurity Threat Preparedness

      • Increase the organization’s preparedness for cybersecurity threats. 79% of organizations that were impacted by email threats in 2020 were not prepared for the hit (Diligent)
    • Increase Risk Management’s Impact to Drive Strategic Value

      • Currently, only 3% of organizations are extensively using risk management to drive their unique competitive advantage, compared to 35% of companies who do not use it at all (AICPA & NC State Poole College of Management).
    • Reduce Lost Productivity for the Enterprise

      • Among small businesses, 76% are still not considering purchasing cyberinsurance in 2021, despite the fact that ransomware attacks alone cost Canadian businesses $5.1 billion in productivity in 2020 (Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2021).

    “31% of CIO’s expected their role to expand and include risk management responsibilities.” (IDG “2021 State of the CIO,” 2021)

    Make integrated risk management sustainable

    58%

    Focus not just on the preventive risk management but also the value-creating opportunities. With 58% of organizations concerned about disruptive technology, it’s an opportunity to take the concern and transform it into innovation. (Accenture)

    70%

    Invest in tools that have data and analytics features. Currently, “gut feelings” or “experience” inform the risk management decisions for 70% of late adopters. (Clear Risk)

    54%

    Align to the strategic vision of the board and CEO, given that these two roles account for 54% of the accountability associated with extended enterprise risk management. (Extended Enterprise Risk Management Survey, 2020,” Deloitte)

    63%

    Include IT leaders in the risk committee to help informed decision making. Currently 63% of chief technology officers are included in the C‑suite risk committee. (AICPA & NC State Poole College of Management)

    Successful adoption of integrated risk management is often associated with these key elements.

    Assessment

    Assess your organization’s method of addressing risk management to determine if integrated risk is possible

    Assessing the organization’s risk maturity

    Mature or not, integrated risk management should be a consideration for all organizations

    The first step to integrating risk management within the enterprise is to understand the organization’s readiness to adopt practices that will enable it to successfully integrate information.

    In 2021, we saw enterprise risk management assessments become one of the most common trends, particularly as a method by which the organization can consolidate the potential impacts of uncertainties or threats (Lawton, 2021). A major driver for this initiative was the recognition that information and technology not only have enterprise-wide impacts on the organization’s risk management but that IT has a critical role in supporting processes that enable effective access to data/information.

    A maturity assessment has several benefits for an organization: It ensures there is alignment throughout the organization on why integrated risk is the right approach to take, it recognizes the organization’s current risk maturity, and it supports the organization in defining where it would like to go.

    Pie chart titled 'Organizational Risk Management Maturity Assessment Results' showing just under half 'Progressing', a third 'Established', a seventh 'Emerging', and a very small portion 'Leading or Aspirational'.

    Integrated Risk Maturity Categories

    Semi-circle with colored points indicating four categories.

    1

    Context & Strategic Direction Understand the organization’s main objectives and how risk can support or enhance those objectives.

    2

    Risk Culture and Authority Examine if risk-based decisions are being made by those with the right level of authority and if the organization’s risk appetite is embedded in the culture.

    3

    Risk Management Process Determine if the current process to identify, assess, respond to, monitor, and report on risks is benefitting the organization.

    4

    Risk Program Optimization Consider opportunities where risk-related data is being gathered, reported, and used to make informed decisions across the enterprise.

    Maturity should inform your approach to risk management

    The outcome of the risk maturity assessment should inform how risk management is approached within the organization.

    A row of waves starting light and small and becoming taller and darker in steps. The levels are 'Non-existent', 'Basic', 'Partially Integrated', 'Mostly Integrated', 'Fully Integrated', and 'Optimized'.

    For organizations with a low maturity, remaining superficial with risk will offer more benefits and align to the enterprise’s risk tolerance and appetite. This might mean no integrated risk is taking place.

    However, organizations that have higher risk maturity should begin to integrate risk information. These organizations can identify the nuances that would affect the severity and impact of risk events.

    Integrated Risk Maturity Assessment

    The purpose of the Integrated Risk Maturity Assessment is to assess the organization's current maturity and readiness for integrated risk management (IRM).

    Frequently and continually assessing your organization’s maturity toward integrated risk ensures the right risk management program can be adopted by your organization.

    Integrated Risk Maturity Assessment

    A simple tool to understand if your organization is ready to embrace integrated risk management by measuring maturity across four key categories: Context & Strategic Direction, Risk Culture & Authority, Risk Management Process, and Risk Program Optimization

    Sample of the Integrated Risk Maturity Assessment deliverable.

    Use the results from this integrated risk maturity assessment to determine the type of risk management program that can and should be adopted by your organization.

    Some organizations will need to remain siloed and focused on IT risk management only, while others will be able to integrate risk-related information to start enabling automatic controls that respond to this data.

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