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Title: IT Doesn't Matter-Business Processes Do: A Critical Analysis of Nicholas Carr's I.T. Article in the Harvard Business Review by Howard Smith, Peter Fingar ISBN: 0-929652-35-5 Publisher: Meghan Kiffer Pr Pub. Date: August, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 (14 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Springtime for IT/BPM? Better gardening tools needed...
Comment: Contrary to what some might suspect, this is not simply a thinly veiled attempt to plug their recently published book, even though it does essentially repurpose much of the content to make their case. However, the vision Smith and Fingar paint of a Business Process Management (BPM) future as counterpoint to Nicholas Carr's HBR article should perhaps be more appropriately called Business Process Magic, and even if the future they deify is less than five years away (difficult to believe) their vision does little or nothing to solve the real pain today. The fact that standards have been developed, frankly doesn't mean they'll ever be widely used, except, perhaps, for marketing purposes by those involved in developing, selling and profiting from them (Microsoft, IBM anyone?). And, just because something is "enterprise," doesn't mean it has to be complex, confusing and expensive, does it? Some things to consider when evaluating the IT/BPM near-future (or more accurately, your business pain today):
1. IT departments are not the customer.
Smith and Fingar go to great lengths to explain what Carr did and did not mean by "IT," ultimately deciding he meant the industry, not IT specialists (IT departments, including the CIO). The truth is, IT departments may provide the backbone, the infrastructure, to the enterprise, but they are not the brains. That is, they are not the subject matter experts (SMEs) who perform the day-to-day transactions that define the enterprise's business value (even Smith and Fingar estimate 80% of enterprise processes should be managed by business users, not IT). This is not to condemn IT specialists (just as programmers generally shouldn't design UIs, UI designers generally shouldn't write code). Despite years of aligning IT with business, the sensibilities are just too different. Smith and Fingar seem to be committed to helping internal IT redefine itself into being something greater than it needs to or should be, ultimately causing overlap and redundancy with other senior management. The COO/CFO and ultimately HR will own the future of process management because, like it or not, humans are the critical components - IT is simply the enabler. IT will support things automated, but should never define requirements (or even build the systems if the software is designed well enough) unless it is their own internal processes (where they are the SMEs).
2. Cost matters.
There is little mention of the cost of implementing existing or future BPM systems, but in Smith and Fingar's universe it ain't gonna be cheap. Kodak spent 1 billion dollars implementing an ERP system, and that's just a piece of the BPM puzzle. Why so much? Because 20-50% of IT costs (estimates vary) are integration costs, tying systems together at the code level. Consider this - if 80% of processes should be managed by business users, is all that integration really needed? Perhaps there's an easier way.
3. Don't carboload on consulting.
Implicit in both their books, consulting appears to be an eternal given. It doesn't have to be - not if the tools are truly usable. Consultants don't know your business - they know the toolset, and they excel at holding hands. You know your business. If the software is really designed to be used by business users, then USE it. Get your hands dirty, document your processes, then let your employees interact with them. Analyze the usage. Then think about bringing in consultants if and when problems start to emerge (or read a book on process, you might just fix it yourself!).
4. It's all about usability.
The bottom line - if Carr is right and IT has truly been commoditized, then the sole critical differentiator is ease of use. And if Smith and Fingar truly believe business users must use BPM software hands-on to maximize impact, it not only has to be easy to use, but logical, and aligned visually and semantically with relevant and meaningful metaphors. The outlook today? Usability is painfully adequate in most desktop and web apps (score points for Carr) but still highly questionable for IT department-centric server apps (regardless what Smith and Fingar claim, I'm from Missouri on this one).
Finally, full disclosure - my company, ... has developed a business operating system does solve real pain and is available today. ...enables business users to use their own business processes to organize people, applications and information. And yes, it's easy to use, reasonably priced and out of the box.
Rating: 5
Summary: Correct thinking about IT
Comment: Nicholas Carr's article in the Harvard Business Review has taken the backlash wave from the IT overspend in the 1990s to spin a sensational story, a story that some rebuttals have called "dangerous," for it distorts the role of IT in creating competitive advantage. Companies are indeed struggling with the issue of IT's role, and it is difficult to break out of existing misconceptions of IT. This is evident in David Forbes' review of this book. He seems so locked into his perceptions that he distorts what the book actually says. For example, he says the Smith & Fingar's vision is that of expensive ERP sysems of the past. He must be so busy railing against ERP systems that he failed to actually read the book's related discussions that are in fact in agreement with him. And, about Forbes' comments about usability... did he actually read the section on amenity? Again, agreement.
The point is that when it comes to IT, many people bring much baggage to the subject, for IT means many things to many people and is an emotiaonally charged subject for those with a particular stake in IT. Many read a book like this and filter it through their individual bias to the point where they distort what the book actually says.
As a business manager using the book to foster discussion in our company, I suggest readers go through it twice: once quickly with their defensive mechanizms in place, and then again with a keen eye on what the IT issues portend for their company going forward. We are doing precisely that in our company and find the book to be the focal point of our deliberations, for it covers all the key issues of the past and those setting the stage for the future. Correct thining about IT, not preconcieved notions or turf bias, is essential for companies to move forward, for as the book says, IT is not about the past fity years of business automation and its inherent limitations, IT is about a "change in kind" in business automation where the focus is not on data and record keeping, but on the way business is conducted. And yes, the authors totally agree that usibility is key to that, for it's business people who must manage their own business processes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Replace IT with Architecture
Comment: Having browsed through both sides of the story, i have to say that Howard Smith and Peter Fingar do an excellent job bringing the importance of business processes to the forefront. In the systems of tomorrow, business processes will play an important role but that role has to be supported and realized by a sound architecture. IT in this context will be important but will perhaps assume a slightly different flavour.
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Title: Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave by Howard Smith, Peter Fingar ISBN: 0929652339 Publisher: Meghan-Kiffer Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage by Nicholas G. Carr ISBN: 1591394449 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: April, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title:IT Doesn't Matter (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) by Nicholas G. Carr ASIN: B00009MBYN Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 24 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $7.00 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $7.00 |
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Title: Business Process Management (BPM) is a Team Sport: Play it to Win! by Andrew Spanyi ISBN: 0929652029 Publisher: Meghan Kiffer Pr Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Business Process Management: Profiting From Process by Roger Burlton ISBN: 0672320630 Publisher: SAMS Pub. Date: 17 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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