Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

On the surface, business process in any of its various guises appears to be a simple, even natural, activity, but it is not. Business process change -- significant business process change -- in the real world is a very difficult thing to pull off. This is because business processes occur in one organizational dimension and "management" occurs in another.

For many years, we have been recommending that IT organizations think of themselves as a service business, with five fundamental service portfolios (you can refer to my previous Business-IT Strategies Advisors and Executive Reports for further discussion of these portfolios):

Corporate survival and growth depend on innovation to provide new products and new ways of doing business. Innovation cannot exist without risk, yet organizations must be risk-averse to survive in difficult times. This creates a paradox, as a key risk is the inability to innovate. The relationship between risk and opportunity is a difficult one. Risk presents both challenges and new possibilities.

Again and again, I'm reminded that customer relationship management (CRM) involves more that just up-selling and cross-selling. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether organizations sometimes use CRM merely as an excuse to placate themselves for failing to address bad business practices.

Cloud computing has a lot in common with longstanding forms of outsourced data processing services. There are some key differences, however, and these differences need to be appreciated. The expertise that user organizations have garnered from these older practices will serve them well in harnessing cloud computing, but it is advisable to extend that expertise. The potential benefits need to be sifted through, and measures need to be put in place to ensure that the full potential of cloud computing is realized.