It's a New World ... So Grab Your Old Weapons

From the Editor, Gabriele Piccoli

This issue of Cutter Benchmark Review focuses on a topic of interest to all organizations, bar none: the use of prepackaged software and the management of the implementation process of off-the-shelf applications. Our academic contribution this month is provided by Erica Wagner, Assistant Professor at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, and Sue Newell, Cammarata Professor of Management, Bentley College. Providing our view from the field is Bill Ulrich, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant and President of Tactical Strategy Group, Inc.

One of the survey results I find most interesting is that only 28% of respondents fully deployed an application package. This is, of course, by design. Like how the user who complains that he only employs a fraction of Excel functionalities forgets that Excel is designed not only for him but for millions of other users (some like him and some not), so, too, management often forgets that its organization is unique -- as is every other one implementing the same off-the-shelf application. Expecting to fully deploy the software just because it is available -- not because every component fits well with the organization's processes -- is simply planning for heartbreak. Heartbreak, ranging from mild to deadly, comes in the form of user dissatisfaction, countless post-implementations requests, overtime and overbudget implementations, and so on. I do understand that sometimes you need to give a little to get a little, as when the firm values the integration offered by an ES and is willing to forego deployment of the best module for each of its functional areas. But don't expect management to understand this "seemingly obvious" fact on its own.

Moreover, with nearly half of our respondents reporting that changes went beyond what was anticipated, Bill stresses that we need to be proactive in managing management expectations. It is our responsibility to ensure that management understands what to expect during and after implementation. I can certainly tell you that many in the intended audience of my new textbook (i.e., future senior managers) typically do not realize how dramatically large organizational off-the-shelf applications (and the issues they bring about) differ from the personal productivity software they are most familiar with when it comes to IT.

To compound the problem, management often severely underestimates how difficult and costly customization is going to be. Yet, as Erica and Sue show, while many respondents faced unplanned changes, nearly 95% managed to create a system that was in production. So Erica and Sue have a very provocative suggestion: How about we stop treating the go-live moment as the watershed of failure or success? They recommend including post-implementation time. Erica has done some further writing in this area explaining the reasons for enduring project failure and challenging the traditional system development lifecycle. ¹

For a publication that prides itself on multiple views, there is remarkable consistency between the analysis and guidelines in our two contributions. This is perhaps best captured by Bill when he says: "The bottom line is this: Organizations are making major investments to customize application packages, integrate those packages into surrounding IT environments, and adapt business processes.... Yet the benefits accrued from these investments are delivering less than what the business community had anticipated in a variety of best practice categories."

It may be the brave new world of "buy and make," as I called it in the introduction to this issue. Yet the above reminds us very much of the traditional challenges associated with custom systems design and development.

What's an IT professional to do then? Polish those relationship skills and continue the good fight of senior management education. I am sure that I speak for the whole Cutter crew and the CBR team when I say that we'll continue the fight by your side.

NOTES

¹ The paper (Wagner, Erica, and Gabriele Piccoli, "A Call to Engagement: Moving Beyond User Involvement in Order to Achieve Successful Information Systems Design") is forthcoming in Communications of the ACM, but I can share it if you e-mail me at gpiccoli@cutter.com.