When Projects are Confused with Strategy

Too often executives use terminology to their advantage to add work that is contradictory with the trends of reducing spend. The verbiage is used to cushion and dispel rumours of unnecessary spending. If changes or new development have to be completed to meet business needs, should this be labeled as a project or a strategy? Does the label "strategy" constitute more funding than "project"? Does a defining strategy override the need to minimize overhead?

It is important to recognize that strategy embodies a vision that requires multiple tasks to be accomplished for a common goal. A project is a set of well-defined tasks that accomplish business requirements and directives. Many projects are birthed from a strategy but the two are not interchangeable.

For example, if a company chooses to build an ODS (operational data store) based on frequent data feeds from external data sources, there are usually two compelling reasons - 1) reduce overhead of reporting development and maintenance from different data sources and 2) implement and simplify business intelligence in a format understandable by sales, marketing, and operations executives. The project to create the ODS is a very important part of the strategy of providing visibility and transparency to customers and cross-departmental executives to increase customer satisfaction and develop better products/services for its consumers. Now if there is no unique identifier to relate consumers and products/services across the ODS, there needs to be a one-time data update to create and amass this key for reference. This is neither a project nor a strategy but a one-time assignment and task for a data update for the synchronization across the ODS to happen successfully.

In essence, strategy does not equal to project. While strategies are normally highly funded, projects have to be formed to implement the strategy accurately. One time tasks that only provide an immediate business need are not projects and should not be labeled accordingly. Test it out. What projects are you working on to impact a strategy or fulfill an immediate business need? The answer defines whether you are a key component to a greater vision.

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Finding Success from On-Premise to Off-Premise Solutions

As the CIO or technology strategist you have made the decision to move to an SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model from the old in-house supported standard. The benefits have outweighed the initial costs and the total cost of ownership is inevitably more affordable for your organization to satisfy business needs. Now it is more important to succeed in this implementation and change. How do you quickly get current staff on board to replace existing systems? There are three defining moments to guaranteeing the off-premise success – 1) winning over the business, 2) gradually deploying groups of functionality, and 3) adaptability and mentoring of existing staff.

Whether you selected Salesforce.com, CRM On Demand, Net Suite, or Right Now, the process was no doubt grueling and competitive and demanding in nature. After all the sales calls, demonstrations, research, vendor customer discussions, and trial software periods, your neck is on the line for making the decision. Do not let all the efforts be wasted with no user adoption or employee dissatisfaction, or worse, halt in business operations. Find success by implementing these three strategies.

Read more about these strategies that can guarantee a succcess.

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It is Raining Savings in the Cloud

In the midst of economic uncertainty or modest revenue gains, strategic methods of savings are important to leaders. The CIO is put in a position to review IT costs and cut expenses while keeping the business operational and transparent with improved tracking. Cloud computing is the phenomenon that is shifting organizations from developing, servicing and supporting business functional systems to analyzing, developing, and allowing externally hosted solutions. Why is the shift to cloud computing moving swiftly? It is a viable option that can “rain” savings and provide the most value to any organization.

Cloud computing is the latest trend in Total Cost-of-Ownership (TCO) because it streamlines software, hardware, and/or development to an off-site location hosted by reputable vendors. The services offered by reputable vendors like Oracle, Google, Salesforce.com, Amazon, Microsoft, and SUN (soon to be Oracle with the proposed acquisition) fall into one of three categories: software-as-a-service provider; infrastructure-as-a-service provider (offering Web-based access to storage and computing power); and platform-as-a-service providers (giving developers tools to build and host Web applications). Although security remains the dominant concern of leaders not moving in the cloud trends, there are three reasons why major financial, healthcare, pharmaceutical, consumer goods, security, and not-for-profit, and government institutions are investing in cloud computing to thwart declines in their bottom line.

Read more about the three top savings.

To obtain detailed information, email cio@ciointheknow.com