Management and Strategy for
Information Systems I
Assignment 2
Business and IT Relationship
Name: Laith KassisUnit: Management and Strategy for Information
Systems 1
I declare that this assignment is based on my own work and that all
material previously or
published in any source by any other person has been duly
acknowledged in the
assignment.
Signed:
Executive Summary
The research community at a NSW University relies on the services
provided by Federation of Information Technology Providers (ITP)
comprised of three departments: Major Projects Group (MPG),
Strategic Planning and Architecture (SPA) and Information Technology
Services (ITS) to achieve its goals to develop its reputation as an
institution where pure and applied research and research training are
conducted at nationally and internationally recognised standards.
The University’s research community requires access to very high
performance network and computing capabilities, superior quality
databases and other on-line information resources and effective online
collaborative technologies.
Following interviews with the IT manager, one IT staff member, two
managers of business units at the Research Office (RO) and a
Program Area Manager at MPG, the following report identifies key
relationship issues with a University Federation of Information
Technology Providers (ITP) and business units such as the RO.
The key finding of these interviews included the following relationship
features:
The perception of ITP/RO relationship
Understanding the relationship of ITP/RO
Understanding the role of ITP department
Overall the relationship of ITP/RO is seen to be at a good level
governed via the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with ITS and through
project management of the new application implementation with MPG.
The role of SPA was not clear and there was no direct interaction of
SPA staff and the RO. Few improvements could be made to ensure the
success of the ITP/RO relationship, which include:
Improvement of the measurement of customer satisfaction
Improve the process of ITP service delivery to its customers
Improve end-user involvement with new project implementation and
expand on communication with them
Improve the strategic ITP involvement with RO
Improve communication among the ITP divisions
Background Information
How is Information Technology Service provided
The University wide community competes for IT services and project
funding. A University Federation of IT Providers (ITP) has been formed
to assist the organisation’s CIO, in the effective provision of IT services
across the University via three departments: Information Technology
Services (ITS), Major Projects Group (MPG) and Strategic Planning and
Architecture (SPA).
Research Office
Figure 1 Current ITP Service Delivery Model
The Research Office Information Systems Profile
The Commonwealth government has allocated ~$92m to the University
in 2002 on the basis of formula driven block grants. Each of the
relevant formulae has research performance as a key component.
The RO currently maintains 5 separate systems. The data integrity from
current University systems used to determine research performance is
poor as the systems are obsolete (~10 years old in some cases, lacking
Y2K compliance in one instance and not compatible with current
operating systems) and are not integrated within the office nor with
other University enterprise systems. Similarly, current systems are not
sufficiently sophisticated to ensure full compliance with Commonwealth
reporting requirements.
Since all RO processes involve a level of reporting – whether internally
to management/committees, funding agencies or government, existing
systems have no comprehensive reporting functionality to meet such
demand requiring significant manual re-work to provide essential
reports.
A new application implementation is underway and will provide vastly
increased data integrity and enable compliance by replacing multiple
existing systems and integrating with other relevant University systems
(PeopleSoft Finance, PeopleSoft Human Resources Management
System and a Student System) thus removing a significant amount of
duplication, and risk of error, and ensuring all necessary information
required to be reported is captured. This will also lead to greater
efficiencies within Research Office processes allowing resources to be
allocated to increasing total research income and publications reported
by the University.
A new application will provide an integrated solution within the Office
and the University, with distributed access via the WWW to College /
Faculty /Department users to be offered once implementation within
the RO has been achieved. Access to research performance data will be
based on appropriate delegations and is expected to be 100% web
enabled, searchable on key fields and user-friendly. The new application
is promising a suite of customised reports as well as optional reports
for ad-hoc queries. As the RO has recently inherited responsibility for
providing research performance and Go8 benchmarking data for the
University funding model, a sophisticated reporting tool within the new
applications is an essential requirement. Furthermore, a single
information management system for the RO will provide increased
security and enable more efficient back-up and disaster recovery
procedures.
In the process of collecting the above IS background about the RO from
the IT Manager at the RO, I have also interviewed the IT Manager; an
IT staff member directly reporting to the IT manager; the Research
Grants Administration Manager and the Ethics Manager to investigate
and learn more about the perceptions of ITP service provision. The
methodology of this paper is based on Gatto's (2000, p.89-121) work in
dealing with customers. To analyse ITP’s relationship with the RO, I
have asked the following generic questions:
What do they expect/need from ITP – what services, products, systems
etc?
How does the ITP help your business unit them do their jobs?
In terms of function and service delivery – what does ITP do well?
What are the areas where the ITP could add more value?
What do you expect/need from the ITP -
what services, products, systems etc?
The three managers and the IT member staff share a common view of
their need of ITP services, including:
Professional, responsive desktop support for Windows and Macintosh
platforms;
Professional, responsive server support (web hosting, file sharing,
backups, database hosting);
Advice and assistance with software procurement and licensing;
Advice and assistance with hardware specifications and
procurement/leasing;
Advice and assistance with planning and implementation of standard
operating environment for business units;
Advice, assistance and training on best practice for management and
maintenance of business unit IT infrastructure;
Maintenance of network infrastructure;
Maintenance of PABX and telephony infrastructure;
Maintenance and support of enterprise systems;
Project management expertise for large-scale system implementations.
How does the ITP help your business unit to do
their jobs?
According to the IT manager, ITP helps the RO do their job via
Service level agreements (SLA) for and the provision of desktop and
server support;
Provision of files shares and associated backups;
Provision of web and database hosting;
Maintenance of network and telephone infrastructure;
Maintenance and support of existing enterprise systems
Project management expertise via MPG (application implementation
project).
In terms of function and service delivery - what
does ITP do well?
According to the IT manager, events and initiatives organised by the
Federation of IT Providers are a boon, from both knowledge and
networking perspectives. Furthermore, ITS’s desktop support and
server support are generally done well. Problems raised are usually
resolved within acceptable timeframes. Project management services
provided by MPG for the implementation of the new application project
have been outstanding. This finding is in alignment to a report
published as advice for the CIO that “IT departments score best at
solving IT problems (a 70.4 percent approval rating) and delivering
projects on budget (65.6 percent)” (Heeley and Leake, 2001).
What are the areas where the IT Portfolio
could add more value in terms of relationship
to business?
According to the IT staff member, there is an opportunity to add value
via the creation, maintenance and communication of a set of
recommended hardware specifications and list of preferred hardware
vendors. Furthermore, the IT manager explained that there is an
opportunity to assist business units in organising cost-effective leasing
arrangements for hardware.
Furthermore, the IT manager insisted that there is room to provide
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of detailed statistics relating to
service calls to the Help Desk as it would add immense value for the
RO by allowing them to:
Assist in the identification of common, recurring or ongoing problems
that might point to hardware or software issues, or to the need for
additional training;
Track response times against commitments made in service level
agreements managed by ITS (where SLA commitments are not met
some form of support credit should be given to the business unit,
otherwise there is no incentive for ITS to meet the SLA);
Engage in expectation management among our user groups by
providing
documentary evidence of positive outcomes.
Furthermore, according to the business managers at the RO, their
staff often reported frustration in dealing with the Help Desk. While it
is appreciated that Help Desk staff at ITS are doing a difficult job with
limited resources, but on some occasions business unit staff have
received incomplete or incorrect advice from the Help Desk. On other
occasions communication between the Help Desk, desktop support
and/or server support teams has not been effective, with issues
appearing to fall through the cracks when referred between teams.
The IT manager explained that communication from the desktop and
server support teams at ITS is lacking at times, which leads to a
general lack of confidence in the responsiveness and efficacy of desktop
and server support. ITS could add significant value for business units
by improving their communication relating to the resolution of service
calls. In many cases the causes and solutions of issues are not
effectively communicated to business unit staff. In cases where issues
could not be quickly resolved, ITS often does not effectively
communicate the reasons for any delay. In the worst instances, ITS
projects to the business unit the appearance of not working towards a
resolution of the outstanding issue.
Moreover, the business managers noted that MPG could immensely add
business value if they involve them and their staff in scheduling for
project activities. MPG was very demanding on end-user schedule to
meet project activities and deadlines during peak workload cycles
indicating poor MPG-RO business unit relationship.
Analysis of the Business and IT Relationship
The issue of relationship is significant success factor for the
implementation of the project. It is no longer sufficient to coordinate
with the IT department, but it requires getting the buy in from line
executives (Pastore, 1999). Once a relationship is formed it is important
that this relationship is managed.
For example, according to the manager of the business units neither
MPG nor the IT manager at the RO discussed with them the strategic
role for IT to play, or that a degree of business development over the
next few years is dependant on an IT enabler (Baker, 2000). In contrast,
while the IT manager at the RO receives support from his Director on
IT/business strategic alignment, the IT manager believes that his
department is perceived by RO units more as a technical Help Desk
service department rather than an ally to find out what IT can do in
terms of the business.
Another key factor in ensuring that the relationship of business and IT
is maintained is to manage negativity by providing services based on
support and trust (MIS Harvard Update, 2002). Leaders must
demonstrate concern for people and practice integrity to build trust.
Russel and Stone (2002) report that in the absence of trust, fear
dominates organisations and inhibits productivity and inhibits learning
(Couto, 2002).
Another impediment is that IT staff are typically perceived as
technologist first and business focused second (Heeley and Leake (2),
2001). Whilst an IT staff is often judged by his/her technical skills and
the ability to deliver the required IT goods and services, recent trends
require IT staff to be closer to the strategic objectives of the
organisation and demonstrate leadership in par with other business
managers. Hence, IT management becomes about people, not
technology. The paradox is that IT staff such as ITS work in the
technical path and do not identify and develop people and relationship
skills early enough in their careers (Santosus, 2003; Datz, 2003).
Furthermore, the RO IT manager and MPG had to manage resistance to
the implementation of the new application project by RO staff. Pounder
(2001) emphasises the leader’s responsibility for generating change,
commitment to change and being “change agent”. However, a primary
and vital ingredient for effective leadership learning is changing within
(Buchanan, 1996) to encourage individuals to seek and foster change
within themselves (Stickland, 1996). The leadership challenge is to
convince discouraged people that change is possible and that their
efforts to do better will be supported (Borins, 2002). Furthermore,
leaders have to educate followers about economic realities in a way
that makes their message credible (Couto, 2002).
When asked about ITP enterprise leadership, the RO IT manager
explained in words similar to Pastore (1999) that ITP functions “within
a miasma of maybes, as politics and personalities work to obscure the
best course of action”. The perception is that Directors of the three ITP
divisions have political issues that they “don’t assemble all resources
they need. They try to deliver what they can with what they’ve got, but
it’s never going to be enough to satisfy expectations.” (Pastore, 1999).
Furthermore, none of the interviewees at the RO knew what SPA’s role
was and have never interacted with its staff. They were also unaware
about existing strategic planning methodologies committed at SPA.
These findings are also in alignment to a survey conducted of IT
managers by Enterprise-works Web site, where it has been identified
that limited resources, length of time, poor IT-Business relationship
and poor strategic planning methodologies are the top barriers in
implementing IT in an organisation.
ITP acknowledge its weaknesses. According to a Program Area
Manager at MPG supervising the project implementation at the RO, an
initiative is required in response to the concerns with the current
method of ITP service delivery. As also explained, ITP suffers from
service delivery issues that include:
Diffused and disorganised service delivery to deploy the appropriate
expertise at the right place and right time;
Lack of formalised management of a consultative service (i.e. policies,
procedures, documentation);
The service is not responsive to the changing needs of our customers;
Inappropriate service quality levels;
Potential loss of credibility through poor or inconsistent delivery;
Poor communication of existing services, communication structures,
processes and buy in;
Inappropriate use of resources;
An environment that encourages ‘feral’ system and methodologies;
Lack of transparency – users don’t know how ITP works;
Lack of user involvement in projects;
Lack of ‘clean’ handovers from MPG to ITS;
Relying on individual relationships rather than process: ITP can impact
all of the above causes;
Role ambiguity – relationships between roles and lack of ownership;
Lack of publicised definition of services; and
ITP tension/turf issues/relationships
Required Areas of Improvement
ITP strategy should be based on consolidating and redefining a range of
services by leveraging existing people, knowledge and solutions and
enables development of new services using a structured methodology.
From the interviews conducted, identified areas of deficiencies that
requires further improvements to ensure that the current ITP/RO
relationship develop and grow include: 1-Account / Relationship
Management – As discussed earlier, not only ITP has a fragmented
approached to service delivery, which can cause a duplicate in effort
[vendor, ITS, MPG], it also lacks ‘end to end’ problem resolution and
accountability. There is also the end-user confusion about ‘who to talk
to’. This puts impediments to development of good relationships with
end-user and does not meet end-user expectations of the service and
reduces confidence in ITS capability. The recommended strategy is to
introduce an account manager role [MPG, ITS] and integrate it with
Help Desk – problem management; escalation; reporting and involve
client in development of strategy. The strategy entails developing a
profile of ITP clients including all services provided to them. The
objective is to:
Improve customer satisfaction by implementation of account
management services for ‘key customers’ or services;
Improved customer satisfaction and confidence in ITP;
More unified ITP;
Improve communication;
Revisit the SLA and project charters to better manage user expectation;
and
More efficiency: reduce duplication of effort; less time; reduce costs
2-The perception of IT and Advice Service – It is becoming essential
to develop a standardised process for Service Delivery within ITP and
to change the current process. As IT departments “strive to develop
and deliver valuable services to the customers, the required IT
processes must be highly flexible and integrated, implement a robust
process measurements, define needs customer linkages and provide
required reporting mechanisms.” (Drake, 2000). In order to do so, ITP
has to restructure its teams to perform in a process that crosses
functional or organisational boundaries (Drake, 2000). It also requires
developing internal portfolio wide processes to support the role and to
communicate more efficiently to client at a senior executive and end-
user levels.
Figure 2 Proposed ITP Service Delivery
Wider University community e.g. RO
3-Communication – While communication is to a good level for senior
managers at the RO, this could be improved upon to other business
units and end-users at the RO. Furthermore, the objective is to:
Improve the presentation of the Web sites of ITP to cater for the end-
user
Measure output
• Accountability through KPIs such as:
o All expenditure on projects is founded on business case
o Role defined, approved, filled and delivering
o All SLAs to include clear statements around end-to-end service
management
o Service quality (as rated by customers) is benchmarked
o Enhanced service delivery
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