Tag Archives: COE
Is Your Center of Excellence Excellent?
A CIO told me “After five years with an integration Center of Excellence, I expect them to be excellent. They aren’t.” But so what? The IT organization has lots of things to focus on. Is integration excellence really essential? (more…)
Demand Management Is An Oxymoron
I was delivering a presentation recently to a group of IT executives and one of the CIOs asked “The Integration Factory sounds great, but how do you manage backlog?” My response was, “There is no backlog so there is nothing to manage.” In lean terminology, a backlog of projects or change requests are work-in-process inventory and are considered waste; essentially an inventory of unmet needs. A lean factory strives to minimize WIP by using just-in-time techniques. (more…)
Will Data Governance Slow Down Or Accelerate Cloud Adoption?
Recently I outlined Five Ways to Avoid a Cloud Data Disaster. Well, according to recent Ponomen Institute research, ”Nearly three out of four (73 percent) respondents say that adoption of cloud-based applications will have a significant impact on end users’ ability to circumvent existing access policies.” Are we on the verge of something cataclysmic or is there an opportunity lurking in this potential crisis?
Convincing the CFO – A How-To guide for compelling business cases
Last week I wrote about a telephone company (Avaya) that achieved a 2,000% ROI through their Data Quality COE. They achieved this payback by focusing on the income side of the business; that is, driving revenue growth and reducing operational costs by improving the quality of integrated customer and business data.
But is it possible to develop a business case for an investment that doesn’t improve profitability? The short answer is yes. The long answer (including a comprehensive business-case methodology) is explained in the ICC workshop at the Global Integration Summit, but here is a real-world example. (more…)
Integration Payback: Making the Business Case
A recent news release reported a 2,000% ROI resulting from a Data Quality Center of Excellence. How did Richard Trapp pull off this amazing feat? His answer caught me off guard when I asked him; “I never talk about data quality.” Pardon me? Isn’t that what you do? Richard’s response is that “Business people are not excited about good data quality. Business people are excited about good marketing, increased sales, supply chain efficiencies, and reduced order-to-cash cycles.”
By the way, you can meet Richard at the upcoming GIS. Visit www.globalintegrationsummit.com for more information about the event and how you too can learn to create compelling business cases. In the meantime, here are two secrets for how he did it. (more…)