This ppt talks about how IT matters in achieving excellence in an organisation.

1. Does IT matter ? :
Impressions and Implications
for Organizational Excellence
Dr S G Deshmukh
Director
ABV-Indian Institute of Information
Technology & Management, Gwalior
deshmukh.sg@gmail.com
Key note speech at
National Conference on
Mapping for Excellence: Challenges Ahead
Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies , Indore
16 Feb 2009

2. Speaking points of my keynote
1. Organizational excellence
2. Dimensions of Technology
3. e-business & its advantages
4. The Commoditization of IT
5. Role of IT
6. Various impressions for Organizational
excellence and its Implications
7. Endthoughts

3. Motivation
 IT has become all pervading in almost
every walk of life
 Lot of debate on use/utility of IT
 Historically a thought provoking article by Nicholas
Carr in Harvard Business Review (May 2003) and a
series of articles and books thereafter (N Carr, Does
IT Matter, HBR, May 2003)
 Relevance of IT for organizational
excellence?
3

4. Organizational excellence
 Organizational Excellence is a final product
composed of two basic elements alloyed
prudently by the members/stakeholders of an
organization. These two basic elements are
“Strategy” and “Culture”.
 Quality practices bring all stakeholders together
 Quality practices focus on processes
 Quality is a journey, there are no successes or failures, just
learning experiences.
 What is the Role of IT ?
4

5. Dimensions of Information
Technology
 Smart
 Fast
 Small & slick
 Affordable
 Convenient
 Flexible
 Friendly
 Accessible
 Connectivity
Culturally acceptable,
economically feasible
and technologically
accessible !

6. All pervading IT
 Internet
 Mobile
 Multi-Media
 Notebook
 Ipod,MP3,PMP, and
other gadgets
 Railway reservation
system
 MyTrip, amazon.com,
ebay.com, shaadi.com,
naukari.com, YouTube
 Social /professional
networks: Orkut,
MySpace,Facebook,
Hi5,Linkedlin
6

7. Characteristics of IT
 Ubiquitous
 Mobility
 Lighter and Smaller
 High speed
 Smartness
 Multiple functions
 Mix with Non-IT applications

8. IT is making world flatter !
 Outsourcing dominated paradigm
 Team work and leadership assumes new meaning
 Geography has become history: Time and distance are no
longer the important variables
 Mobile dense and multimedia rich environment has
accelerated digital environment.
 Connectivity has made the global village possible
 Working on-line, flexi-time, tele/videoconferencing, spiral
career paths, continuous learning and global competition are
changing the traditional notions of how work gets done.
 Internet is changing the way we communicate with –
suppliers, customers, potential and current employees by
way of 2-way communications !
 SMS driven communication

9. • Competitive World
• Customers demand More
– High Quality, Low Price, Flexibility and
what not !
• IT age
– Unpredictable
– New Media
– New Methodologies
Typical Business Scenario

10. A list of terms prefixed by ‘e-’
e-commerce
e-business
e-marketing
e-procurement
e-logistics
e-health
e-retailer
e-finance
e-banking
e-recruiting
e-service
e-crm
e-procurement
e-strategy

11. Tangible Benefits
Increased sales from new sales leads giving rise to increased
revenue from
 new customers, new markets
 existing customers (repeat-selling), existing customers (cross-
selling)
Marketing cost reduction from
 reduced time in customer service
 online sales,reduced printing and distribution costs of
marketing communications
Supply chain cost reductions from
 reduced levels of inventory
 increased competition from suppliers, shorter cycle time in
ordering
Administration cost reductions from
 more efficient routine business processes such as recruitment,
invoice payment, holiday authorisation etc

12. IT and Organizational
Excellence
 IT for streamlining of various business
functions
 IT for quality management
 IT for waste reduction
 IT for managing human resource
 IT for listening to the voice of customer
 IT for K-sharing
12

13. IT doesn’t matter ?
 IT became backbone of business.
 Over $2 trillion a year spent on IT worldwide
despite the out sourcing cry and dot com bust
scene.
 IT was seen as proletarian tool-calculators only.
Source:
IT doesn’t matter:http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articles/matter.html

14. Impression: IT capability
 Because of its ability to record every
customer interaction,
 Ability to offer insights into customer and
market behavior,
 Turn a business into a scientific laboratory
for pre and post-production and
manufacturing purposes
 Its potential to re-invent the business itself
 IT’s proximity to decision making 14

15. IT Capability..
 How IT is used rather that what of IT is used
for achieving organizational excellence
 IT fundamentally offers three capabilities to
businesses:
 Infrastructure,
 Integration and
 Interactivity
 These capabilities have to be managed
effectively for business
15

16. Implications : for
Organizational Excellence
 Infrastructure (relevant to Strategy)
 Integration (relevant to Culture)
 Interactivity (relevant to Strategy)
 Management (affecting both strategy
& culture)
These capabilities are to be effectively
managed for organizational excellence
16

17. Implication 1: Infrastructure
 IT as a part of infrastructure (Network(LAN/WAN),
Data centre etc.)
 Investment and choice of such infrastructure
 It affects strategy
 Enables connectivity and makes processes streamlined
 Role of Management: Capital outlay, proper choice of IT,
enabling the organizational structure
From Bahu(Buy all Hardware & Utilities) to
Saas(Software as a Service)
17

18. Implication 2: Integration
 Enables powerful integration of various
business functions : Marketing, Operations,
Design , Finance (Example: ERP based
systems)
 Integrates both internal and external functions
thereby avoids duplication and unnecessary
wastage
 Empowers suppliers and customers to become
part of the extended enterprise
18

19. Observation..
 “..Ordinary people now have access to
technology, where they can create
value and even collaborate and level
the playing field with the world’s
mightiest enterprises ..
 Anthony Williams, “ Wikinomics: How Mass
collaboration Changes Everything”, 2007
19

20. Insight..
 Web 2.0 takes some of its philosophical
underpinning from James Surowiecki's
book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, which
asserts that the aggregated insights of
large groups of diverse people can
provide better answers and innovations
than individual experts.
20

21. Comment..
 If infrastructure is for connectivity -- akin to railroad,
Integration is about integrating functionalities of
various systems and applications even people; in a
broad sense focused on integrating people, processes
and technology in an enterprise setting.
 Role of Management: Enables effective integration,
provide necessary eco-system for integration resulting
in organizational excellence
21

22. Implication 3: Interactivity
 Interactivity (WAP, Web Services, XML) being
more recent in the IT evolution
 Enables to understand customer better
 Establishes long term relationships with both
customer and suppliers
 Helps in understanding product features and
add-ons by close interaction
 Feedback through blogging (example: AB, SRK,
Lalu Prasad Yadav) 22

23. Implication for Management:
Connectivity !
Communication is anytime, anywhere via any device :
Person-to-person, person-to-machine, machine-to-
machine
 Connecting to Information sources
 Connecting to Change
 Connecting to an ever-changing , far reaching
universe
 Connecting to new issues and trends
 Connecting to diverse resources
 Connecting to talent pipeline
 Connecting to different ways of thinking
 Connecting to unexpected allies

24. Implication..
 Ever since the Internet brought down the cost of
connectivity, the need for integration (be it application
integration, b2b integration or data integration) has
been growing
 So also interactivity needs of enterprises particularly
dealing with bringing in pervasive functionalities as in
enterprise mobility, personalization and so on. This
enables in achieving excellence
24

25. Observation..
 IT is inherently strategic because of its indirect
effects
 It creates possibilities and options that did not
exist before
 Companies that see, and act on, these
possibilities before others do will continue to
excel themselves in the marketplace and reap
economic rewards
25

26. Insight..
 IT may become ubiquitous, but the insight
required to harness its potential will not be so
evenly distributed Therein lies the opportunity
for organizational excellence and significant
strategic advantage
 The manner in which iii are going to be
Managed is the key !
26

27. IT initiatives for Excellence..
 Datamining & Business
Intelligence
 K-sharing
 Customer Relationship
Management
 Supplier Relationship
Management
 Enterprise Resource
Planning
 Etc..
Implementation of these
require careful
considerations on the
following IT capabilities:
 Infrastructure
 Integration
 Interactivity
27

28. Initiative-Capability Matrix
IT Initiative Capability
Infrastructure Integration Interactivity
Data-mining &
Business
Intelligence
K-sharing Medium High Very High
SRM
CRM
ERP High High Medium
28

29. Strategy for Organizational
Excellence
 Active use of IT
 Knowledge sharing
 Talent Acquisition and management
 Stress on continuous improvement
 Listening to the voice of
customer(internal or external)
29

30. Implications..
 Leave the comfort zone of traditional
management concepts
 Letting controls go
 Invest less money but more time
 Recognize information needs and wants
 Someone may be using YouTube for projecting
incrimination evidence of human rights abuse
worldwide.

31. End Thoughts
 Excellence : No excuse for waste and sloppiness, now that
IT is a dominant technology
 Smart use of technology : Innovation and adaptability
 IT does matter by offering capabilities
 Infrastructure
 Integration
 Interactivity
 Challenge : People dimension in using IT
 Part of decision making
 Sense of being “connected”
 Feeling of “Global community”

32. Thank you for your
patience
deshmukh.sg@gmail.com
www.iiitm.ac.in