Analyst Perspective

The key is in anticipation.

“We all encounter unexpected changes and our responses are often determined by how we perceive and understand those changes. We react according to the unexpected occurrence. Business organizations are no different.

When a company faces a major technology disruption in its markets – one that could fundamentally change the business or impact its processes and technology – the way its management perceive and understand the disruption influences how they describe and plan for it. In other words, the way management sets the context of a disruption – the way they frame it – shapes the strategy they adopt. Technology leaders can vastly influence business strategy by adopting a proactive approach to understanding disruptive and innovative technologies by simply adopting a process to review and evaluate technology impacts to the company’s lines of business.”

Troy Cheeseman
Practice Lead, Infrastructure & Operations Research
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• New technology can hit like a meteor. Not only disruptive to IT, technology provides opportunities for organization-wide advantage.
• Your role is endangered. If you don’t prepare for the most disruptive technologies, you could be overshadowed. Don’t let the chief marketing officer (CMO) set the technological innovation agenda.

Common Obstacles

• Predicting the future isn’t easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, predicting which specific technologies will become disruptive is difficult.
• Communication is difficult when the sky is falling. Even forward-looking IT leaders struggle with convincing others to devote time and resources to monitoring technologies with a formal process.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Identify, resolve, and evaluate. Use an annual process as described in this blueprint: a formal evaluation of new technology that turns analysis into action.
• Lead the analysis from IT. Establish a team to carry out the annual process as a cure for the causes of “airline magazine syndrome” and to prevent it from happening in the future.
• Train your team on the patterns of progress, track technology over time in a central database, and read Info-Tech’s analysis of upcoming technology.
• Create your KPIs. Establish your success indicators to create measurable value when presenting to your executive.
• Produce a comprehensive proof-of-concept plan that will allow your company to minimize risk and maximize reward when engaging with new technology.

Info-Tech Insight

Proactively monitoring, evaluating, and exploiting disruptive tech isn’t optional.
This will protect your role, IT’s role, and the future of the organization.

A diverse working group maximizes the insight brought to bear.
An IT background is not a prerequisite.

The best technology is only the best when it brings immediate value.
Good technology might not be ready; ready technology might not be good.

Review

We help IT leaders make the most of disruptive impacts.

This research is designed for:

Target Audience: CIO, CTO, Head of Infrastructure

This research will help you:

• Develop a process for anticipating, analyzing, and exploiting disruptive technology.
• Communicate the business case for investing in disruptive technology.
• Categorize emerging technologies to decide what to do with them.
• Develop a plan for taking action to exploit the technology that will most affect your organization.

Problem statement:

As a CIO, there is a need to move beyond day-to-day technology management with an ever-increasing need to forecast technology impacts. Not just from a technical perspective but to map out the technical understandings aligned to potential business impacts and improvements. Technology transformation and innovation is moving more quickly than ever before and as an innovation champion, the CIO or CTO should have foresight in specific technologies with the understanding of how the company could be disrupted in the near future. Foresight + Current Technology + Business Understanding = Understanding the Business Disruption. This should be a repeatable process, not an exception or reactionary response.

Insight Summary

Establish the core working group, select a leader, and select a group of visionaries to help brainstorm emerging technologies.

The right team matters. A core working group will keep focus through the process and a leader will keep everyone accountable. Visionaries are out-of-the-box thinkers and once they understand how to think like a "futurists," they will drive the longlist and shortlist actions.

Train the group to think like futurists

To keep up with exponential technology growth you need to take a multi-threaded approach.

Brainstorm about creating a better future; begin brainstorming an initial longlist

Establish the longlist. The longlist helps create a holistic view of most technologies that could impact the business. Assigning values and quadrant scoring will shortlist the options and focus your PoC option.

Converge everyone’s longlists

Long to short...that's the short of it. Using SWOT, value readiness, and quadrant mapping review sessions will focus the longlist, creating a shortlist of potential POC candidates to review and consider.

Evaluate the shortlist

There is no such thing as a risk-free endeavor. Use a systematic process to ensure that the risks your organization takes have the potential to produce significant rewards.

Define your PoC list and schedule

Don’t be afraid to fail! Inevitably, some proof-of-concept projects will not benefit the organization. The projects that are successful will more than cover the costs of the failed projects. Roll out small scale and minimize losses.

Finalize, present the plan to stakeholders, and repeat!

Don't forget the C-suite. Effectively communicate and present the working group’s finding with a well-defined and succinct presentation. Start the process again!

1. Identify
   • Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
   • Train the group to think like futurists
   • Hold your initial meeting
2. Resolve

• Create and winnow a longlist
• Assess and create the shortlist

The Key Is in Anticipation!

Use Info-Tech’s approach for analyzing disruptive technology in your own disruptive tech working group

Four key challenges make it essential for you to become a champion for exploiting disruptive technology

1. New technology can hit like a meteor. It doesn’t only disrupt IT; technology provides opportunities for organization-wide advantage.
2. Your role is endangered. If you don’t prepare for the most disruptive technologies, you could be overshadowed. Don’t let the CMO rule technological innovation.
3. Predicting the future isn’t easy. Most IT leaders fail to realize how quickly technology increases in capability. Even for the tech savvy, predicting which specific technologies will become disruptive is difficult.
4. Communication is difficult when the sky is falling. Even forward-looking IT leaders struggle with convincing others to devote time and resources to monitoring emerging technologies with a formal process.

“Look, you have never had this amount of opportunity for innovation. Don’t forget to capitalize on it. If you do not capitalize on it, you will go the way of the dinosaur.”
– Dave Evans, Co-Founder and CTO, Stringify

Technology can hit like a meteor

“ By 2025:

• 38.6 billion smart devices will be collecting, analyzing, and sharing data.
• The web hosting services market is to reach $77.8 billion in 2025.
• 70% of all tech spending is expected to go for cloud solutions.
• There are 1.35 million tech startups.
• Global AI market is expected to reach $89.8 billion.”

– Nick Gabov

IT Disruption

Technology disrupts IT by:

• Affecting the infrastructure and applications that IT needs to use internally.
• Affecting the technology of end users that IT needs to support and deploy, especially for technologies with a consumer focus.
• Allowing IT to run more efficiently and to increase the efficiency of other business units.
• Example: The rise of the smartphone required many organizations to rethink endpoint devices.

Business Disruption

Technology disrupts the business by:

• Affecting the viability of the business.
• Affecting the business’ standing in relation to competitors that better deal with disruptive technology.
• Affecting efficiency and business strategy. IT should have a role in technology-related business decisions.
• Example: BlackBerry failed to anticipate the rise of the apps ecosystem. The company struggled as it was unable to react with competitive products.

Senior IT leaders are expected to predict disruptions to IT and the business, while tending to today’s needs

You are expected to be both a firefighter and a forecaster

• Anticipating upcoming disruptions is part of your job, and you will be blamed if you fail to anticipate future business disruptions because you are focusing on the present.
• However, keeping IT running smoothly is also part of your job, and you will be blamed if today’s IT environment breaks down because you are focusing on the future.

You’re caught between the present and the future

• You don’t have a process that anticipates future disruptions but runs alongside and integrates with operations in the present.
• You can’t do it alone. Tending to both the present and the future will require a team that can help you keep the process running.

Info-Tech Insight

Be prepared when disruptions start coming down, even though it isn’t easy. Use this research to reduce the effort to a simple process that can be performed alongside everyday firefighting.

Make disruptive tech analysis and exploitation part of your innovation agenda

Organizations without high satisfaction with IT innovation leadership are only 20% likely to be highly satisfied with IT

“You rarely see a real-world correlation of .86!”
– Mike Battista, Staff Scientist, Cambridge Brain Sciences, PhD in Measurement

There is a clear relationship between satisfaction with IT and the IT department’s innovation leadership.

Prevent “airline magazine syndrome” by proactively analyzing disruptive technologies

“The last thing the CIO needs is an executive saying ‘I don’t what it is or what it does…but I want two of them!”
– Tim Lalonde

Airline magazine syndrome happens to IT leaders caught between the business and IT. It usually occurs in this manner:

1. While on a flight, a senior executive reads about an emerging technology that has exciting implications for the business in an airline magazine.
2. The executive returns and approaches IT, demanding that action be taken to address the disruptive technology – and that it should have been (ideally) completed already.

Without a Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan:

“I don’t know”

With a Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan:

“Here in IT, we have already considered that technology and decided it was overhyped. Let me show you our analysis and invite you to join our working group.”

OR

“We have already considered that technology and have started testing it. Let me show you our testing lab and invite you to join our working group.”

Info-Tech Insight

Airline magazine syndrome is a symptom of a wider problem: poor CEO-CIO alignment. Solve this problem with improved communication and documentation. Info-Tech’s disruptive tech iterative process will make airline magazine syndrome a thing of the past!

IT leaders who do not keep up with disruptive technology will find their roles diminished

“Today’s CIO dominion is in a decaying orbit with CIOs in existential threat mode.”
– Ken Magee

Protect your role within IT

• IT is threatened by disruptive technology:
  • Trends like cloud services, increased automation, and consumerization reduce the need for IT to be involved in every aspect of deploying and using technology.
  • In the long term, machines will replace even intellectually demanding IT jobs, such as infrastructure admin and high-level planning.
• Protect your role in IT by:
  • Anticipating new technology that will disrupt the IT department and your place within it.
  • Defining new IT roles and responsibilities that accurately reflect the reality of technology today.
  • Having a process for the above that does not diminish your ability to keep up with everyday operations that remain a priority today.

Protect your role against other departments

• Your role in the business is threatened by disruptive technology:
  • The trends that make IT less involved with technology allow other executives – such as the CMO – to make IT investments.
  • As the CMO gains the power and data necessary to embrace new trends, the CIO and IT managers have less pull.
• Protect your role in the business by:
  • Being the individual to consult about new technology. It isn’t just a power play; IT leaders should be the ones who know technology thoroughly.
  • Becoming an indispensable part of the entire business’ innovation strategy through proposing and executing a process for exploiting disruptive technology.

IT leaders who do keep up have an opportunity to solidify their roles as experts and aggregators

“The IT department plays a critical role in [innovation]. What they can do is identify a technology that potentially might introduce improvements to the organization, whether it be through efficiency, or through additional services to constituents.”
– Michael Maguire, Management Consultant

The contemporary CIO is a conductor, ensuring that IT works in harmony with the rest of the business.

The new CIO is a conductor, not a musician. The CIO is taking on the role of a business engineer, working with other executives to enable business innovation.

The new CIO is an expert and an aggregator. Conductor CIOs increasingly need to keep up on the latest technologies. They will rely on experts in each area and provide strategic synthesis to decide if, and how, developments are relevant in order to tune their IT infrastructure.

The pace of technological advances makes progress difficult to predict

“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
– Ray Kurzweil

Technology advances exponentially. Rather than improving by the same amount of capability each year, it multiplies in capability each year.

Think like a futurist to anticipate technology before it goes mainstream.

Exponential growth happens much faster than linear growth, especially when it hits the knee of the curve. Even those who acknowledge exponential growth underestimate how capabilities can improve.

To predict new advances, turn innovation into a process

“We spend 70 percent of our time on core search and ads. We spend 20 percent on adjacent businesses, ones related to the core businesses in some interesting way. Examples of that would be Google News, Google Earth, and Google Local. And then 10 percent of our time should be on things that are truly new.”
– Eric Schmidt, Google

• Don’t get caught in the trap of refining your core processes to the exclusion of innovation. You should always be looking for new processes to improve, new technology to pilot, and where possible, new businesses to get into.
• Devote about 10% of your time and resources to exploring new technology: the potential rewards are huge.

You and your team need to analyze technology every year to predict where it’s going.

Foundational technologies, such as computing power, storage, and networks, are improving exponentially. Disruptive technologies are specific manifestations of foundational advancements. Advancements of greater magnitude give rise to more manifestations; therefore, there will be more disruptive technologies every year. There is a lot of noise to cut through. Remember Google Glasses? As technology becomes ubiquitous and consumerization reigns, everybody is a technology expert. How do you decide which technologies to focus on?

Protect IT and the business from disruption by implementing a simple, repeatable disruptive technology exploitation process

“One of the most consistent patterns in business is the failure of leading companies to stay at the top of their industries when technologies or markets change […] Managers must beware of ignoring new technologies that can’t initially meet the needs of their mainstream customers.”
– Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen

Info-Tech Insight

Use Info-Tech’s tools and templates, along with this storyboard, to walk you through creating and executing an exploitation process in six steps.

Create measurable value by using Info-Tech’s process for evaluating the disruptive potential of technology

No business process is perfect. Use Info-Tech’s Proof of Concept Template to create a disruptive technology proof of concept implementation plan. Harness your company’s internal wisdom to systematically vet new technology. Engage only in calculated risk and maximize potential benefit.

Info-Tech Insight

Inevitably, some proof of concept projects will not benefit the organization. The projects that are successful will more than cover the costs of the failed projects. Roll out small scale and minimize losses.

Establish your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators allow for rigorous analysis, which generates insight into utilization by platform and consumption by business activity.

• Brainstorm metrics that indicate when process improvement is actually taking place.
• Have members of the group pitch KPIs; the facilitator should record each suggestion on a whiteboard.
• Make sure to have everyone justify the inclusion of each metric: how does it relate to the improvement that the proof of concept project is intended to drive? How does it relate to the overall goals of the business?
• Include a list of KPIs, along with a description and a target (ensuring that it aligns with SMART metrics).

Communicate your plan with the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

Use the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template to summarize everything that the group does. Update the report continuously and use it to show others what is happening in the world of disruptive technology.

Whether you need a process for exploiting disruptive technology, or an analysis of current trends, Info-Tech can help

Two sets of research make up Info-Tech’s disruptive technology coverage:

This storyboard, and the associated tools and templates, will walk you through creating a disruptive technology working group of your own.

Blueprint deliverables

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

Key deliverable:

The Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template acts as an implementation plan for developing a long-term strategy for monitoring and implementing disruptive technologies.

Proof of Concept Template

The Proof of Concept Template will guide you through the creation of a minimum-viable proof-of-concept project.

Executive Presentation

The Disruptive Technology Executive Presentation Template will assist you to present an overview of the disruptive technology process, outlining the value to your company.

Disruptive Technology Value Readiness & SWOT Analysis Tool

The Disruptive Technology Value Readiness & SWOT Analysis Tool will assist you to systematize notional evaluations of the value and readiness of potential disruptive technologies.

Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool

The Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool will help you to keep track of the independent research that is conducted by members of the disruptive technology exploitation working group.

Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool

The Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool will help you to codify the results of the disruptive technology working group's longlist winnowing process.

Disruptive Technology Look to the Past Tool

The Disruptive Technology Look to the Past Tool will assist you to collect reasonability test notes when evaluating potential disruptive technologies.

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?

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 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

Exploit Disruptive Infrastructure Technology

Disrupt or be disrupted.

Identify

Create your working group.

PHASE 1

Use Info-Tech’s approach for analyzing disruptive technology in your own disruptive tech working group

1. Identify
   1. Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
   2. Train the group to think like futurists
   3. Hold your initial meeting
2. Resolve
   1. Create and winnow a longlist
   2. Assess and create the shortlist
3. Evaluate
   1. Create process maps
   2. Develop proof of concept charter

The Key Is in Anticipation!

Phase 1: Identify

Create your working group.

Activities:

Step 1.1: Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
Step 1.2: Train the group to think like futurists
Step 1.3: Hold the initial meeting

This step involves the following participants:

IT Infrastructure Manager

CIO or CTO

Potential members and visionaries of the working group

Outcomes of this step:

• Establish a team of subject matter experts that will evaluate new, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies.
• Establish a process for including visionaries from outside of the working group who will provide insight and direction.
• Introduce the core working group members.
• Gain a better understanding of how technology advances.
• Brainstorm a list of organizational processes.
• Brainstorm an initial longlist.

Step 1.1

Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries.

Activities:

• Articulate the long- and short-term benefits and costs to the entire organization
• Gain support by articulating the long- and short-term benefits and costs to the IT department
• Gain commitment from key stakeholders and executives
• Help stakeholders understand what goes into formally exploiting disruptive tech by reviewing this process
• Establish the core working group and select a leader
• Create a schedule with a time commitment appropriate to your organization’s size; it doesn’t need to take long
• Select a group of visionaries external to IT to help the working group brainstorm disruptive technologies

This step involves the following participants:

• IT Infrastructure Manager
• CIO or CTO
• Potential members and visionaries of the working group

Outcomes of this step

• Establish a team of subject matter experts that will evaluate new, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies.
• Establish a process for including visionaries from outside of the working group that will provide insight and direction.

1.1.A Articulate the long- and short-term benefits and costs to the entire organization

A cost/benefit analysis will give stakeholders a picture of how disruptive technology could affect the business. Use the chart as a starting point and customize it based on your organization.

1.1.B Gain support by articulating the long- and short-term benefits and costs to the IT department

A cost/benefit analysis will give stakeholders a picture of how disruptive technology could affect the business. Use the chart as a starting point and customize it based on your organization.

1.1.C Gain commitment from key stakeholders and executives

Gaining approval from executives and key stakeholders is the final obstacle. Ensure that you cover the following items to have the best chance for project approval.

• Use a sample deck similar to this section for gaining buy-in, ensuring that you add/remove information to make it specific to your organization. Cover this section, including:
  • Who: Who will lead the team and who will be on it (working group)?
  • What: What resources will be required by the team (costs)?
  • Where/When: How often and where will the team meet (meeting schedule)?
  • Why: Why is there a need to exploit disruptive technology (benefits and examples)?
  • How: How is the team going to exploit disruptive technology (the process)?
• Go through this blueprint prior to presenting the plan to stakeholders so that you have a strong understanding of the details behind each process and tool.
• Frame the first iteration of the cycle as a pilot program. Use the completed results of the pilot to establish exploiting disruptive technology as a necessary company initiative.

Insert the resources required by the disruptive tech exploitation team into Section 1.5 of the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template. Have executives sign-off on the project in Section 1.6.

Disruption has undermined some of the most successful tech companies

“The IT department plays a critical role in [innovation]. What they can do is identify a technology that potentially might introduce improvements to the organization, whether it be through efficiency or through additional services to constituents.”
- Michael Maguire, Management Consultant

VoIP’s transformative effects

Disruptive technology:
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a modern means of making phone calls through the internet by sending voice packets using data, as opposed to the traditional circuit transmissions of the PSTN.

Who won:
Organizations that realized the cost savings that VoIP provided for businesses with a steady internet connection saved as much as 60% on telephony expenses. Even in the early stages, with a few more limitations, organizations were able to save a significant amount of money and the technology has continued to improve.

Who lost?
Telecom-related companies that failed to realize VoIP was a potential threat to their market, and organizations that lacked the ability to explore and implement the disruptive technology early.

Digital photography — the new norm

Disruptive technology:
Digital photography refers to the storing of photographs in a digital format, as opposed to traditional photography, which exposes light to sensitive photographic film.

Who won:
Photography companies and new players that exploited the evolution of data storage and applied it to photography succeeded. Those that were able to balance providing traditional photography and exploiting and introducing digital photography, such as Nikon, left competitors behind. Smartphone manufacturers also benefited by integrating digital cameras.

Who lost?
Photography companies, such as Kodak, that failed to respond to the digital revolution found themselves outcompeted and insolvent.

1.1.D Help stakeholders understand what goes into formally exploiting disruptive tech by reviewing this process

There are five steps to formally exploiting disruptive technology, each with its own individual outputs and tools to take analysis to the next level.

Info-Tech Insight

Before going to stakeholders, complete the entire blueprint to better understand the tools and outputs of the process.

1.1.E Establish the core working group and select a leader

• Selecting your core membership for the working group is a critical step to the group’s success. Ensure that you satisfy the following criteria:
  • This is a team of subject matter experts. They will be overseeing the learning and piloting of disruptive technologies. Their input will also be valuable for senior executives and for implementing these technologies.
  • Choose members that can take time away from firefighting tasks to dedicate time to meetings.
  • It may be necessary to reach outside of the organization now or in the future for expertise on certain technologies. Use Info-Tech as a source of information.

• Once the team is established, you must decide who will lead the group. Ensure that you satisfy the following criteria:
  • A leader should be credible, creative, and savvy in both technology and business.
  • The leader should facilitate, acting as both an expert and an aggregator of the information gathered by the team.

Choose a compelling name

The working group needs a name. Be sure to select one with a positive connotation within your organization.

Section 1.3 of the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

1.1.F Create a schedule with a time commitment appropriate to your organization’s size; it doesn’t need to take long

Time the disruptive technology working group’s meetings to coincide and integrate with your organization’s strategic planning — at least annually.

“Regardless of size, it’s incumbent upon every organization to have some familiarity of what’s happening over the next few years, [and to try] to anticipate what some of those trends may be. […] These trends are going to accelerate IT’s importance in terms of driving business strategy.”
– Vern Brownell, CEO, D-Wave

Section 1.4 of the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

1.1.G Select a group of visionaries external to IT to help the working group brainstorm disruptive technologies

Selecting advisors for your group is an ongoing step, and the roster can change.

Ensure that you satisfy the following criteria:

• Look beyond IT to select a team representing several business units.
• Check for self-professed “geeks” and fans of science fiction that may be happy to join.
• Membership can be a reward for good performance.

This group does not have to meet as regularly as the core working group. Input from external advisors can occur between meetings. You can also include them on every second or third iteration of the entire process.

However, the more input you can get into the group, the more innovative it can become.

“It is … important to develop design fictions based on engagement with directly or indirectly implicated publics and not to be designed by experts alone.”
– Emmanuel Tsekleves, Senior Lecturer in Design Interactions, University of Lancaster

Section 1.3 of the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

The following case study illustrates the innovative potential that is created when you include a diverse group of people

INDUSTRY - Chip Manufacturing
SOURCE - Clayton Christensen, Intel

To achieve insight, you need to collaborate with people from outside of your department.

Challenge

• Headquartered in California, through the 1990s, Intel was the largest microprocessor chip manufacturer in the world, with revenue of $25 billion in 1997.
• All was not perfect, however. Intel faced a challenge from Cyrix, a manufacturer of low-end chips. In 18 months, Cyrix’s share of the low-margin entry-level chip manufacturing business mushroomed from 10% to 70%.

Solution

• Troubled by the potential for significant disruption of the microprocessor market, Intel brought in external consultants to hold workshops to educate managers about disruptive innovation.
• Managers would break into groups and discuss ways Intel could facilitate the disruption of its competitors. In one year, Intel hosted 18 workshops, and 2,000 managers went through the process.

Results

• Intel launched the Celeron chip to serve the lower end of the PC market and win market share back from Cyrix (which no longer exists as an independent company) and other competitors like AMD.
• Within one year, Intel had captured 35% of the market.

“[The models presented in the workshops] gave us a common language and a common way to frame the problem so that we could reach a consensus around a counterintuitive course of action.” – Andy Grove, then-CEO, Intel Corporation

Phase 1: Identify

Create your working group.

Activities:

Step 1.1: Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
Step 1.2: Train the group to think like futurists
Step 1.3: Hold the initial meeting

This step involves the following participants:

• IT Infrastructure Manager
• CIO or CTO
• Potential members and visionaries of the working group

Outcomes of this phase:

• Establish a team of subject matter experts that will evaluate new, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies.
• Establish a process for including visionaries from outside of the working group who will provide insight and direction.
• Introduce the core working group members.
• Gain a better understanding of how technology advances.
• Brainstorm a list of organizational processes.
• Brainstorm an initial longlist.

Step 1.2

Train the group to think like futurists

Activities:

1. Look to the past to predict the future:
   • Step 1: Review the technology opportunities you missed
   • Step 2: Review and record what you liked about the tech
   • Step 3: Review and record your dislikes
   • Step 4: Record and test the reasonability
2. Crash course on futurology principles
3. Peek into the future

This step involves the following participants:

• IT Infrastructure Manager
• CIO or CTO
• Core working group members
• Visionaries

Outcomes of this step

• Team members thinking like futurists
• Better understanding of how technology advances
• List of past examples and characteristics

Info-Tech Insight

Business buy-in is essential. Manage your business partners by providing a summary of the EDIT methodology and process. Validate the process value, which will allow you create a team of IT and business representatives.

1.2 Train the group to think like futurists

1 hour

Ensure the team understands how technology advances and how they can identify patterns in upcoming technologies.

1. Lead the group through a brainstorming session.
2. Follow the next phases and steps.
3. This session should be led by someone who can facilitate a thought-provoking discussion.
4. This training deck finishes with a video.

Input

• Facilitated creativity
• Training deck [following slides]

Output

• Inspiration
• Anonymous ideas

Materials

• Futurist training “steps”
• Pen and paper

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries
• Facilitator

1.2.A Look to the past to predict the future

30 minutes

Use the Disruptive Technology Research Look to the Past Tool to record your output.

Input

• Facilitated creativity
• Speaker’s notes

Output

• Inspiration
• Anonymous ideas
• Recorded missed opportunities
• Recorded positive points
• Recorded dislikes
• Reasonability test list

Materials

• Futurist training “steps”
• Pen and paper
• “Look to the Past” tool

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries
• Facilitator

Understand how the difference between linear and exponential growth will completely transform many organizations in the next decade

“The last ten years have seen exponential growth in research on disruptive technologies and their impact on industries, supply chains, resources, training, education and employment markets … The debate is still open on who will be the winners and losers of future industries, but what is certain is that change has picked up pace and we are now in a new technology revolution whose impact is potentially greater than the industrial revolution.”
– Gary L. Evans

Exponential advancement will ensure that life in the next decade will be very different from life today.

• Linear growth happens one step at a time.
• The difference between linear and exponential is hard to notice, at first.
• We are now at the knee of the curve.

What about email?

• Consider the amount of email you get daily
• Double it
• Triple it

Exponential growth happens much faster than linear growth, especially when it hits the knee of the curve. Technology grows exponentially, and we are approaching the knee of the curve.

This graph is adapted from research by Ray Kurzweil.

Growth: Linear vs. Exponential

1.2.B Crash course on futurology principles

1 hour

“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
- Ray Kurzweil

Review the differences between exponential and linear growth

The pace of technological advances makes progress difficult to predict.

Technology advances exponentially. Rather than improving by the same amount of capability each year, it multiplies in capability each year.

Think like a futurist to anticipate technology before it goes mainstream.

Exponential growth happens much faster than linear growth, especially when it hits the knee of the curve. Even those who acknowledge exponential growth underestimate how capabilities can improve.

The following case study illustrates the rise of social media providers

“There are 7.7 billion people in the world, with at least 3.5 billion of us online. This means social media platforms are used by one in three people in the world and more than two-thirds of all internet users.”
– Esteban Ortiz-Ospina

The following case study illustrates the rapid growth of Machine to Machine (M2M) connections

Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns

“Ray Kurzweil has been described as ‘the restless genius’ by The Wall Street Journal, and ‘the ultimate thinking machine’ by Forbes. He was ranked #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States by Inc Magazine, calling him the ‘rightful heir to Thomas Edison,’ and PBS included Ray as one of 16 ‘revolutionaries who made America,’ along with other inventors of the past two centuries.”
Source: KurzweilAI.net

Growth is linear?

“Information technology is growing exponentially. That’s really my main thesis, and our intuition about the future is not exponential, it’s really linear. People think things will go at the current pace …1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 30 steps later, you’re at 30.”

Better IT strategy enables future business innovation

“The reality of information technology like computers, like biological technologies now, is it goes exponentially … 2, 4, 8, 16. At step 30, you’re at a billion, and this is not an idle speculation about the future.” [emphasis added]

“When I was a student at MIT, we all shared a computer that cost tens of millions of dollars. This computer [pulling his smartphone out of his pocket] is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more powerful — that’s a billion-fold increase in MIPS per dollar, bits per dollar… and we’ll do it again in 25 years.”
Source: “IT growth and global change: A conversation with Ray Kurzweil,” McKinsey & Company

1.2.C Peak into the future

1 hour

Leverage industry roundtables and trend reports to understand the art of the possible

• Uncover important business and industry trends that can inform possibilities for technology disruption.
• Market research is critical in identifying factors external to your organization and identifying technology innovation that will provide a competitive edge. It’s important to evaluate the impact each trend or opportunity will have in your organization and market.

Visit Info-Tech’s Trends & Priorities Research Center

Visit Info-Tech’s Industry Coverage Research to get started.

Phase 1: Identify

Create your working group

Activities:

Step 1.1: Establish the core working group and select a leader; select a group of visionaries
Step 1.2: Train the group to think like futurists
Step 1.3: Hold the initial meeting

This step involves the following participants:

• IT Infrastructure Manager
• CIO or CTO
• Potential members and visionaries of the working group

Outcomes of this phase:

• Establish a team of subject matter experts that will evaluate new, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies.
• Establish a process for including visionaries from outside of the working group who will provide insight and direction.
• Introduce the core working group members.
• Gain a better understanding of how technology advances.
• Brainstorm a list of organizational processes.
• Brainstorm an initial longlist.

Info-Tech Insight

Establish the longlist. The longlist help create a holistic view of most technologies that could impact the business. Assigning values and quadrant scoring will shortlist the options and focus your PoC option.

Step 1.3

Hold the initial meeting

Activities:

1. Create an agenda for the meeting
2. Start the kick-off meeting with introductions and a recap
3. Brainstorm about creating a better future
4. Begin brainstorming an initial longlist
5. Have team members develop separate longlists for their next meeting

This step involves the following participants:

• IT Infrastructure Manager
• CIO or CTO
• Core working group members
• Visionaries

Outcomes of this step

• Introduce the core working group members
• Gain a better understanding of how technology advances
• Brainstorm a list of organizational processes
• Brainstorm an initial longlist

1.3.A Create an agenda for the meeting

1 hour

Kick-off this cycle of the disruptive technology process by welcoming your visionaries and introducing your core working group.

The purpose of the initial meeting is to brainstorm where new technology will be the most disruptive within the organization. You’ll develop two longlists: one of business processes and one of disruptive technology. These longlists are in addition to the independent research your core working group will perform before Phase 2.

• Find an outgoing facilitator. Sitting back will let you focus more on ideating, and an engaging presenter will help bring out ideas from your visionaries.
• The training deck (see step 1.2c) includes presenting a video. We’ve included some of our top choices for you to choose from.
  • Feel free to find your own video or bring in a keynote speaker.
  • The object of the video is to get the group thinking about the future.
  • Customize the training deck as needed.
• If a cycle has been completed, present your findings and all of the group’s completed deliverables in the first section.
• This session is the only time you have with your visionaries. Get their ideas on what technologies will be disruptive to start forming a longlist.

Info-Tech Insight

The disruptive tech team is prestigious. If your organization is large enough or has the resources, consider having this meeting in an offsite location. This will drive excitement to join the working group if the opportunity arises and incentivize good work.

Info-Tech Insight

The disruptive tech team is prestigious. If your organization is large enough or has the resources, consider having this meeting in an offsite location. This will drive excitement to join the working group if the opportunity arises and incentivize good work.

1.3.B Start the kick-off meeting with introductions and a summary of what work has been done so far

30 minutes

1. Start the meeting off with an icebreaker activity. This isn’t an ordinary business meeting – or even group – so we recommend starting off with an activity that will emphasize this unique nature. To get the group in the right mindset, try this activity:
   1. Go around the group and have people present:
   2. Their names and roles
   3. Pose some or all of the following questions/prompts to the group:
      • “Tell me about something you have created.”
      • “Tell me about a time you created a process or program considered risky.”
      • “Tell me about a situation in which you had to come up with several new ideas in a hurry. Were they accepted? Were they successful?”
      • “Tell me about a time you took a risk.”
      • “Tell me about one of your greatest failures and what you learned from it.”
2. Once everyone has been introduced, present any work that has already been completed.
   1. If you have already completed a cycle, give a summary of each technology that you investigated and the results from any piloting.
   2. If this is the first cycle for the working group, present the information decided in Step 1.1.

Input

• Disruptive technology exploitation plan

Output

• Networking
• Brainstorming

Materials

• Meeting agenda

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries
• Facilitator

1.3.C Brainstorm about creating a better future for the company, the stakeholders, and the employees

30 minutes

1. Have everyone put up at least two ideas for each chart paper.
2. Go around the room and discuss their ideas. You may generate some new ideas here.

These generated ideas are organizational processes that can be improved or disrupted with emerging technologies. This list will be referenced throughout Phases 2 and 3.

Input

• Inspiration
• Anonymous ideas

Output

• List of processes

Materials

• Chart paper and markers
• Pen and paper

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries

1.3.D Begin brainstorming a longlist of future technology, and discuss how these technologies will impact the business

30 minutes

• Use the Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool to organize technologies and ideas. Longstanding working groups can track technologies here over the course of several years, updating the tool between meetings.
• Guide the discussion with the following questions, and make sure to focus on the processes generated from Step 1.2.d.

Focus on

The Technology

• What is the technology and what does it do?
• What processes can it support?

Experts and Other Organizations

• What are the vendors saying about the technology?
• Are similar organizations implementing the technology?

Your Organization

• Is the technology ready for wide-scale distribution?
• Can the technology be tested and implemented now?

The Technology’s Value

• Is there any indication of the cost of the technology?
• How much value will the technology bring?

Download the Disruptive Technology Database Tool

Input

• Inspiration
• List of processes

Output

• Initial longlist

Materials

• Chart paper and markers
• Pen and paper
• Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries

1.3.E Explore these sources to generate your disruptive technology longlist for the next meeting

30 Minutes

There are many sources of information on new and emerging technology. Explore as many sources as you can.

Science fiction is a valid source of learning. It drives and is influenced by disruptive technology.

“…the inventor of the first liquid-fuelled rocket … was inspired by H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds (1898). More recent examples include the 3D gesture-based user interface used by Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report (2002), which is found today in most touch screens and the motion sensing capability of Microsoft’s Kinect. Similarly, the tablet computer actually first appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the communicator – which we’ve come to refer today as the mobile phone – was first used by Captain Kirk in Star Trek (1966).”
– Emmanuel Tsekleves, senior lecturer, University of Lancaster

Right sources: blogs, tech news sites, tech magazines, the tech section of business sites, popular science books about technology, conferences, trade publications, and vendor announcements

Quantity over quality: early research is not the time to dismiss ideas.

Discuss with your peers: spark new and innovative ideas

Insert a brief summary of how independent research is conducted in Section 2.1 of the Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template.

1.3.E (Cont.) Explore these sources to generate your disruptive technology longlist for the next meeting

30 Minutes

There are many sources of information on new and emerging technology. Use this list to kick-start your search.

• Technology journalists and bloggers are often on top of disruptive technologies and trends. Some sources we used for compiling our longlist include:
  • Ars Technica
  • Singularity Hub
  • Singularity Weblog
  • KurzweilAI
  • TechRepublic / Innovation
  • Transforming Network Infrastructure
  • r/Futurology
  • WIRED
• Vendors are also a valuable source of information, especially if they host webinars or publish whitepapers.
• Explore different academic organizations such as the IEEE and the Association of Computing Machinery.

Connect with practitioners that are worth their weight in Reddit gold. Check out topic-based LinkedIn groups and subreddits such as r/sysadmin and r/tech. People experienced with technology frequent these groups.

YouTube is for more than cat videos. Many vendors use YouTube for distributing their previous webinars. There are also videos showcasing various technologies that are uploaded by lecturers, geeks, researchers, and other technology enthusiasts.

Test your reasonability. Check your “Think Like a Futurist” Tool

Resolve

Evaluate Disruptive Technologies

PHASE 2

Phase 2: Resolve

Evaluate disrupted technologies

Activities:

Step 2.1: Create and Winnow a Longlist
Step 2.2: Assess Shortlist

Info-Tech Insight

Long to short … that’s the short of it. Using SWOT, value readiness, and quadrant mapping review sessions will focus the longlist, creating a shortlist of potential PoC candidates to review and consider.

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Infrastructure Management

Outcomes of this step:

• Finalized longlist
• Finalized shortlist
• Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist

Step 2.1

Create and winnow a longlist

Activities:

1. Converge everyone’s longlists
2. Narrow technologies from the longlist down to a shortlist using Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool
3. Use the shortlisting tool to help participants visualize the potential
4. Input the technologies on your longlist into the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool to produce a shortlist

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group members

Outcomes of this step:

• Finalized longlist
• Finalized shortlist
• Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist

2.1 Organize a meeting with the core working group to combine your longlists and create a shortlist

1 hour

Plan enough time to talk about each technology on the list. Each technology was included for a reason.

• Start with the longlist. Review the longlist compiled at the initial meeting, and then have everyone present the lists that they independently researched.
• Focus on the company’s context. Make sure that the working group analyzes these disruptive technologies in the context of the organization.
• Start to compile the shortlist. Begin narrowing down the longlist by excluding technologies that are not relevant.

Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template

2.1.A Converge the longlists developed by your team

90 minutes

• Start with the longlist developed at the initial meeting. Write this list on the whiteboard.
• If applicable, have a member present the longlist that was created in the last cycle. Remove technologies that:
  • Are no longer disruptive (e.g. have been implemented or rejected).
  • Have become foundational.
• Eliminate redundancy: remove items that are very similar.
• Have members “pitch” items on their lists:
  • Explain why their technologies will be disruptive (2-5 minutes maximum)
  • Add new technologies to the whiteboard
• Record the following for metrics:
  • Each presented technology
  • Reasons the technology could be disruptive
  • Source of the information
• Use Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool as a starting point.

Insert the final longlist into Section 2.2 of your Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template.

Input

• Longlist developed at first meeting
• Independent research
• Previous longlist

Output

• Finalized longlist

Materials

• Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool
• Whiteboard and markers
• Virtual whiteboard

Participants

• Core working group

Review the list of processes that were brainstormed by the visionary group, and ask for input from others

• IT innovation is most highly valued by the C-suite when it improves business processes, reduces costs, and improves core products and services.
• By incorporating this insight into your working group’s analysis, you help to attract the attention of senior management and reinforce the group’s necessity.
• Any input you can get from outside of IT will help your group understand how technology can be disruptive.
  • Visionaries consulted in Phase 1 are a great source for this insight.
• The list of processes that they helped to brainstorm in Step 1.2 reflects processes that can be impacted by technology.
• Info-Tech’s research has shown time and again that both CEOs and CIOs want IT to innovate around:
  • Improving business processes
  • Improving core products and services
  • Reducing costs

N=364 CXOs & CIOs from the CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic Questions were asked on a 7-point scale of 1 = Not at all to 7 = Very strongly. Results are displayed as percentage of respondents selecting 6 or 7.

Info-Tech Insight

The disruptive tech team is prestigious. If your organization is large enough or has the resources, consider having this meeting in an offsite location. This will drive excitement to join the working group if the opportunity arises and incentivize good work.

2.1.B Narrow technologies from the longlist down to a shortlist using Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool

90 minutes

To decide which technology has potential for your organization, have the working group or workshop participants evaluate each technology:

1. Record each potentially disruptive technology in the longlist on a whiteboard.
2. Making sure to carefully consider the meaning of the terms, have each member of the group evaluate each technology as “high” or “low” along each of the axes, innovation and transformation, on a piece of paper.
3. The facilitator collects each piece of paper and inputs the results by technology into the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool.

Insert the final shortlist into Section 2.2 of your Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template.

Input

• Longlist
• Futurist brainstorming

Output

• Shortlist

Materials

• Disruptive Technology Research Database Tool
• Whiteboard and markers
• Virtual whiteboard

Participants

• Core working group

Disruptive technologies are innovative and transformational

Info-Tech Insight

Technology can be transformational but not innovative. Not every new technology is disruptive. Even where technology has improved the efficiency of the business, if it does this in an incremental way, it might not be worth exploring using this storyboard.

2.1.C Use the shortlisting tool to help participants visualize the potential

1 hour

Use the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool, tabs 2 and 3.

Assign quadrants

• Input group members’ names and the entire longlist (up to 30 technologies) into tab 2 of the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool.
• On tab 3 of the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool, input the quadrant number that corresponds to the innovation and transformation scores each participant has assigned to each technology.

Note

This is an assessment meant to serve as a guide. Use discretion when moving forward with a proof-of-concept project for any potentially disruptive technology.

2.1.D Use the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool to produce a shortlist

1 hour

Use the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool, tabs 3 and 4.

Use the populated matrix and the discussion list to arrive at a shortlist of four to six potentially disruptive technologies.

• The tool populates each quadrant based on how many votes it received in the voting exercise.
• Technologies selected for a particular quadrant by a majority of participants are placed in the quadrant on the graph. Where there was no consensus, the technology is placed in the discussion list.
• Technologies in the upper right quadrant – high transformation and high innovation – are more likely to be good candidates for a proof-of-concept project. Those in the bottom left are likely to be poor candidates, while those in the remaining quadrants are strong on one of the axes and are unlikely candidates for further systematic evaluation.

Input the results of the vote into tab 3 of the Disruptive Technology Shortlisting Tool.

View the results on tab 4.

Phase 2: Resolve

Evaluate disrupted technologies

Activities:

Step 2.1: Create and Winnow a Longlist
Step 2.2:- Assess Shortlist

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Infrastructure Management

Outcomes of this step:

• Finalized longlist
• Finalized shortlist
• Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist

Assess Shortlist

Activities:

1. Assess the value of each technology to your organization by breaking it down into quality and cost
2. Investigate the overall readiness of the technologies on the shortlist
3. Interpret each technology’s value score
4. Conduct a SWOT analysis for each technology on the shortlist
5. Use Info-Tech’s disruptive technology shortlist analysis to visualize the tool’s outputs
6. Select the shortlisted technologies you would like to move forward with

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group members
• IT Management

Outcomes of this step:

• Finalized shortlist
• Initial analysis of each technology on the shortlist

2.2 Evaluate technologies based on their value and readiness, and conduct a SWOT analysis for each one

Use the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool

• A technology monitor diagram prioritizes investment in technology by analyzing its readiness and value.
  • Readiness: how close the technology is to being practical and implementable in your industry and organization.
  • Value: how worthwhile the technology is, in terms of its quality and its cost.
• Value and readiness questionnaires are included in the tool to help determine current and future values for each, and the next four slides explain the ratings further.
• Categorize technology by its value-readiness score, and evaluate how much potential value each technology has and how soon your company can realize that value.
• Use a SWOT analysis to qualitatively evaluate the potential that each technology has for your organization in each of the four categories (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).

The technology monitor diagram appears in tab 9 of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool

2.2.A Assess the value of each technology to your organization by breaking it down into quality and cost

1 hour

Update the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool, tab 4.

Populate the chart to produce a score for each technology’s overall value to the company conceptualized as the interaction of quality and cost.

The value assessment is part of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool

Info-Tech Insight

Watch your costs: Technology that seems cheap at first can actually be expensive over time. Be sure to account for operational and opportunity costs as well.

2.2.B Investigate the overall readiness of the technologies on the shortlist

1 hour

Update the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool, tab 4.

Overall Readiness

Age

How much time has the technology had to mature? Older technology is more likely to be ready for adoption.

Venture Capital

The amount of venture capital gathered by important firms in the space is an indicator of market faith.

Market Size

How big is the market for the technology? It is more difficult to break into a giant market than a niche market.

Market Players

Have any established vendors (Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc.) thrown their weight behind the technology?

Fragmentation

A large number of small companies in the space indicates that the market has yet to reach equilibrium.

The readiness assessment is part of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool

Use a variety of sources to populate the chart

Google is your friend: search each shortlisted technology to find details about its development and important vendors.

Websites like Crunchbase, VentureBeat, and Mashable are useful sources for information on the companies involved in a space and the amount of money they have each raised.

2.2.C Interpret each technology’s value score

1 hour

Insert the result of the SWOT analysis into tab 7 of Info-Tech’s Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool.

Visualize the results of the quality-cost analysis

• Quality and cost are independently significant; it is essential to understand how each technology stacks up on the axes.
• Use tab 6 of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool for an illustration of how quality and cost interact to produce each technology’s final position on the tech monitor graph.
• Remember: the score is notional and reflects the values that you have assigned. Be sure to treat it accordingly.

Green represents a technology that scores extremely high on one axis or the other, or quite high on both. These technologies are the best candidates for proof-of-concept projects from a value perspective.

Red represents a technology that has scored very low on both axes. These technologies will be expensive, time consuming, and of poor quality.

Yellow represents the fuzzy middle ground. These technologies score moderately on both axes. Be especially careful when considering the SWOT analysis of these technologies.

2.2.D Conduct a SWOT analysis for each technology on the shortlist

1 hour

Use tab 6 of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool.

A formal process for analyzing disruptive technology is the only way to ensure that it is taken seriously.

Write each technology as a heading on a whiteboard. Spend 10-15 minutes on each technology conducting a SWOT analysis together.

Consider four categories for each technology:

• Strengths: Current uses of the technology or supporting technology and ways in which it helps your organization.
• Weaknesses: Current limitations of the technology and challenges or barriers to adopting it in your organization.
• Opportunities: Potential uses of the technology, especially as it advances or improves.
• Threats: Potential negative disruptions resulting from the technology, especially as it advances or improves.

The list of processes generated at the cycle’s initial meeting is a great source for opportunities and threats.

Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool

2.2.E Use Info-Tech’s disruptive technology shortlist analysis to visualize the tool’s outputs

1 hour

Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool, tab 9

The tool’s final tab displays the results of the value-readiness analysis and the SWOT analysis in a single location.

Insert the shortlist analysis report into Section 3 of your Disruptive Technology Exploitation Plan Template.

2.2.F Select the shortlisted technologies you would like to move forward with

1 hour

Present your findings to the working group.

• The Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool aggregates your inputs in an easy-to-read, consistent way.
• Present the tool’s outputs to members of the core working group.
• Explain the scoring and present the graphic to the group. Go over each technology’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats it presents/poses to the organization.
• Go through the proof-of-concept planning phase before striking any technologies from the list.

Info-Tech Insight

A technology’s exceptional value and immediate usability make it the best. A technology can be promising and compelling, but it is unsuitable unless it can bring immediate and exceptional value to your organization. Don’t get caught up in the hype.

Evaluate

Create an Action Plan to Exploit Disruptive Technologies

PHASE 3

Phase 3: Evaluate

Create an Action Plan to Exploit Disruptive Technologies

Activities:

Step 3.1: Create Process Maps
Step 3.2: Develop Proof of Concept Charter

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Infrastructure Management
• Working group leader
• CIO

Outcomes of this step:

• Business process maps before and after disruption
• Proof of concept charter
• Key performance indicators
• Estimation of required resources

Step 3.1

Create Process Maps

Activities:

1. Creating a problem canvas by identifying stakeholders, jobs, pains, and gains
2. Clarify the problem the proof-of-concept project will solve
3. Identify jobs and stakeholders
4. Outline how disruptive technology will solve the problem
5. Map business processes
6. Identify affected business units
7. Outline and map the business processes likely to be disrupted
8. Recognize how the new technology will impact business processes
9. Make the case: Outline why the new business process is superior to the old

This step involves the following participants:

• Working group leader
• CIO

Outcomes of this step:

• Business process maps before and after disruption

3.1 Create an action plan to exploit disruptive technologies

Clarify the problem in order to make the case. Fill in section 1.1 of Info-Tech’s Proof of Concept Template to clearly outline the problem each proof of concept is designed to solve.

Establish roles and responsibilities. Use section 1.2 of the template to outline the roles and responsibilities that fall to each member of the team. Ensure that clear lines of authority are delineated and that the list of stakeholders is exhaustive: include the executives whose input will be required for project approval, all the way to the technicians on the frontline responsible for implementing it.

Outline the solution to the problem. Demonstrate how each proof-of-concept project provides a solution to the problem outlined in section 1.1. Be sure to clarify what makes the particular technology under investigation a potential solution and record the results in section 1.3.

Use the Proof of Concept Project Template to track the information you gather throughout Phase 3.

3.1.A Creating a problem canvas by identifying stakeholders, jobs, pains, and gains

2 hours

Instructions:

1. On a whiteboard, draw the visual canvas supplied below.
2. Select your issue area, and list jobs, pains, and gains in the associated sections.
3. Record the pains, jobs, and gains in sections 1.1-1.3 of the Proof of Concept Template.

Gains

1. More revenue

2. Job security

3. ……

Jobs

1. Moving product

2. Per sale value

3. ……

Pains

1. Clunky website

2. Bad site navigation

3. ……

Input

• Inspiration
• Anonymous ideas

Output

• List of processes

Materials

• Chart paper and markers
• Pen and paper

Participants

• Core working group
• Visionaries

3.1.B Clarify the problem the proof-of-concept project will solve

2 hours

What is the problem?

• Every technology is designed to solve a problem faced by somebody somewhere. For each technology that your team has decided to move forward with, identify and clearly state the problem it would solve.
• A clear problem statement is a crucial part of a new technology’s business case. It is impossible to earn buy-in from the rest of the organization without demonstrating the necessity of a solution.
• Perfection is impossible to achieve: during the course of their work, everyone encounters pain points. Identify those pain points to arrive at the problem that needs to be solved.

Example:

List of pains addressed by conversational commerce:

• Search functions can be clunky and unresponsive.
• Corporate websites can be difficult to navigate.
• Customers are uncomfortable in unfamiliar internet environments.
• Customers do not like waiting in a long queue to engage with customer service representatives when they have concerns.

“If I were given one hour to solve a problem, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”
– Albert Einstein

Input the results of this exercise into Section 1.1 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.1.C Identify jobs and stakeholders

1 hour

Jobs

Job: Anything that the “customer” (the target of the solution) needs to get done but that is complicated by a pain.

Examples:
The job of the conversational commerce interface is to make selling products easier for the company.
From the customer perspective, the job of the conversational interface is to make the act of purchasing a product simpler and easier.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder: Anyone who is impacted by the new technology and who will end up using, approving, or implementing it.

Examples:
The executive is responsible for changing the company’s direction and approving investment in a new sales platform.
The IT team is responsible for implementing the new technology.
Marketing will be responsible for selling the change to customers.
Customers, the end users, will be the ones using the conversational commerce user interface.

Input the results of this exercise into Section 1.2 of the Proof of Concept Template.

Info-Tech Insight

Process deconstruction reveals strengths and weaknesses. Promising technology should improve stakeholders’ abilities to do jobs.

3.1.D Outline how disruptive technology will solve the problem

1 hour

How will the technology in question make jobs easier?

• How will the disruptive technology you have elected to move forward with create gains for the organization?
• First, identify the gains that are supposed to come with the project. Consider the benefits that the various stakeholders expect to derive from the jobs identified.
• Second, make note of how the technology in question facilitates the gains you have noted. Be sure to articulate the exclusive features of the new technology that make it an improvement over the current state.

Note: The goal of this exercise is to make the case for a particular technology. Sell it!

Expected Gain: Increase in sales.

Conversational Commerce’s Contribution: Customers are more likely to purchase products using interfaces they are comfortable with.

Expected Gain: Decrease in costs.

Conversational Commerce’s Contribution: Customers who are satisfied with the conversational interface are less likely to interact with live agents, saving labor costs.

Input the results of this exercise into Section 1.3 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.1.E Map business processes

1 hour

Map the specific business processes the new technology will impact.

• Disruptive technologies will impact a wide variety of business processes.
• Map business processes to visualize what parts of your organization (departments, silos, divisions) will be impacted by the new technology, should it be adopted after the proof of concept.
• Identify how the disruption will take place.
• Demonstrate the value of each technology by including the results of the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool with your process map.

Use the Proof of Concept Project Template to track the information you gather throughout Phase 3.

3.1.F Identify affected business units

30 minutes per technology

Disruptive technology will impact business units.

• Using the stakeholders identified earlier in the project, map each technology to the business units that will be affected.
• Make your list exhaustive. While some technologies will have a limited impact on the business as a whole, others will have ripple effects throughout the organization.
• Examine affected units at all scales: How will the technology impact operations at the team level? The department level? The division level?

“The disruption is not just in the technology. Sometimes a good business model can be the disruptor.”
– Jason Hong, Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon

Example:

• Customer service teams: Conversational commerce will replace some of the duties of the customer service representative. They will have to reorganize to account for this development.
• IT department: The IT department will be responsible for building/maintaining the conversational interface (or, more likely, they will be responsible for managing the contract with the vendor).
• Sales analytics: New data from customers in natural language might provide a unique opportunity for the analytics team to develop new initiatives to drive sales growth.

Input the results of this exercise into Section 2.1 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.1.G Outline and map the business processes likely to be disrupted

15 minutes per technology

Leverage the insights of the diverse working group.

• Processes are designed to transform inputs into outputs. All business activities can be mapped into processes.
• A process map illustrates the sequence of actions and decisions that transform an input into an output.
• Effective mapping gives managers an “aerial” view of the company’s processes, making it easier to identify inefficiencies, reduce waste, and ultimately, streamline operations.
• To identify business processes, have group members familiar with the affected business units identify how jobs are typically accomplished within those units.

“To truly understand a business process, we need information from both the top-down and bottom-up points of view. Informants higher in the organizational hierarchy with a strategic focus are less likely to know process details or problems. But they might advocate and clearly articulate an end-to-end, customer-oriented philosophy that describes the process in an idealized form. Conversely, the salespeople, customer service representatives, order processors, shipping clerks, and others who actually carry out the processes will be experts about the processes, their associated documents, and problems or exception cases they encounter.”
– Robert J. Glushko, Professor at UC Berkeley and Tim McGrath, Business Consultant

Info-Tech Insight

Opinions gathered from a group that reflect the process in question are far more likely to align with your organization’s reality. If you have any questions about a particular process, do not be afraid to go outside of the working group to ask someone who might know.

3.1.G Outline and map the business processes likely to be disrupted (continued)

15 minutes per technology

Create a simple diagram of identified processes.

• Use different shapes to identify different points in the process.
• Rectangles represent actions, diamonds represent decisions.
• On a whiteboard, map out the actions and decisions that take place to transform an input into an output.
• Input the result into section 2.2 of the Proof of Concept Template.

Source: Edraw Visualization Solutions

Example: simplified process map

1. User: visits company website
2. User: engages search function or browses links
3. User: selects and purchases product from a menu
4. Company: ships product to customer

3.1.H Recognize how the new technology will impact business processes

15 minutes per technology

Using the information gleaned from the previous activities, develop a new process map that takes the new technology into account.

Identify the new actions or decisions that the new technology will affect.

User: selects and purchases product from a menu; Company: ships product to customer; Company: ships product to customer">

Info-Tech Insight

It’s ok to fail! The only way to know you’re getting close to the “knee of curve" is from multiple failed PoC tests. The more PoC options you have, the more likely it will be that you will have two to three successful results.

3.1.I Make the case: Outline why the new business process is superior to the old

15 minutes per technology

Articulate the main benefits of the new process.

• Using the revised process map, make the case for each new action.
• Questions to consider: How does the new technology relieve end-user/customer pains? How does the new technology contribute to the streamlining of the business process? Who will benefit from the new action? What are the implications of those benefits?
• Record the results of this exercise in section 2.4 of the Proof of Concept Template.

Info-Tech Insight

If you cannot articulate how a new technology will benefit a business process, reconsider moving forward with the proof-of-concept project.

Phase 3: Evaluate

Create an Action Plan to Exploit Disruptive Technologies

Activities:

Step 3.1: Create Process Maps
Step 3.2: Develop Proof of Concept Charter

Develop Proof of Concept Charter

This step involves the following participants:

• Core working group
• Infrastructure Management
• Working group leader
• CIO

Outcomes of this step:

• Business process maps before and after disruption
• Proof of concept charter
• Key performance indicators
• Estimation of required resources

Step 3.2

Develop Proof of Concept Charter

Activities:

1. Use SMART success metrics to define your objectives
2. Develop key performance indicators (KPIs)
3. Identify key success factors for the project
4. Outline the project’s scope
5. Identify the structure of the team responsible for the proof-of-concept project
6. Estimate the resources required by the project
7. Be aware of common IT project concerns
8. Communicate your working group’s findings and successes to a wide audience
9. Hand off the completed proof-of-concept project plan
10. Disruption is constant: Repeat the evaluation process regularly to protect the business

This step involves the following participants:

• Working group leader
• CIO

Outcomes of this step:

• Proof of concept charter
• Key performance indicators
• Estimation of required resources

3.2 Develop a proof of concept charter

Keep your proof of concept on track by defining five key dimensions.

1. Objective: Giving an overview of the planned proof of concept will help to focus and clarify the rest of this section. What must the proof of concept achieve? Objectives should be: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. Outline and track key performance indicators.
2. Key Success Factors: These are conditions that will positively impact the proof of concept’s success.
3. Scope: High-level statement of scope. More specifically, state what is in scope and what is out of scope.
4. Project Team: Identify the team’s structure, e.g. sponsors, subject-matter experts.
5. Resource Estimation: Identify what resources (time, materials, space, tools, expertise, etc.) will be needed to build and socialize your prototype. How will they be secured?

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.A Use SMART success metrics to define your objectives

Examples:

1. Increase in sales by $40,000 per month by the end of next quarter.
2. Immediate increase in web traffic by 600 unique page views per day.
3. Number of pilots approved per year.
4. Number of successfully deployed solutions per year.

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.B Develop key performance indicators (KPIs)

30 minutes per technology

Key performance indicators allow for rigorous analysis, which generates insight into utilization by platform and consumption by business activity.

• Use the process improvements identified in step 3.1 to brainstorm metrics that indicate when process improvement is actually taking place.
• Have members of the group pitch KPIs; the facilitator should record each suggestion on a whiteboard.
• Make sure to have everyone justify the inclusion of each metric: How does it relate to the improvement that the proof of concept project is intended to drive? How does it relate to the overall goals of the business?
• Include a list of KPIs, along with a description and a target (ensuring that it aligns with SMART metrics) in section 3.1 of the Proof of Concept Template.

“An estimated 70% of performance measurement systems fail after implementation. Carefully select your KPIs and avoid this trap!”
Source: Collins et al. 2016

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.1 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.C Identify key success factors for the project

30 minutes per technology

Effective project management involves optimizing four key success factors (Clarke, 1999)

• Communication: Communicate the expected changes to stakeholders, making sure that everyone who needs to know does know. Example: Make sure customer service representatives know their duties will be impacted by the conversational UI well before the proof-of-concept project begins.
• Clarity: All involved in the project should be apprised of what the project is intended to accomplish and what the project is not intended to accomplish. Example: The conversational commerce project is not intended to be rolled out to the entire customer base all at once; it is not intended to disrupt normal online sales.
• Compartmentalization: The working group should suggest some ways that the project can be broken down to facilitate its effective implementation. Example: Sales provides details of customers who might be amenable to a trial, IT secures a vendor, customer service writes a script.
• Flexibility: The working group’s final output should not be treated as gospel. Ensure that the document can be altered to account for unexpected events. Example: The conversational commerce platform might drive sales of a particular product more than others, necessitating adjustments at the warehouse and shipping level.

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.D Outline the project’s scope

10 minutes per technology

Create a high-level outline of the project’s scope.

• Questions to consider: Broadly speaking, what are the project’s goals? What is the desired future state? Where in the company will the project be rolled out? What are some of the company’s goals that the project is not designed to cover?
• Be sure to avoid scope creep! Remember: The goal of the proof-of-concept project is to produce a minimum case for viability in a carefully defined area. Reserve a detailed accounting of costs and benefits for the post-proof-of-concept stage.
• Example: The conversational user interface will only be rolled out in an e-commerce setting. Other business units (HR, for example) are beyond the scope of this particular project.

“Although scope creep is not the only nemesis a project can have, it does tend to have the farthest reach. Without a properly defined project and/or allowing numerous changes along the way, a project can easily go over budget, miss the deadline, and wreak havoc on project success.”
– University Alliance, Villanova University

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.E Identify the structure of the team responsible for the proof-of-concept project

10 minutes per technology

Brainstorm who will be involved in project implementation.

• Refer back to the list of stakeholders identified in 3.1.a. Which stakeholders should be involved in implementing the proof-of-concept plan?
• What business units do they represent?
• Who should be accountable for the project? At a high level, sketch the roles of each of the participants. Who will be responsible for doing the work? Who will approve it? Who needs to be informed at every stage? Who are the company’s internal subject matter experts?

Example

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.F Estimate the resources required by the project

10 minutes per technology

Time and Money

• Recall: Costs can be operational, capital, or opportunity.
• Revisit the Disruptive Technology Value-Readiness and SWOT Analysis Tool. Record the capital and operational expenses expected to be associated with each technology, and add detail where possible (use exact figures from particular vendors instead of percentages).
• Write the names and titles of each expected participant in the project on a whiteboard. Next to each name, write the number of hours they are expected to devote to the project and include a rough estimate of the cost of their participation to the company. Use full-time employee equivalent (FTE measures) as a base.
• Outline how other necessary resources (space, tools, expertise, etc.) will be secured.

Example: Conversational Commerce

• OpEx: $149/month + 2.9¢/transaction* (2,000 estimated transactions)
• CapEx: $0!
• IT Manager: 5 hours at $100/hour
• IT Technician: 40 hours at $45/hour
• CMO: 1 hour at $300/hour
• Customer Service Representative: 10 hours at $35/hour
• *Estimated total cost for a one-month proof-of-concept project: $3,157

*This number is a sample taken from the vendor Rhombus

Input the results of this exercise into Section 3.0 of the Proof of Concept Template.

3.2.G Be aware of common IT project concerns

Of projects that did not meet business expectations or were cancelled, how significant were the following issues?

This survey data did not specifically address innovation projects.

• Disruptive technology projects will be under increased scrutiny in comparison to other projects.
• Be sure to meet deadlines and stay within budget.
• Be cognizant that your projects can go out of scope, and there will be projects that may have to be cancelled due to low quality. Remember: Even a failed test is a learning opportunity!

Info-Tech’s CIO-CEO Alignment Survey, N=225

Organization size was determined by the number of IT employees within the organization

Small = 10 or fewer IT staff, medium = 11 to 25 IT staff, and large/enterprise = 26 or greater IT staff

3.2.H Communicate your working group’s findings and successes to a wide audience

Advertise the group’s successes and help prevent airline magazine syndrome from occurring.

• Share your group’s results internally:
  • Run your own analysis by senior management and then share it across the organization.
  • Maintain a list of technologies that the working group has analyzed and solicit feedback from the wider organization.
  • Post summaries of the technologies in a publicly available repository. The C-suite may not read it right away, but it will be easy to provide when they ask.
  • If senior management has declined to proceed with a certain technology, avoid wasting time and resources on it. However, include notes about why the technology was rejected.
• These postings will also act as an advertisement for the group. Use the garnered interest to attract visionaries for the next cycle.
• These postings will help to reiterate the innovative value of the IT department and help bring you to the decision-making table.

“Some CIOs will have to battle the bias that they belong in the back office and shouldn’t be included in product architecture planning. CIOs must ‘sell’ IT’s strength in information architecture.”
– Chris Curran, Chief Technologist, PwC (Curran, 2014)

Info-Tech Insight

Cast a wide net. By sharing your results with as many people as possible within your organization, you’ll not only attract more attention to your working group, but you will also get more feedback and ideas.

3.2.I Hand off the completed proof-of-concept project plan

The proof of concept template is filled out – now what?

• The core working group is responsible for producing a vision of the future and outlining new technology’s disruptive potential. The actual implementation of the proof of concept (purchasing the hardware, negotiating the SLA with the vendor) is beyond the working group’s responsibilities.
• If the proof of concept goes ahead, the facilitator should block some time to evaluate the completed project against the key performance indicators identified in the initial plan.
• A cure for airline magazine syndrome: Be prepared when executives ask about new technology. Present them with the results of the shortlist analysis and the proof-of-concept plan. A clear accounting of the value, readiness, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats posed by each technology, along with its impact on business processes, is an invaluable weapon against poor technology choices.

Use section 3.2.b to identify the decision-making stakeholder who has the most to gain from a successful proof-of-concept project. Self-interest is a powerful motivator – the project is more likely to succeed in the hands of a passionate champion.

Info-Tech Insight

Set a date for the first meeting of the new iteration of the disruptive technology working group before the last meeting is done. Don’t risk pushing it back indefinitely.

3.2.J Hand off the completed proof-of-concept project plan

Record the results of the proof of concept. Keep track of what worked and what didn’t.

Repeat the process regularly.

• Finalize the proof of concept template, but don’t stop there: Keep your ear to the ground; follow tech developments using the sources identified in step 1.2.
• Continue expanding the potential longlist with independent research: Be prepared to expand your longlist. Remember, the more technologies you have on the longlist, the more potential airline magazine syndrome cures you have access to.
• Have the results of the previous session’s proof of concept plan on hand: At the start of each new iteration, conduct a review. What technologies were successful beyond the proof of concept phase? Which parts of the process worked? Which parts did not? How could they be improved?

Info-Tech Insight

The key is in anticipation. This is not a one-and-done exercise. Technology innovation operates at a faster pace than ever before, well below the Moores Law "18 month" timeline as an example. Success is in making EDIT a repeatable process.

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Research contributors and experts

Nitin Babel, Co-Founder, niki.ai

Nitin Babel, MSc, co-created conversational commerce platform niki.ai in early 2015. Since then, the technology has been featured on the front page of the Economic Times, and has secured the backing of Ratan Tata, former chairman of the Tata Group, one of the largest companies in the world.

Mark Hubbard, Senior Vice President, FirstOnSite

Mark is the SVP for Information Technology in Canada with FirstOnSite, a full service disaster recovery and property restoration company. Mark has over 25 years of technology leadership guiding global organizations through the development of strategic and tactical plans to strengthen their technology platforms and implement business aligned technology strategies.

Chris Green, Enterprise Architect, Boston Private
Chris is an IT architect with over 15 years’ experience designing, building, and implementing solutions. He is a results-driven leader and contributor, skilled in a broad set of methods, tools, and platforms. He is experienced with mobile, web, enterprise application integration, business process, and data design.

Andrew Kope, Head of Data Analytics
Big Blue Bubble
Andrew Kope, MSc, oversees a team that develops and maintains a user acquisition tracking solution and a real-time metrics dashboard. He also provides actionable recommendations to the executive leadership of Big Blue Bubble – one of Canada’s largest independent mobile game development studios.

Jason Hong, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Jason Hong is a member of the faculty at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. His research focus lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction, privacy and security, and systems. He is a New America National Cyber Security Fellow (2015-2017) and is widely published in academic and industry journals.

Tim Lalonde, Vice President, Mid-Range

Tim Lalonde is the VP of Technical Operations at Mid-Range. He works with leading-edge companies to be more competitive and effective in their industries. He specializes in developing business roadmaps leveraging technology that create and support change from within — with a focus on business process re-engineering, architecture and design, business case development and problem-solving. With over 30 years of experience in IT, Tim’s guiding principle remains simple: See a problem, fix a problem.

Jon Mavor, Co-Founder and CTO, Envelop VR
Jon Mavor is a programmer and entrepreneur, whose past work includes writing the graphics engine for the PC game Total Annihilation. As Chief Technology Officer of Envelop VR, a virtual reality start-up focused on software for the enterprise, Jon has overseen the launch of Envelop for Windows’s first public beta.

Dan Pitt, President, Palo Alto Innovation Advisors
Dan Pitt is a network architect who has extensive experience in both the academy and industry. Over the course of his career, Dan has served as Executive Director of the Open Networking Foundation, Dean of Engineering at Santa Clara University, Vice President of Technology and Academic Partnerships at Nortel, Vice President of the Architecture Lab at Bay Networks, and, currently, as President of Palo Alto Innovation Advisors, where he advises and serves as an executive for technology start-ups in the Palo Alto area and around the world.

Courtney Smith, Co-Founder, Executive Creative Director
PureMatter
Courtney Smith is an accomplished creative strategist, storyteller, writer, and designer. Under her leadership, PureMatter has earned hundreds of creative awards and been featured in the PRINT International Design Annual. Courtney has juried over 30 creative competitions, including Creativity International. She is an invited member of the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts.

Emmanuel Tsekleves, Senior Lecturer in Design Interactions, University of Lancaster
Dr. Emmanuel Tsekleves is a senior lecturer and writer based out of the United Kingdom. Emmanuel designs interactions between people, places, and products by forging creative design methods along with digital technology. His design-led research in the areas of health, ageing, well-being, and defence has generated public interest and attracted media attention by the national press, such as the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Times, the Daily Mail, Discovery News, and several other international online media outlets.

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The perfect time to start analyzing your ticket data is now

Service desks improve their services by leveraging ticket data to inform their actions. However, many organizations don’t know where to start. It’s tempting to wait for perfect data, but there’s a lot of value in analyzing your ticket data as it exists today.

Start small. Track key tension metrics based on the out-of-the-box functionality in your tool. Review the metrics regularly to stay on track.

By reviewing your ticket data, you’re going to get better organically. You’re going to learn about the state of your environment, the health of your processes, and the quality of your services. Regularly analyze your data to drive improvements.

Make ticket analysis a weekly habit. Every week, you should be evaluating how the past week went. Every month, you should be looking for patterns and trends.

Executive Summary

Your Situation

Leverage your service desk ticket data to gain insights for improving your operations:

1. Use a data-based approach to allocate service desk resources.
2. Design appropriate SLOs and SLAs to better service end users.
3. Gain efficiencies for your shift-left strategy.
4. Communicate the current and future value of the service desk to the business.

Common Obstacles

Properly analyzing ticket data is challenging for the following reasons:

• Poor ticket hygiene and unclear ticket handling guidelines can lead to untrustworthy results.
• Undocumented tickets from various intake channels prevents you from seeing the whole picture.
• Service desk personnel are not sure where to start with analysis and are too busy to find time.
• Too many metrics are tracked to parse actionable insights from the noise.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Info-Tech’s approach to improvement:

• To reduce the noise, standardize your ticket data in a format that will ease analysis.
• Start with common analyses using the cleaned data set.
• Identify action items based on your ticket data.

Analyze your ticket data to help continually improve your service desk.

Slow down. Give yourself time.

Give yourself time to observe the new metrics and draw enough insights to make recommendations for improvement. Then, execute on those recommendations. Slow and steady improvement of the service desk only adds business value and will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help service desk managers analyze their ticket data

Analyzing ticket data involves:

• Collecting ticket data and keeping it clean. Based on the metrics you’re analyzing, define ticket expectations and keep the data up to date.
• Showing the value of the service desk. SLAs are meaningless if they are not met consistently. The prerequisite to implementing proper SLAs is fully understanding the workload of the service desk.
• Understanding – and improving – the user experience. You cannot improve the user experience without meaningful metrics that allow you to understand the user experience. Different user groups will have different needs and different expectations of the level of service. Your metrics should reflect those needs and expectations.

36% of organizations are prioritizing ticket handling in IT for 2021 (Source: SDI, 2021)

12% of organizations are focusing directly on service desk improvement (Source: SDI, 2021)

Common obstacles

Many organizations face these barriers to analyzing their ticket data:

• Finding time to properly analyze ticket data is a challenge. Not knowing where to start can lead to not analyzing the proper data. Service desks end up either tracking too much data or not tracking the proper metrics.
• Data, even if clean, can be housed in various tools and databases. It’s difficult to aggregate data if the data is stored throughout various tools. Comparisons may also be difficult if the data sets aren’t consistent.
• Shifting left to move tickets toward self-service is difficult when there is no visibility into which tickets should be shifted left.

What your peers are saying about why they can’t start analyzing their ticket data:

• “My technicians do not consistently update and close tickets.”
• “My ITSM doesn’t have the capabilities I need to make informed decisions on shifting tickets left.”
• “My tickets are always missing data”
• “I’m constantly firefighting. I have no time for ticket data analysis.”
• “I have no idea where to start with the amount of data I have.”

Common obstacles that prevent effective ticket analysis

We asked IT service desk managers and teams about their biggest hurdles

Info-Tech’s approach

Repeat this analysis every business cycle:

• Gather Your Data
  Collect your ticket data OR start measuring the right metrics.
• Extract & Analyze
  Organize and visualize your data to extract insights
• Action the Results
  Implement low-effort improvements and celebrate quick successes.
• Implement Larger Changes
  Reference your ticket data while implementing process, tooling, and other changes.
• Communicate the Results
  Use your data to show the value of your effort.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Track these metrics as you improve

Use the data to tell you which aspects of IT need to be shifted left and which need to be automated

Your data will show you where you can improve.

As you act on your data, you should see:

• Lower costs per ticket
• Decreased average time to resolve
• Increased end-user satisfaction
• Fewer tickets escalated beyond Tier 1

See Info-Tech’s blueprint Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy.

Info-Tech’s methodology for analyzing service desk tickets

Insight summary

Slow down. Give yourself time.

Give yourself time to observe the new metrics and draw enough insights to make recommendations for improvement. Then, execute on those recommendations. Slow and steady improvement of the service desk only adds business value and will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Iterate on what to track rather than trying to get it right the first time.

Tracking the right data in your ticket can be challenging if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Start with standardized fields and iterate on your data analysis to figure out your gaps and needs.

If you don’t know where to go, ticket data can point you in the right direction.

If you have service desk challenges, you will need to allocate time to process improvement. However, prioritizing your initiatives is easier if you have the ticket data to point you in the right direction.

Start with data from one business cycle.

Service desks don’t need three years’ worth of data. Focus on gathering data for one business cycle (e.g. three months). That will give you enough information to start generating value.

Let the data do the talking.

Leverage the data to drive organizational and process change in your organization by tracking meaningful metrics. Choose those metrics using business-aligned goals.

Paint the whole picture.

Single metrics in isolation, even if measured over time, may not tell the whole story. Make sure you design tension metrics where necessary to get a holistic view of your service desk.

Blueprint deliverables

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• Discover and implement the proper metrics to improve your service desk
• Use a data-based approach to improve your customer service and operational goals
• Increase visibility with the business and other IT departments using a structured presentation

Business Benefits

• Quicker resolutions to incidents and service requests
• Better expectations for the service desk and IT
• Better visibility into the current state, challenges, and goals of the service desk
• More effective support when contacting the service desk

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

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks 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 3-4 calls over the course of 2-3 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

• Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges. Enter your data into the tool.

Phase 2

• Call #2: Assess the current state across the different dashboards.

Phase 3

• Call #3: Identify improvements and insights to include in the communication report.
• Call #4: Review the service desk ticket analysis report.

PHASE 1

Import Your Ticket Data

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 1.1.1 Define your objectives for analyzing ticket data
• 1.1.2 Identify success metrics
• 1.1.3 Import your ticket data into the tool
• 1.1.4 Update your ticket fields for future analysis

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• ITSM Manager
• Service Desk Technician

1.1.1 Define your objectives for analyzing ticket data

Input: Understanding of current service desk process and ticket routing

Output: Defined objectives for the project

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Ticket Analysis Report

Participants: Service Desk Staff, Service Desk Manager, IT Director, CIO

Use the discussion questions below as a guide

1. Identify your main objective for analyzing ticket data. Use these three sample objectives as a starting point:
   • Demonstrate value to the business by improving customer service.
   • Improve service desk operations.
   • Reduce the number of recurring incidents.
2. Answer the following questions as a group:
   • What challenges do you have getting accurate data for this objective?
   • What data is missing for supporting this objective?
   • What kind of issues must be solved for us to make progress on achieving this objective?
   • What decisions are held up from a lack of data?
   • How can better ticket data help us to more effectively manage our services and operations?

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

1.1.2 Identify success metrics

Select metrics that will track your progress on meeting the objective identified in Activity 1.1.1.

Input: Understanding of current service desk process and ticket routing

Output: Defined objectives for the project

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Ticket Analysis Report

Participants: Service Desk Manager, IT Director, CIO

Use these sample metrics as a starting point:

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Inefficient ticket-handling processes lead to SLA breaches and unplanned downtime

Analyze the ticket data to catch mismanaged or lost tickets that lead to unnecessary escalations and impact business profitability

• Ticket Category – Are your tickets categorized by type of asset? By service?
• Average Ticket Times – How long does it take to resolve or fulfill tickets?
• Ticket Priority – What is the impact and urgency of the ticket?
• SLA/OLA Violations – Did we meet our SLA objectives? If not, why?
• Ticket Channel – How was the issue reported or ticket received?
• Response and Fulfillment – Did we complete first contact resolution? How many times was it transferred?
• Associated Tasks and Tickets – Is this incident associated with any other tasks like change tickets or problem tickets?

Encourage proper ticket-handling procedures to enable data quality

Ensure everyone understands the expectations and the value created from having ticket data that follows these expectations

• Create and update tickets, but not at the expense of good customer service. Agents can start the ticket but shouldn’t spend five minutes creating the ticket when they should be troubleshooting the problem.
• Update the ticket when the issue is resolved or needs to be escalated. If agents are escalating, they should make sure all relevant information is passed along within the ticket to the next technician.
• Update user of ETA if issue cannot be resolved quickly.
• Ticket templates for common incidents can lead to fast creation, data input, and categorizations. Templates can reduce the time it takes to create tickets from two minutes to 30 seconds.
• Update categories to reflect the actual issue and resolution.
• Reference or link to the knowledgebase article as the documented steps taken to resolve the incident.
• Validate with the client that the incident is resolved; automate this process with ticket closure after a certain time.
• Close or resolve the ticket on time.

Info-Tech Insight

Ticket handling ensures clean handovers, whether it is to higher tiers or back to the customer. When filling the ticket out with information intended for another party, ensure the information is written for their benefit and from their point of view.

Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool overview

The Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool will help you standardize your ticket data in a meaningful format that will allow you to apply common analyses to identify the actions you need to take to improve service desk operations

TABS 1 & 2 INSTRUCTIONS & DATA ENTRY	TAB 3 : TICKET SUMMARY TICKET SUMMARY DASHBOARDS	TABS 4 to 8: DASHBOARDS INCIDENT SERVICE REQUEST CATEGORY
Input at least three months of your exported ticket data into the corresponding columns in the tool to feed into the common analysis graphs in the other tabs.	This tab contains multiple dashboards analyzing how tickets come in, who requests them, who resolves them, and how long it takes to resolve them.	These tabs each have dashboards outlining analysis on incidents and service requests. The category tab will allow you to dive deeper on commonly reported issues.

1.1.3 Import your data into our Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

You can still leverage your current data, but use this opportunity to improve your service desk ticket fields down the line

Input: ITSM data log

Output: Populated Service Desk Ticket Data Analysis Tool

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

Participants: Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Technicians

Start here:

• Extract your ticket data from your ITSM tool in an Excel or text format.
• Look at the fields on the data entry tab of the Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool.
• Fill the fields with your ticket data by copying and pasting relevant sections. It is okay if you don’t have all the fields, but take note of the fields you are missing.
• With the list of the fields you are missing, run through the following activity to decide if you will need to adopt or add fields to your own service desk ticket tool.

When entering your data, pay close attention to the following fields:

• Time to Resolve: This is automatically calculated using data in the Open Date, Open Time, Close Date, and Close Time fields. You have three options for entering your data in these fields:
  1. Enter your data as the fields describe. Ensure your data contain only the field description (e.g. Open Date separated from Open Time). If your data contain Open Date AND Open Time, Excel will not show both.
  2. Enter your data only in Open Date and Close Date. If your ITSM does not separate date and time, you can keep the data in a single cell and enter it in the column. The formula in Time to Resolve will still be accurate.
  3. If your ITSM outputs Time to Resolve, overwrite the formula in the Time to Resolve column.
• SLA: If your ITSM outputs SLA fulfilled: Y/N, enter that directly into the SLA Fulfilled column.
• Blank Columns: If you do not have data for all the columns, that is okay. Continue with the following activity. Note that some stock dashboards will be empty if that is the case.
• Incidents vs. Service Requests: If you separate incidents and service requests, be sure to capture that in the SR/Incident for Tabs 4 and 5. If you do not separate the two, then you will only need to analyze Tab 3.

Use Info-Tech’s tool instead of building your own. Download the Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool.

1.1.4 Update your ticket fields for future analysis

Input: Populated Service Desk Ticket Data Analysis Tool

Output: New ticket fields to track

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

Participants: Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Technicians

As a group, pay attention to the ticket fields populated in the tool as well as the ticket fields that you were not able to populate. Use the example “Fields Captured” table to the right, which lists all fields present in the ticket analysis tool.

Discuss the following questions:

1. Consider the fields not captured. Would it be valuable to start capturing that data for future analysis?
2. If so, does your ITSM support that field?
3. Can you make the change in-house or do you have to bring in an external ITSM administrator to make the change?
4. Capture the results in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Info-Tech Insight

Don’t wait for your ticket quality to be perfect. You can still draw actions from your ticket data. They will likely be process improvements initially, but the exercise of pulling the data is a necessary first step.

Common ticket fields tracked by your peers

Which of these metrics do you track and action?

• Remember you don’t have to track every metric. Only track metrics that are actionable.

For each metric that you end up tracking:

• Look for trends over time.
• Brainstorm reasons why the metric could rise or fall.

Associate a metric with each improvement you execute.

• Performing this step will allow you to better see the value from your team’s efforts.
• It will also give you a quicker response than waiting for spikes in your data.

(Source: Info-Tech survey, 2021; N=20)

PHASE 2

Analyze Your Ticket Data

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 2.1.1 Review high-level ticket dashboards
• 2.2.1 Review incident, service request, and ticket category dashboards

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Visualize your ticket data as a first step to analysis

Identifying trends is easier when looking at diagrams, graphs, and figures

Start your analysis with common visuals employed by other service desk professionals

• Phase 2 will walk you through visualizing your data to get a better understanding of your ticket intake, incident management, and service request management.
• Each step will walk you through:
  • Common visualizations used by service desks
  • Patterns to look for in your visualizations
  • Actions to take to address negative patterns and to continue positive trends
• Share diagrams that underscore both the value being provided by the service desk as well as the scope of the pain points. Use Info-Tech’s Ticket Analysis Report template as a starting point.

“Being able to tell stories with data is a skill that’s becoming ever more important in our world of increasing data and desire for data-driven decision making. An effective data visualization can mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to communicating the findings of your study, raising money for your nonprofit, presenting to your board, or simply getting your point across to your audience.” - Cole Knaflic, Founder and CEO, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Use the detailed dashboards to determine the next steps for improvement

A single number doesn’t tell the whole picture

Analyze trends over time:

• Analyze trends by day, by week, by month, and by year to determine:
  • When are the busy periods? (E.g. Do tickets tend to spike every morning, every Monday, or every September?)
  • When are the slow periods? (E.g. Do tickets drop at the end of the day, at midday, on Fridays, or over the summer?)
• Are spikes or drops in volume consistent trends or one-time anomalies?

Then build a plan to address them:

• How will you handle volume spikes, if they’re consistent?
• What can your resources work on during slow times, if they are consistent?
• If you assume no shrinkage, can you handle the peaks in volume if you make all FTEs available to work on tickets at a certain time of day?

Look for seasonal trends. In this example, we see high ticket volumes in May and January, with lower ticket volumes in June and July when many staff are taking holidays. However, also be careful to look at the big picture of how you pulled the data. August through October sees a high volume of open tickets because the data set is pulled in November, not because there’s a seasonal spike on tickets not closing at the end of the fiscal year.

Track ticket data over time

Make low-effort adjustments before major changes

Don’t rush to a decision based off the first numbers you see

Review ticket summary dashboard

Ideally, you should track ticket patterns over an entire year to get a full sense of trends within each month of the year. At minimum, track for 30 days, then 60, then 90, and see if anything changes. The longer you can track ticket patterns, the more accurate your picture will be.

Review additional dashboards

If you separate incidents and service requests, and you have accurate ticket categories, then you can use these dashboards to further break down the data to identify ticket trends.

The output of the ticket analysis will only be as accurate as its input.
To get the most accurate results, first ensure your data is accurate, then analyze it over as much time as possible. Aggregating with accurate data will give you a better picture of the trends in demand that your service desk sees.

Not separating incidents and service requests? Need to fix your ticket categories? Visit Standardize the Service Desk to get started.

Analyze incidents and requests separately

Each type has its own set of customer experiences and expectations

• Different ticket types are associated with radically different prioritization, routing, and service levels. For instance, most incidents are resolved within a business day, but requests take longer to implement.
• If you fail to distinguish between ticket types, your metrics will obscure service desk performance.
• From a ticket analysis standpoint, separating ticket types prior to analysis or, better yet, at intake allows for cleaner data. In turn, this means more structured analyses, better insights, and more meaningful actions. Not separating ticket types may still get you to the same conclusions, but it will be much more difficult to sift through the data.

Incident

An unanticipated interruption of a service.
The goal of incident management is to restore the service as soon as possible, even if the resolution involves a workaround.

Request

A generic description for a small change or service access.
Requests are small, frequent, and low risk. They are best handled by a process distinct from incident, change, and project management.

Not separating incidents and service requests? Need to fix your ticket categories? Visit Standardize the Service Desk to get started.

Step 2.1

Analyze Your High-Level Ticket Data

Dashboards

• Ticket Volume
• Ticket Intake
• Ticket Handling and Resolution
• Ticket Categorization

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Visualize the current state of your service desk.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Build your metrics baseline to compare with future metric results.

Dashboards: Ticket Volume

Analyze your data for insights

• Analyze volume trends by day, by week, by month, and by year to determine:
  • When are the busy periods? (E.g. Do tickets tend to spike every morning, every Monday, or every September?)
  • When are slow periods? (E.g. Do tickets drop at the end of the day, at midday, on Fridays, or over the summer?)
• Are spikes or drops in volume consistent trends or one-time anomalies?
• What can your resources be working on during slow times? Are you able to address ticket backlog?

Dashboards: Ticket Intake

Analyze your data for insights

• Determine how to drive intake to the most appropriate solution for your organization:
  • A web portal is the most efficient intake method, but it must be user friendly to increase its adoption.
  • The phone should be available for urgent requests or incidents. Encourage those who call with a request to submit a ticket through the portal.
  • Discourage use of email if it is unstructured, as users don’t provide enough detail, and often two or three transactions are required for triage.
  • If walk-ups are encouraged, structure and formalize the support so it can be resourced and managed rather than interrupt-driven.

Dashboard: Ticket Handling and Resolution

Analyze your data for insights

• Look at your ticket load by technician and by tier. This is an essential step to set your baseline to measure your shift-left initiatives. If you are focusing on self-service or Tier 1 training, the ticket load from higher tiers should decrease over time.
• If Tiers 2 and 3 are handling the majority of the tickets, this could be a red flag indicating tickets are inappropriately escalated or Tier 1 could use more training and support.
• For average time to resolve and average time to resolve by tier, are you meeting your SLAs? If not, are your SLAs too aggressive? Are tickets left open and not properly closed?

Dashboard: Ticket Categorization

Analyze your data for insights

• Ticket categorization is critical to clean data. Having a categorization scheme with categories that are miscellaneous, too specific, or too general easily leads to inaccurate reporting or confusing workflows for technicians.
• When looking at your ticket categories, first look for duplicate categories that could be collapsed into one.
• Also look at your top five to seven categories and see if they make sense. Are these good candidates in your organization for automation or shift-left?
• Compare your Tier 1 categories. The level of specificity for these categories should be comparable to easily run reports. If they are not, assess the need for a category redesign.

Step 2.2

Analyze Incidents, Service Requests, and Ticket Categories

Dashboards

• Incidents
• Service Requests
• Volume by Ticket Category
• Resolution Times by Priority and/or Category
• Tabs for More Granular Investigation and Reporting

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Visualize your incident and service request ticket load and analyze trends. Use this information and cross reference data sets to gain a holistic view of how the service desk interacts with IT and the business.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Gain actionable, data-driven improvements based on your incident and service request data. Show the value of the service desk and highlight improvements needed.

Incident and Service Requests Dashboard: Priority and SLA

Analyze your data for insights

• Your ticket priority distribution for overall load and time to resolve (TTR) should look something like above with low-priority tickets having higher load and TTR and high/critical-priority tickets having a lower load and lower TTR. If it is reversed, that is a good indication that the service desk is too reactive or isn’t properly prioritizing its work.
• If your SLA has a high failure rate, consider reassessing your targets with SLOs that you can meet before publishing them as achievable SLAs.

Incident and Service Requests Dashboard: Priority and SLA

Analyze your data for insights

• Examine your ticket handling by looking at ticket status and resolution codes.
  • If you have a lot of blanks, then tickets are not properly handled. Consider reinforcing your standards for close codes and statuses.
  • Alternatively, if tickets are left open, you may have to build follow-ups on stale tickets into your process or introduce proper auto-close processes.

Category, Resolution Time, and Resolution Code Dashboards

These PivotCharts allow you to dig deeper

Investigate whether there are trends in ticket volume and resolution times within specific categories and subcategories

Tab 6, Category Dashboard; tab 7, Resolution Time Dashboard; and tab 8, Resolution Code Dashboard are PivotCharts. Use these tabs to investigate whether there are trends in ticket volume, resolution times, and resolution codes within specific categories and subcategories.

Start with the charts that are available. The +/- buttons will allow you to show more granular information. By default, this granularity will be into the levels of the ticket categorization scheme.

For most categorization schemes, there will be too many categories to properly graph. You can apply a filter to investigate specific categories by clicking on the drop-down buttons.

Use these tabs for more granular investigation and reporting

TAB 6 CATEGORY DASHBOARD	TAB 7 RESOLUTION TIME DASHBOARD	TAB 8 RESOLUTION TIME DASHBOARD
Investigate ticket distributions in first, second, and third levels. Are certain categories overcrowded, suggesting they can be split? Are certain categories not being used?	Do average resolution times match your service level agreements? Do certain categories have significantly different resolution times? Are there areas that can benefit from shift-left?	Are resolution codes being accurately used? Are there trends in resolution codes? Are these codes providing sufficient information for problem management?

PHASE 3

Communicate Your Insights

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 3.1.1 Review common recommendations
• 3.2.1 Review ticket reports daily
• 3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team updates
• 3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders
• 3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Step 3.1

Build Recommendations Based on Your Ticket Data

Activities

• 3.1.1 Review common recommendations

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Review common recommendations as a first step to extracting insights from your own data.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians

Outcomes of this step

You will gain an understanding of the common challenges with service desks and ticket analysis in general. See which ones apply to you to inform your ticket data analysis moving forward.

Review these common recommendations

1. Fix your ticket categories
   Organize your ticket categorization scheme for proper routing and reporting.
2. Focus more on self-service
   Self-service is essential to enable shift-left strategies. Focus on knowledgebase processes and portal ease of use.
3. Update your service catalog
   Improve your service catalog, if necessary, to make it easy for end users to request services and for the service desk to provide those services.
4. Direct volume toward other channels
   Walk-ups make it more difficult to properly log tickets and assign service desk resources. Drive volume to other channels to improve your ticket quality.
5. Crosstrain Tier 1 on certain topics
   Tier 1 breadth of knowledge is essential to drive up first contact resolution.
6. Build more automation
   Identify bottlenecks and challenges with your ticket data to streamline ticket handling and resolution.
7. Revisit service level agreements
   Update your SLAs and/or SLOs to prioritize expectation management for your end users.
8. Improve your data quality
   You can only analyze data that exists. Revisit your ticket-handling guidelines and more regularly check tickets to ensure they comply with those standards.

Optimize your processes and look for opportunities for automation

Leverage Info-Tech research to improve service desk processes

Review your service desk processes and tools for optimization opportunities:

• Clearly establish ticket-handling guidelines.
• Use ticket templates to reduce time spent entering tickets.
• Document incident management and service request fulfillment workflows and eliminate any unnecessary steps.
• Automate manual tasks wherever possible.
• Build or improve a self-service portal with a knowledgebase to allow users to resolve their own issues, reducing incoming ticket volume to the service desk.
• Optimize your internal knowledgebase to reduce time spent troubleshooting recurring issues.
• Leverage AI capabilities to speed up ticket processing and resolution.

Standardize the Service Desk

This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes, including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management.

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

This project will help you build a strategy to shift service support left to optimize your service desk operations and increase end-user satisfaction.

Step 3.2

Action and Communicate Your Ticket Data

Activities

• 3.2.1 Review your ticket queues daily
• 3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team status updates
• 3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders
• 3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Organize your scrums to report on the metrics that will inform daily and monthly operations.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Use the dashboards and data to inform your daily and monthly scrums.

3.2.1 Review your ticket queues daily

Clean data is still useless if not used properly

• The metrics you’ve chosen to measure and visualize in the previous step are useful for informing your day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month strategies for the service desk and IT. Conduct scrums daily to action your dashboard data to help clear ticket queues.
• Reference your dashboards daily with each IT team.
• You need to have a dashboard of open tickets assigned to each team.

Review Daily

• Ticket volume over the last day (look for spikes)
• SLA breach risks/SLA breaches
• Recurring incidents
• Tickets open
• Tickets handed over (confirmation of handover)

3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team status updates

Explain your metric spikes and trends

• Hold weekly or monthly meetings to review the ticket trends selected during Phases 1 and 2 of this blueprint.
• Review ticket spikes, identify seasonal trends, and discuss root causes (e.g. projects/changes going live, onboarding blitz).
• Discuss any actions associated with spikes and seasonal trends (e.g. resource allocation, hiring, training).
• You can incorporate other IT leaders or departments in this meeting as needed to discuss action items for improvement, quality assurance concerns, customer service concerns, and/or operating level agreement concerns.

Review Weekly/Monthly

• Ticket volume
• Ticket category by priority level over time
• Tickets from different business groups, VIP groups, and different vertical levels
• Tickets escalated, tickets that didn’t need to be escalated, tickets that were incorrectly escalated
• Ticket priority levels over time
• Most requested services
• Tickets resolved by which group over time
• Ability to meet SLAs and OLAs over time by different groups

3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders

Use your data to help improve business relationships

Review the following with business leaders:

• Volume of work done this past time cycle for the leader’s group
• Trends and spikes in the data and possible explanations for them (note: get their input on the potential causes of trends)
• Improvements you plan to execute within the service desk
• Action items you need from the business leader

Use your data to show the value you provide to the group. Schedule quarterly meetings with the heads of different business groups to discuss the work that the service desk does for each group.

Show trends in incidents and service requests: “I see you have a spike in CRM tickets. I’ve been working with the CRM team to address this issue.”

3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

Effectively communicate with the business and leadership

• With your visualized metrics, organize your story into a presentation for different stakeholder groups. You can use the Ticket Analysis Report as a starting point to provide data about:
  • Value provided by the service desk
  • Successes
  • Opportunities for Improvements
  • Current state of KPIs
• Include information about the causes of data trends and actions you will take in response to the data.
• For each of these themes, look at the metrics you’ve chosen to track and see which ones fit to tell the story. Let the data do the talking.
• Consider supplementing the ticket data with data from other systems. For example, you can include data on transactional customer satisfaction surveys, knowledgebase utilization, and self-service utilization.

Download the Ticket Analysis Report.

Ticket Analysis Report

Include the following information as you build your ticket analysis report:

• Value Provided by the Service Desk
  Start with the value provided by the service desk to different areas of the business. Include information about first contact resolution, average resolution times, ticket volume (e.g. by category, priority, location, requestor).
• Successes
  Successes is a general field that can include how process improvements have impacted the service desk or how initiatives have enhanced shift-left opportunities. Highlight any positive trends over time.
• Opportunities for Improvement
  Let the data guide the conversation to where improvements can be made. Day-to-day ops, self-service tools, shifting work left from Tier 2, Tier 3, standardizing a non-standard service, and staffing adjustments are possibilities for this section.
• Current State of KPIs
  Mean time to resolve, FCR, ticket volume, and end-user satisfaction are great KPIs to include as a starting point.

Download the Ticket Analysis Report.

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

You now have a better understanding of how to action your service desk ticket data, including improvements to your current ticket templates for incidents and service requests.

You also have the data to craft a story to different stakeholder groups to celebrate the successes of the service desk and highlight possible improvements. Continue this exercise iteratively to continue improving the service desk.

Remember, ticket analysis is not a single event but an ongoing initiative. As you track, analyze, and action more data, you will find more improvements.

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.

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:

Analyze your dashboards An analyst will walk through the ticket data and dashboards with you and your team to help interpret the data and tailor improvements	Populate your ticket data report Given the action items from this solution set, an analyst will help you craft a report to celebrate the successes and highlight needed improvements in the service desk.

Related Info-Tech Research

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

The best type of service desk ticket is the one that doesn’t exist.

Incident & Problem Management

Don’t let persistent problems govern your department.

Design & Build a User-Facing Service Catalog

Improve user satisfaction with IT with a convenient menu-like catalog.

Bibliography

Bayes, Scarlett. “ITSM: 2021 & Beyond.” Service Desk Institute, 2021. Web.

“Benchmarking Report v.9.” Service Desk Institute, 17 Jan. 2020. Web.

Bennett, Micah. “The 9 Help Desk Metrics That Should Guide Your Customer Support.” Zapier, 3 Dec. 2015. Web.

“Global State of Customer Service: The transformation of customer service from 2015 to present day.” Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft, 2020. Web.

Goodey, Ben. “How to Manually Analyze Support Tickets.” SentiSum, 26 July 2021. Web.

Jadhav, Megha. “Four Metrics to Analyze When Using Ticketing Software.” Vision Helpdesk Blog, 21 Mar. 2016. Web.

Knaflic, Cole Nussbaumer. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals. Wiley, 2015.

Li, Ta Hsin, et al. “Incident Ticket Analytics for IT Application Management Services.” 2014 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2014. Web.

Olson, Sarah. “10 Help Desk Metrics for Service Desks and Internal Help Desks.” Zendesk Blog, Sept. 2021. Web.

Paramesh, S.P., et al. “Classifying the Unstructured IT Service Desk Tickets Using Ensemble of Classifiers.” 2018 3rd International Conference on Computational Systems and Information Technology for Sustainable Solutions (CSITSS), 2018. Web.

Volini, Erica, et al. “2021 Global Human Capital Trends: Special Report.” Deloitte Insights, 21 July 2021. Web.

“What Kind of Analysis You Can Perform on a Ticket Management System.” Commence, 3 Dec. 2019. Web.

INFO-TECH RESEARCH GROUP

Improve IT Team Effectiveness

Implement the four critical factors required for all high-performing teams.

Analyst Perspective

All teams need to operate effectively; however, IT teams experience unique challenges.

IT often struggles to move from an effective to a high-performing team due to the very nature of their work. They work across multiple disciplines and with multiple stakeholders.

When operating across many disciplines it can become more difficult to identify the connections or points of interactions that define effective teams and separate them from being a working group or focus on their individual performance.

IT employees also work in close partnership with multiple teams outside their IT domain, which can create confusion as to what team are they a primary member of. The tendency is to advocate for or on behalf of the team they primarily work with instead of bringing the IT mindset and alignment to IT roadmap and goals to serve their stakeholders.

Amanda Mathieson
Research Director, People & Leadership Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

The Challenge

Organizations rely on team-based work arrangements to provide organizational benefits and better navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) operating environment.

This is becoming more challenging in a hybrid environment as interactions now rely less on casual encounters and must become more intentional.

A high-performing team is more than productive. They are more resilient and able to recognize opportunities. They are proactive instead of reactive due to the trust and high level of communication and collaboration.

Common Obstacles

IT teams are more unique, which also provides unique challenges other teams don't experience:

• Multiple disciplines that tend to operate in parallel versus within a sequence of events
• Multiple incumbent roles where people operate in parallel versus needing to share information to produce an outcome
• Multiple stakeholders that create a tension with competing priorities

Info-Tech's Approach

Use Info-Tech's phased approach to diagnose your team and use the IDEA model to drive team effectiveness.

The IDEA model includes four factors to identify team challenges and focus on areas for improvement: identity, decision making, exchanges within the team, and atmosphere of team psychological safety.

Info-Tech Insight

IT teams often fail to reach their full potential because teamwork presents unique challenges and complexities due to the work they do across the organization and within their own group. Silos, not working together, and not sharing knowledge are all statements that indicate a problem. As a leader it's difficult to determine what to do first to navigate the different desires and personalities on a team.

How this blueprint will help

Assess, diagnose, and address issues to realize your team's full potential.

This research helps IT support:

• Work Teams: Operate under one organizational unit or function. Their membership is generally stable with well-defined roles.
• Project Teams: Typically, are time-limited teams formed to produce a particular output or project. Their membership and expertise tend to vary over time.
• Management or Leadership Teams: Provide direction and guidance to the organization and are accountable for overall performance. Membership is structured by the hierarchy of the organization and includes a diverse set of skills, experience, and expertise.

Traditionally, organizations have tried to fix ineffective teams by focusing on these four issues: composition, leadership competencies, individual-level performance, and organizational barriers. While these factors are important, our research has shown it is beneficial to focus on the four factors of effective teams addressed in this blueprint first. Then, if additional improvement is needed, shift your focus to the traditional issue areas.

Common obstacles

These barriers make it difficult to address effectiveness for many IT teams:

• Teams do not use one standard set of processes because they may have a wide variety of assignments requiring different sets of processes.
  Source: Freshworks

• There are multiple disciplines within IT that require vastly different skill sets. Finding the connection points can be difficult when on the surface it seems like success doesn't require interconnectivity.
• IT has many people in the same roles that act independently based on the stakeholder or internal customer they are serving. This can lead to duplication of effort if information and solutions aren't shared.
• IT serves many parts of the organization that can bring competing priorities both across the groups they support and with the IT strategy and roadmap itself. Many IT leaders work directly in or for the business, which can see them associate with the internal client team more than their IT team – another layer of conflicting priorities.

IT also experience challenges with maturity and data silos

Current realities require teams to operate effectively

Teams struggle to realize their full potential

Poor Communication

To excel, teams must recognize and adapt to the unique communication styles and preferences of their members.

To find the "just right" amount of communication for your team, communication and collaboration expectations should be set upfront.

85% of tech workers don't feel comfortable speaking in meetings.
Source: Hypercontext, 2022

Decision Making

Decision making is a key component of team effectiveness. Teams are often responsible for decisions without having proper authority.

Establishing a team decision-making process becomes more complicated when appropriate decision-making processes vary according to the level of interdependency between team members and organizational culture.

20% of respondents say their organization excels at decision making.
Source: McKinsey, 2019

Resolving Conflicts

It is common for teams to avoid/ignore conflict – often out of fear. People fail to see how conflict can be healthy for teams if managed properly.

Leaders assume mature adults will resolve conflicts on their own. This is not always the case as people involved in conflicts can lack an objective perspective due to charged emotions.

56% of respondents prioritize restoring harmony in conflict and will push own needs aside.
Source: Niagara Institute, 2022

Teams with a shared purpose are more engaged and have higher performance

Increased Engagement

Effective and high-performing teams exchange information freely. They are clear on the purpose and goals of the organization, which enable empowerment.

Info-Tech Insight

Clear decision-making processes allow employees to focus on getting the work done versus navigating the system.

Case Study

Project Aristotle at Google – What makes a team effective at Google?

INDUSTRY: Technology
SOURCE: reWork

Challenge

Google wanted to clearly define what makes a team effective to drive a consistent meaning among its employees. The challenge was to determine more than quantitative measures, because more is not always better as it can just mean more mistakes to fix, and include the qualitative factors that bring some groups of people together better than others.

Solution

There was no pattern in the data it studied so Google stepped back and defined what a team is before embarking on defining effectiveness. There is a clear difference between a work group (a collection of people with little interdependence) and a team that is highly interdependent and relies on each other to share problems and learn from one another. Defining the different meanings took time and Google found that different levels of the organization were defining effectiveness differently.

Results

Google ended up with clear definitions that were co-created by all employees, which helped drive the meaning behind the behaviors. More importantly it was also able to define factors that had no bearing on effectiveness; one of which is very relevant in today's hybrid world – colocation.

It was discovered that teams need to trust, have clarity around goals, have structure, and know the impact their work has.

Overcoming barriers

Teams often lack the skills or knowledge to increase effectiveness and performance.

• Leaders struggle with team strife and ineffectiveness.
• A leader's ability to connect with and engage team members is vital for driving desired outcomes. However, many team leads struggle to deal with low-performing or conflict-ridden teams.
• Without adequate training on providing feedback, coaching, and managing difficult conversations, team leads often do not have the skills to positively affect team performance – and they do not appreciate the impact their actions have on desired outcomes.
• Team leads often find it difficult to invest time and resources in addressing challenges when the team is working toward deadlines.
• Team leads who are new to a management role within the organization often struggle to transition from independent contributor to leader – especially when they are tasked with managing team members who are former peers.
• Some team leads believe that soliciting help will be viewed as a personal failure, so they are reluctant to seek support for team performance management from more-senior leaders.

It's unrealistic to expect struggling teams to improve without outside help; if they were able to, they would have already done so.
To improve, teams require:

• A clearly defined team identity
• A clearly defined decision-making paradigm
• Consistently productive exchanges within the team
• An atmosphere of psychological safety

BUT these are the very things they are lacking when they're struggling.

Improving team effectiveness

Use the Info-Tech IDEA Model to assess and improve your team's effectiveness.

Begin by assessing, recognizing, and addressing challenges in:

• Identity – team goals, roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities
• Decision-making paradigms and processes within the team.
• Exchanges of information, motivation, and emotions between team members
• Atmosphere of team psychological safety

IDEA Model of Team Effectiveness

Effective Team

• Identity
• Decisions
• Exchanges
• Atmosphere

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?

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 6 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

Phase 1

Assess the team

Improving team effectiveness

Use the Info-Tech IDEA Model to assess and improve your team's effectiveness

Begin by assessing, recognizing, and addressing challenges in:

• Identity – team goals, roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.
• Decision-making paradigms and processes within the team.
• Exchanges of information, motivation, and emotions between team members.
• Atmosphere of team psychological safety.

Effective Team

• Identity
• Decisions
• Exchanges
• Atmosphere

Assess the shared understanding of team identity

In addition to having a clear understanding of the team's goals and objectives, team members must also:

• Understand their own and each other's roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.
• Recognize and appreciate the value of each team member.
• Realize how their actions impact each others' work and the overall goals and objectives.
• Understand that working in silos is considered a work group whereas a team coordinates activities, shares information, and supports each other to achieve their goals.

Clear goals enable employees to link their contributions to overall success of the team. Those who feel their contributions are important to the success of the department are two times more likely to feel they are part of a team working toward a shared goal compared to those who don't (McLean & Company, Employee Engagement Survey, IT respondents, 2023; N=4,551).

Goals matter in teamwork

The goals and objectives of the team are the underlying reason for forming the team in the first place. Without a clear and agreed-upon goal, it is difficult for teams to understand the purpose of their work.

Clear goals support creating clear roles and the contributions required for team success.

Assess the shared understanding of decision making

Decision making adds to the complexity of teamwork.
Individual team members hold different information and opinions that need to be shared to make good decisions.
Ambiguous decision-making processes can result in team members being unable to continue their work until they get clear direction.
The most appropriate decision-making process depends on the type of team:

• The higher the degree of interconnectivity in team members' work, the greater the need for a general consensus approach to decision making. However, if you opt for a general consensus approach, a backup decision-making method must be identified in the event consensus cannot be reached.
• High-pressure and high-stakes environments tend to centralize decision making to make important decisions quickly.
• Low-pressure and low-stakes environments are more likely to adopt consensus models.

Ensure team members understand how decisions are made within the team. Ask:

• Do team members recognize the importance of sharing information, opinions, and suggestions?
• Do team members feel their voices are heard?
• Must there be consensus between all team members?
• Is there a single decision maker?

Assess team exchanges by focusing on communication

Evaluate exchanges within your team using two categories:

These categories are related, but there is not always overlap. While some conflicts involve failures to successfully exchange information, conflict can also occur even when everyone is communicating successfully.

Successful exchange behaviors

• Shared understanding of how to motivate one another and how team members respond emotionally.
• Team moving beyond conflict to united action.
• Formalized processes used for resolving conflicts.
• Platforms provided for expressing diverse or conflicting perspectives and opinions – and used in a constructive manner.
• Use of agendas at meetings as well as clearly defined action items that reflect meeting outcomes.
• Avoidance of language that is exclusive, such as jargon and inside jokes.

Exchanges of information, emotion, and motivation

When selecting a method of communication (for example, in-person versus email), consider how that method will impact the exchange of all three aspects – not just information.

Downplaying the importance of emotional and motivational exchanges and focusing solely on information is very risky since emotional and motivational exchanges can impact human relationships and team psychological safety.

• Information: data or opinions.
• Emotions: feelings and evaluations about the data or opinions.
• Motivations: what we feel like doing in response to the data or opinions.

Communication affects the whole team

Effects are not limited to the team members communicating directly:

• How team members interact one on one transmits information and causes emotional and motivational responses in other group members not directly involved.
• How the larger group receives information, emotions, and motivations will also impact how individuals relate to each other in group settings.

Remember to watch the reactions and behavior of participants and observers when assessing how the team behaves.

Managing conflict

Identify how conflict management is embedded into team practices.

• Resolving conflicts is difficult and uses up a lot of time and energy. This is especially true if the team needs to figure out what to do each and every time people disagree.
• Teams that take the time to define conflict resolution processes upfront:
  • Demonstrate their commitment to resolving conflict in a healthy way.
  • Signal that diverse perspectives and opinions are valued, even if they spur disagreement sometimes.
  • Are ready for conflict when it arises – prepared to face it and thrive.

Successfully communicating information, emotions, and motivations is not the same as managing conflict.

Teams that are communicating well are more likely to uncover conflicting perspectives and opinions than teams that are not.

Conflict is healthy and can be an important element of team success if it is managed.

The team should have processes in place to resolve conflicts and move to united action.

Assess the atmosphere

Team psychological safety

A team atmosphere that exists when all members feel confident that team members can do the following without suffering negative interpersonal consequences such as blame, shame, or exclusion:

• Admit mistakes
• Raise questions or concerns
• Express dissenting views

(Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999;
The New York Times, 2016)

What psychologically safe teams look like:

• Open and learning-focused approach to error.
• Effective conflict management within the team.
• Emotional and relational awareness between team members.
• Existence of work-appropriate interpersonal relationships between team members (i.e. beyond mere working relationships).

(Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999;
The New York Times, 2016)

What "team psychological safety" is not:

• A situation where all team members are friends.
  In some cases psychologically safe team atmospheres might be harder to create when team members are friends since they might be more reluctant to challenge or disagree with friends.
• Merely trust. Being able to rely on people to honor their commitments is not the same as feeling comfortable admitting mistakes in front of them or disagreeing with them.

"Psychological safety refers to an individual's perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive… They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea."

– re:Work

Psychological safety

The impact of psychological safety on team effectiveness

Why does an atmosphere of team psychological safety matter?

• Prevents groupthink.
  • People who do not feel safe to hold or express dissenting views gravitate to teams that think like they do, resulting in the well-known dangers of groupthink.
• Encourages contribution and co-operation.
  • One study found that if team psychological safety is present, even people who tend to avoid teamwork will be more likely to contribute in team settings, thereby increasing the diversity of perspectives that can be drawn on (Journal of Organizational Culture, 2016).

Creating psychological safety in a hybrid environment requires a deliberate approach to creating team connectedness.

In the Info-Tech State of Hybrid Work in IT report autonomy and team connectedness present an interesting challenge in that higher levels of autonomy drove higher perceptions of lack of connectedness to the respondent's team. In a hybrid world, this means leaders need to be intentional in creating a safe team dynamic.

47% of employees who experienced more control over their decisions related to where, when, and how they work than before the pandemic are feeling less connected to their teams.
Source: Info-Tech, State of Hybrid Work in IT, 2022

1.1 Prepare to launch the survey

1-2 hours

1. Review and record the objectives and outcomes that support your vision of a high-performing team:
   1. Why is this important to you?
   2. What reactions do you anticipate from the team?
2. In your team meeting, share your vision of what a high-performing team looks like. Engage the team in a discussion:
   1. Ask how they work. Ask them to describe their best working team environment from a previous experience or an aspirational one.
   2. Option: Instruct them to write on sticky notes, one idea per note, and share. This approach will allow for theming of ideas.
3. Introduce the survey as a way, together as a team, the current state can be assessed against the desired state discussed.
   1. Be clear that as the leader, you won't be completing the survey as you don't want to influence their perceptions of the team. As the leader, you hold authority, and therefore, experience the team differently. This is about them and their feedback.

Input

• Observations of team behavior
• Clearly articulated goals for team cohesion

Output

• Speaking notes for introducing survey
• Survey launch

Materials

• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Sticky notes
• IDEA Assessment

Participants

• Leader
• Team Members

Download the IT Team Effectiveness Survey

1.2 Launch the survey

1-2 hours

1. Determine how the survey will be completed.
   1. Paper-based
      1. Email a copy of the Word document IT Team Effectiveness Survey for each person to complete individually.
      2. Identify one person to collect each survey and enter the results into the team effectiveness survey tool (tab 2. Data – Effectiveness Answers and tab 3. Data – Team Type Answers). This must be someone outside the team.
   2. Online direct input into Team Effectiveness Survey Tool
      1. Post the document in a shared folder.
      2. Instruct individuals to select one of the numbered columns and enter their information into tab 2. Data – Effectiveness Answers and tab 3. Data – Team Type Answers.
      3. To protect anonymity and keep results confidential, suggest each person opens document in "Cognito mode."
      4. Hide the Summary and Results tabs to avoid team members previewing them.

Download the IT Team Effectiveness Survey Results Tool

Paper-Based Cautions & Considerations

• Heavily dependent on a trusted third party for genuine results
• Can be time consuming to enter the results

Online Direct Cautions & Considerations

• Ensure that users keep to the same numbered column across both entry tabs
• Seeing other team members' responses may influence others
• Least amount of administration

Phase 2

Review Results and Action Plan

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Analyzing and debriefing the results to determine themes and patterns to come to a team consensus on what to focus on.
• Facilitated activities to drive awareness, build co-created definitions of what an effective team looks like, and identify solutions the team can undertake to be more effective.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Leader of the team
• All team members

Deliverables:

• A presentation that communicates the team assessment results
• A plan for effectively delivering the assessment results

Phase 2: Build a plan to review results and create an action plan

Reviewing assessment results and creating an improvement action plan is best accomplished through a team meeting.

Analyzing and preparing for the team meeting may be done by:

• The person charged with team effectiveness (i.e. team coach).
• For teams that are seriously struggling with team effectiveness, the coach should complete this step in its entirety.
• The team coach and the team lead.
• Truly effective teams are self-reliant. Begin upskilling team leads by involving team leads from the start.

1. Analyze team assessment results
2. Prepare to communicate results to the team
3. Select team activities that will guide the identification of action items and next steps
4. Facilitate the team meeting

2.1 Analyze results

Health Dials

1. Once the results are final, review the Health Dials for each of the areas.
   1. For each area of the team's effectiveness
      • Red indicates a threat – this will derail the team and you will require an external person to help facilitate conversations.
        It would be recommended to contact us for additional guidance if this is one of your results.
      • Yellow is a growth opportunity.
      • Green is a strength and pay attention to where the dial is – deep into strength or just past the line?
   2. Think about these questions and record your initial reactions.
      1. What surprises you – either positively or negatively?
      2. What areas are as expected?
      3. What behaviors are demonstrated that support the results?

Prioritize one to two factors for improvement by selecting those with:

• The lowest overall score.
• The highest variance in responses.
• If psychological safety is low, be sure to prioritize this factor; it is the foundation of any effective team.

2.2 Analyze results

Alignment of Responses

1. The alignment of responses area provides you with an overview of the range of responses from the team for each area.
   • The more variety in the bars indicates how differently each person is experiencing the team.
   • The more aligned the bars are the more shared the experiences.

The flatter the bars are across the top, the more agreement there was. Factors that show significant differences in opinion should be discussed to diagnose what is causing the misalignment within your team.

2. Recommendation is to look at high scores and the alignment and lower scores and the alignment to determine where you may want to focus.

The alignment chart below shows varied responses; however, there are two distinct patterns. This will be an important area to review.
Things to think about:

• Are there new team members?
• Has there been a leadership change?
• Has there been a change that has impacted the team?

2.3 Analyze results

Team Characteristics and Stakes

1. Team Characteristics. Use the Team Type Results tab in the IT Team Effectiveness Assessment Tool to identify how the team characterizes itself along the High-Low Scale. The closer the dark blue bar is to the right or left suggests to which degree the team views the characteristic.
   1. Interdependence highlights the team's view on how interconnected and dependent they are on each other to get work done. Think of examples where they should be sharing or collaborating, and they are not.
   2. Virtual describes the physicality of the team. This area has changed a lot since 2020; however, it's still important to note if the team shares the same understanding of work location. Are they thinking of team members in a different geography or referring to hybrid work?
   3. Decision making describes the scale of one decision maker or many. Where are most decisions made by on your team or who is making them?
   4. Stability refers to the degree to which the team stays the same – no membership change or turnover. It can be defined by length of time the group has been together. Looking at this will help understand alignment results. If alignment is varied, one might expect a less stable team.
2. Stakes and Pressure
   1. Pressure refers to the conditions in which the team must work. How urgent are requests?
   2. Stakes refers to the degree of impact the work has. Will outputs impact safety, health, or a service?
   3. This category can be reviewed against decision making – high pressure, high stakes environments usually have a high concentration of authority. Low pressure, low stakes decisions can also be made either by one person as there is relatively no impact or with many as you have time to get many perspectives.
   4. This area informs what your decision-making protocols should look like.

2.4 Prepare for meeting

1-2 hours

1. Select a facilitator
   • The right person to facilitate the meeting and present the results is dependent upon the results themselves, the team lead's comfort level, and the root and degree of team dysfunction.
   • Typically, the team lead will facilitate and present the results. However, it will be more appropriate to have a member of the HR team or an external third party facilitate.
2. Set the agenda (recommended sample to the right) that ensures:
   • Team members reflect on the results and discuss reaction to the results. (E.g. Are they surprised? Why/why not?)
   • Results are clearly understood and accepted by team members before moving on to activities.
   • The aim of the meeting is kept in mind. The purpose of the team meeting is to involve all team members in the creation of an effectiveness improvement plan.
3. Customize the Facilitation Guide and activities in the Improve IT Team Effectiveness Facilitation Guide. (Activities are aligned with the four factors in the IDEA model.)
   • Identify a clear objective for each activity given the team assessment results. (E.g. What are the areas of improvement? What is the desired outcome of the activity?)
   • Review and select the activities that will best achieve the objectives.
   • Customize and prepare for chosen activities appropriately.
   • Obtain all necessary materials.
   • Practice by anticipating and preparing for questions, objectives, and what you will say and do.

Facilitation Factors
Select a third-party facilitator if:

• The team lead is uncomfortable.
• The leadership or organization is implicated in the team's dysfunction, a third party can be sought in place of HR.
• Regardless of who facilitates, it is critical that the team lead understands the process and results and is comfortable answering any questions that arise.

Agenda

• Review the IDEA Model.
• Discuss the assessment results.
• Invite team members to reflect on the results and discuss reaction to the results.
• Ensure results are clearly understood and accepted.
• Examine team challenges and strengths through selected team activities.
• Create a team charter and effectiveness improvement plan.

Materials

• IT Team Effectiveness Activities Facilitation Guide
• IT Team Effectiveness Survey results

Participants

• Leader

2.5 Run the meeting

2-3 hours

Facilitate the team meeting and agree on the team effectiveness improvement plan.

Work with the team to brainstorm and agree on an action plan of continuous improvements.

By creating an action plan together with the team, there is greater buy-in and commitment to the activities identified within the action plan.

Don't forget to include timelines and task owners in the action plan – it isn't complete without them.

Document final decisions in Info-Tech's Improve IT Team Effectiveness Action Plan Tool.

Review activity Develop Team Charter in the Improve IT Team Effectiveness Facilitation Guide and conclude the team meeting by creating a team charter. With a team charter, teams can better understand:

• Team objectives
• Team membership and roles
• Team ground rules

Facilitation Factors

Encourage and support participation from everyone.

Be sure no one on the team dismisses anyone's thoughts or opinions – they present the opportunity for further discussion and deeper insight.

Watch out for anything said or done during the activities that should be discussed in the activity debrief.

Debrief after each activity, outlining any lessons learned, action items, and next steps.

Agenda

• Review the IDEA Model.
• Discuss the assessment results.
• Invite team members to reflect on the results and discuss reaction to the results.
• Ensure results are clearly understood and accepted.
• Examine team challenges and strengths through selected team activities.
• Create a team charter and effectiveness improvement plan.

Materials

• IT Team Effectiveness Activities Facilitation Guide
• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Sticky notes
• IT Team Effectiveness Survey results

Participants

• Leader
• Team Members
• Optional – External Facilitator

Phase 3

Document and measure

This phase will walk you through the following activities:
Building your team charter that will include:

• Team vision, mission, and goals
• Roles and responsibilities of each member
• Decision-making responsibilities and process
• How information will be shared and by whom
• Ways to build psychological safety on the team

This phase involves the following participants:

• Leader of the team
• All team members

Document and agree to regular check-ins to reassess.

As a team it will be important to drive your brainstormed solutions into an output that is co-created.

• Agree to what actions can be implemented.
• Capture agreed-to team goals, roles, responsibilities, and decision process into a team charter. Also include your communication protocol that articulates how information will be shared in future.

1. Review suggestions and actions
2. Capture in team charter
3. Assign metrics to measure success and determine when to review
4. Complete ongoing check-ins with team through team meeting and plan to reassess if agreed to

Team Charter

Never assume everyone "just knows."

Set clear expectations for the team's interactions and behaviors.

• Some teams call this a team agreement, team protocol, or ways of working. Determine the naming convention that works best for your team and culture.
• This type of document saw a renewed popularity during COVID-19 as face-to-face interactions were more difficult, and as teams, news ways to work needed to be discovered, shared, and documented.
• A co-created team charter is a critical component to onboarding new employees in the hybrid world.

Info-Tech Insight – State of Hybrid Work in IT

One contributor to the report shared the effort and intention around maintaining their culture during the pandemic. The team agreement created became a critical tool to enable conversations between leaders and their team – it was not a policy document.

Team effectiveness is driven through thoughtful planned conversations. And it's a continued conversation.

Download the IT Team Charter Template

Establish Baseline Metrics

Baseline metrics will be improved through:

Identify the impact that improved team effectiveness will have on the organization.
Determine your baseline metrics to assess the success of your team interventions and demonstrate the impact to the rest of the organization using pre-determined goals and metrics.
Share success stories through:

• Newsletters or email announcements
• Team meetings
• Presentations to business partners or the organization

Reassess team effectiveness

Reassess and identify trends after they have worked on key focus areas for improvement.

Track the team's progress by reassessing their effectiveness six to twelve months after the initial assessment.
Identify if:

• Team characteristics have changed.
• Areas of team strengths are still a source of strength.
• Areas for improvement have, in fact, improved.
• There are opportunities for further improvement.

As the team matures, priorities and areas of concern may shift; it is important to regularly reassess team effectiveness to ensure ongoing alignment and suitability.
Note: It is not always necessary to conduct a full formal assessment; once teams become more effective and self-sufficient, informal check-ins by team leads will be sufficient.

If you assess team effectiveness for multiple teams, you have the opportunity to identify trends:

• Are there common challenges within teams?
• If so, what are they?
• How comfortable are teams with intervention?
• How often is outside help required?

Identifying these trends, initiatives, training, or tactics may be used to improve team effectiveness across the department – or even the organization.

Teams are ultimately accountable for their own effectiveness.

As teams mature, the team lead should become less involved in action planning. However, enabling truly effective teams takes significant time and resources from the team lead.

Use the action plan created and agreed upon during the team meeting to hold teams accountable:

• Ensure teams follow through on action items.
• Ensure you are continuously assessing team effectiveness (formally or informally).

The team coach should have a plan to transition into a supportive role by:

• Providing teams with the knowledge, resources, and tools required to improve and sustain high effectiveness.
• Providing team members and leads with a safe, open, and honest environment.
• Stepping in as an objective third party when required.

If the team continues to face barriers

Other important information: If team effectiveness has not significantly improved, other interventions may be required that are beyond the scope of this project.

The four factors outlined in the IDEA Model of team effectiveness are very important, but they are not the only things that have a positive or negative impact on teams. If attempts to improve the four factors have not resulted in the desired level of team effectiveness, evaluate other barriers:

For organizational culture, ask if performance and reward programs do the following:

• Value teamwork alongside individual achievement and competition
• Provide incentives that promote a focus on individual performance over team performance
• Reward or promote those who sabotage their teams

For learning and development, ask:

• Is team effectiveness included in our manager or leadership training?
• Do we offer resources to employees seeking to improve their teamwork competencies?

If an individual team member's or leader's performance is not meeting expectations, potential remedies include a performance improvement plan, reassignment, and termination of employment.

These kinds of interventions are beyond the control of the team itself. In these cases, we recommend you consult with your HR department; HR professionals can be important advocates because they possess the knowledge, influence, and authority in the company to promote changes that support teamwork.

Related Info-Tech Research

Redesign Your IT Department

• You could have the best IT employees in the world, but if they aren't structured well your organization will still fail in reaching its vision.
• Increase the effectiveness of IT as a function.
• Provide employees with clarity in their roles and responsibilities.

Build an IT Employee Engagement Program

• With the growing IT job market, turnover is a serious threat to IT's ability to deliver seamless value and continuously drive innovation.
• Engagement initiatives are often seen as being HR's responsibility; however, IT leadership needs to take accountability for the retention and productivity of their employees in order to drive business value.

Info-Tech Leadership Programs

• Development of the leadership mind should never stop. This program will help IT leaders continue to craft their leadership competencies to navigate the ever-changing world in which we operate.
• Actively delegate responsibilities and opportunities that engage and develop team members to build on current skills and prepare for the future.

Research Contributors and Experts

Carlene McCubbin
Practice Lead
Info-Tech Research Group

Nick Kozlo
Senior Research Analyst
Info-Tech Research Group

Heather Leier-Murray
Senior Research Analyst
Info-Tech Research Group

Stephen O'Conner
Executive Counselor
Info-Tech Research Group

Jane Kouptsova
Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Dr. Julie D. Judd, Ed.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Ventura County Office of Education

Works Cited

Aminov, I., A. DeSmet, and G. Jost. "Decision making in the age of urgency." McKinsey. April 2019. Accessed January 2023.
Duhigg, Charles. "What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team." The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2016. Accessed January 2023.
Edmondson, Amy. "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams." Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2, June 1999, pp. 350-383.
Gardner, Kate. "Julie Judd – Ventura County Office of Education." Toggle, 12 Sept. 2022. Accessed January 2023.
Google People Operations. "Guide: Understand Team Effectiveness." reWork, n.d. Accessed February 2023.
Harkins, Phil. "10 Leadership Techniques for Building High-Performing Teams." Linkage Inc., 2014. Accessed 10 April 2017.
Heath, C. and D. Heath. Decision: How to make better choices in life and work. Random House, 2013, ISBN 9780307361141.
Hill, Jon. "What is an Information Silo and How Can You Avoid It." Bloomfire, 23 March 2022. Accessed January 2023.
"IT Team Management Software for Enhanced Productivity." Freshworks, n.d. Accessed January 2023.
Jackson, Brian. "2022 Tech Trends." Info-Tech Research Group, 2022. Accessed December 2022.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011.
Kouptsova, J., and A. Mathieson. "State of Hybrid Work in IT." Info-Tech Research Group, 2023. Accessed January 2023.
Mayfield, Clifton, et al. "Psychological Collectivism and Team Effectiveness: Moderating Effects of Trust and Psychological Safety." Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, vol. 20, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 78-94.
Rock, David. "SCARF: A Brain-Based Model for Collaborating With and Influencing Others." NeuroLeadership Journal, 2008. Web.
"The State of High Performing Teams in Tech Hypercontext." Hypercontext. 2022. Accessed November 2022.
Weick, Carl, and Kathleen Sutcliff. Managing the unexpected. John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
"Workplace Conflict Statistics: How we approach conflict at work." The Niagara Institute, August 2022. Accessed December 2022.

Build an ERP Strategy and Roadmap

Align business and IT to successfully deliver on your ERP initiative

Table of Contents

Build an ERP Strategy and Roadmap

Align business and IT to successfully deliver on your ERP initiative

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

A foundational ERP strategy is critical to decision making.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a core tool 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

ERP 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 selecting replacement systems without understanding the needs of the organization. Alignment between business and IT is just one part of the overall strategy. Identifying key pain points and opportunities, assessed in the light of organizational strategy, will provide a strong foundation to the transformation of the ERP system.

Robert Fayle
Research Director, Enterprise Applications
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Organizations often do not know where to start with an ERP project. They focus on tactically selecting and implementing the technology but ignore the strategic foundation that sets the ERP system up for success. ERP projects are routinely reported as going over budget, over schedule, and they fail to realize any benefits.

Common Obstacles

ERP projects impact the entire organization – they are not limited to just financial and operating metrics. The disruption is felt during both implementation and in the production environment.

Missteps early on can cost time, financial resources, and careers. Roughly 55% of ERP projects reported being over budget, and two-thirds of organizations implementing ERP realized less than half of their anticipated benefits.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Obtain organizational buy-in and secure top management support. Set clear expectations, guiding principles, and critical success factors.

Build an ERP operating model/business model that identifies process boundaries, scope, and prioritizes requirements. Assess stakeholder involvement, change impact, risks, and opportunities.

Understand the alternatives your organization can choose for the future state of ERP. Develop an actionable roadmap and meaningful KPIs that directly align with your strategic goals.

Info-Tech Insight

Accountability for ERP success is shared between IT and the business. There is no single owner of an ERP. A unified approach to building your strategy promotes an integrated roadmap so all stakeholders have clear direction on the future state.

Insight summary

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems facilitate the flow of information across business units. It allows for the 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.

A measured and strategic approach to change will help mitigate many of the risks associated with ERP projects, which will avoid the chances of these changes becoming the dreaded “career killers.”

A business led, top management supported initiative partnered with IT has the greatest chance of success.

• A properly scoped ERP project reduces churn and provides all parts of the business with clarity.
• This blueprint provides the business and IT the methodology to get the right level of detail for the business processes that the ERP supports so you can avoid getting lost in the details.
• Build a successful ERP Strategy and roadmap by:
  • Aligning and prioritizing key business and technology drivers.
  • Clearly defining what is in and out of scope for the project.
  • Providing a clear picture of how the business process and underlying applications support the business strategic priorities.
  • Pulling it all together into an actionable roadmap.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

What is ERP?

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems facilitate the flow of information across business units. They allow for the seamless integration of systems and create 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.

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.

ERP use cases:

• Product-Centric
  Suitable for organizations that manufacture, assemble, distribute, or manage material goods.
• Service-Centric
  Suitable for organizations that provide and manage field services and/or professional services.

ERP by the numbers

50-70%
Statistical analysis of ERP projects indicates rates of failure vary from 50 to 70%. Taking the low end of those analyst reports, one in two ERP projects is considered a failure. (Source: Saxena and Mcdonagh)

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)

40%
Nearly 40% of companies said functionality was the key driver for the adoption of a new ERP. (Source: Gheorghiu)

ERP dissatisfaction

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.

Info-Tech’s methodology for developing a foundational ERP strategy and roadmap

Blueprint deliverables

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

ERP Strategy Report Complete an assessment of processes, prioritization, and pain points, and create an initiative roadmap.	ERP Business Model Align your business and technology goals and objectives in the current environment.		ERP Operating Model Identify and prioritize your ERP top-level processes.
	ERP Process Prioritization Assess ERP processes against the axes of rigor and strategic importance.		ERP Strategy Roadmap A data-driven roadmap of how to address the ERP pain points and opportunities.

Executive Brief Case Study

INDUSTRY: Aerospace
SOURCE: Panorama, 2021

Aerospace organization assesses ERP future state from opportunities, needs, and pain points

Challenge

Several issues plagued the aerospace and defense organization. Many of the processes were ad hoc and did not use the system in place, often relying on Excel. The organization had a very large pain point stemming from its lack of business process standardization and oversight. The biggest gap, however, was from the under-utilization of the ERP software.

Solution

By assessing the usage of the system by employees and identifying key workarounds, the gaps quickly became apparent. After assessing the organization’s current state and generating recommendations from the gaps, it realized the steps needed to achieve its desired future state. The analysis of the pain points generated various needs and opportunities that allowed the organization to present and discuss its key findings with executive leadership to set milestones for the project.

Results

The overall assessment led the organization to the conclusion that in order to achieve its desired future state and maximize ROI from its ERP, the organization must address the internal issues prior to implementing the upgraded software.

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

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 a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between eight to twelve calls over the course of four to six months.

Phase 1

• Call #1: Scoping call to understand the current situation.
• Call #2: Establish business & IT alignment and project scope.

Phase 2

• Call #3: Discuss the ERP Strategy business model and mega-processes.
• Call #4: Begin the drill down on the level 1 processes.

Phase 3

• Call #5: Establish the stakeholder map and project risks.
• Call #6: Discuss project setup including stakeholder commitment and accountability.

Phase 4

• Call #7: Discuss resolution paths and build initial roadmap.
• Call #8: Summarize results and plan next steps.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com1-888-670-8889

Build an ERP Strategy and Roadmap

Phase 1

Build alignment and scope

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

Build a common language to ensure clear understanding of the organizational needs. Define a vision and guiding principles to aid in decision making and enumerate how the ERP supports achievement of the organizational goals. Define the initial scope of the ERP project. This includes the discussion of what is not in scope.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Primary stakeholders in each value stream supported by the ERP
• ERP Applications support team

Create a compelling case that addresses strategic business objectives

When someone at the organization asks you WHY, you need to deliver a compelling case. The ERP project will receive pushback, doubt, and resistance; if you can’t answer the question WHY, you will be left back-peddling.

When faced with a challenge, prepare for the WHY.

• Why do we need this?
• Why are we spending all this money?
• Why are we bothering?
• Why is this important?
• Why did we do it this way?
• Why did we choose this vendor?

Most organizations can answer “What?”
Some organizations can answer “How?”
Very few organizations have an answer for “Why?”

Each stage of the project will be difficult and present its own unique challenges and failure points. Re-evaluate if you lose sight of WHY at any stage in the project.

Step 1.1

Aligning business and IT

Activities

• 1.1.1 Build a glossary
• 1.1.2 ERP Vision and guiding principles
• 1.1.3 Corporate goals and ERP benefits

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Building a common language to ensure a clear understanding of the organization’s needs.
• Creating a definition of your vision and identifying the guiding principles to aid in decision making.
• Defining how the ERP supports achievement of the organizational goals.

This step involves the following participants:

• Primary stakeholders in each value stream supported by the ERP
• ERP Applications support team

Outcomes of this step

Business and IT have a shared understanding of how the ERP supports the organizational goals.

Are we all talking about the same thing?

Every group has their own understanding of the ERP system, and they may use the same words to describe different things. For example, is there a difference between procurement of office supplies and procurement of parts to assemble an item for sale? And if they are different, do your terms differ (e.g., procurement versus purchasing)?

Activity 1.1.1 Build a glossary

1. As a group, discuss the organization’s functional areas, business capabilities, value streams, and business processes.
2. Ask each of the participants if there are terms or “jargon” that they hear used that they may be unclear on or know that others may not be aware of. Record these items in the table along with a description.
   • Acronyms are particularly important to document. These are often bandied about without explanation. For example, people outside of finance may not understand that FP&A is short for Financial Planning and Analysis.

Record this information in the ERP Strategy Report Template.

Download the ERP Strategy Report Template

Activity 1.1.1 Working slide

Example/working slide for your glossary. Consider this a living document and keep it up to date.

Vision and Guiding Principles

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Guiding principles are high-level rules of engagement that help to align stakeholders from the outset. Determine guiding principles to shape the scope and ensure stakeholders have the same vision.

Creating Guiding Principles

Guiding principles should be constructed as full sentences. These statements should be able to guide decisions.

EXAMPLES

• [Organization] is implementing an ERP system to streamline processes and reduce redundancies, saving time and money.
• [Organization] is implementing an ERP to integrate disparate systems and rationalize the application portfolio.
• [Organization] is aiming at taking advantage of best industry practices and strives to minimize the level of customization required in solution.

Questions to Ask

1. What is a strong statement that will help guide decision making throughout the life of the ERP project?
2. What are your overarching requirements for business processes?
3. What do you ultimately want to achieve?
4. What is a statement that will ensure all stakeholders are on the same page for the project?

Activity 1.1.2 – ERP Vision and Project Guiding Principles

1 hour

1. As a group, discuss whether you want to create a separate ERP vision statement or re-state your corporate vision and/or goals.
   • An ERP vision statement will provide project-guiding principles, encompass the ERP objectives, and give a rationale for the project.
   • Using the corporate vision/goals will remind the business and IT that the project is to find an ERP solution that supports and enhances the organizational objectives.
2. Review each of the sample guiding principles provided and ask the following questions:
   1. Do we agree with the statement?
   2. Is this statement framed in the language we used internally? Does everyone agree on the meaning of the statement?
   3. Will this statement help guide our decision-making process?

Record this information in the ERP Strategy Report Template.

Download the ERP Strategy Report Template

Activity 1.1.2 – ERP Vision and Project Guiding Principles

We, [Organization], will select and implement an integrated software suite that enhances the growth and profitability of the organization through streamlined global business processes, real time data-driven decisions, increased employee productivity, and IT investment protection.

• Support Business Agility: A flexible and adaptable integrated business system providing a seamless user experience.
• Utilize 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”: Unify data model and integrate processes where possible. Assess integration needs carefully.

Align the ERP strategy with the corporate strategy