Efficient Transformation With BI

by Dilip Ramadasan, CIO, Dr. Agarwals Eye Hospital

A thriving services business goes bankrupt because of the advent of technology. Another flying high among its peers brought to its knees due to regulatory issues. A startup 5 years ago struggling to stay afloat is now steaming ahead adding re­sources every minute to manage its burgeoning reputation.

All these are changes that are constantly hit­ting organisations that we are part of and also us as individuals and managing it has become paramount.

We as CIO's are under tremendous pressure as "changes propelled by technology" sweeps across every industry. With Technology becom­ing an enabler in every industry, we as leaders have to become active business partners to enable our organisations to ride the wave and succeed.

But a method to the madness is the need of the hour. It is not surprising to hear that 67% of all Enterprise-wide technology programs are unsuccessful. Many of the failures are because of fundamental issues in change management like

1. Definition of the goal is fuzzy even at the top management; Forget about it filtering down.

2. Success parameters laid out are either not ap­pealing for some of the stakeholders or they are unachievable for some others.

3. Management of the resources be it time, cost or human effort is very inefficient.

“We have to learn to Unlearn”

Physics defines that any change needs a lot of force to overcome the inertia and that is especial­ly true with people. A change makes you Unlearn what you know and learn again. This is inevita­ble, but when you make this process interesting and even sometimes fun for all the stakeholders, that is when you can expect change to have the least resistance.

The ‘why’ of the change needs to be clear to them and should appeal to them.

Any change would follow the fol­lowing steps.

1. Discovery.

2. Finding the Solution.

3. Testing the solution/Pilot.

4. Ascertain the success of the change.

At each step, all the stakeholders need to be involved and at the same time, effort needs to be put in to make it

During the discovery phase, analysis of the existing data is neces­sary to first identify the pain points and among them what to focus on. Being agile, helps the organisation take a few important gaps/issues/pain points and resolve it in quick time optimising cost.

Also, this is where the ‘Why’ of the change is defined. Business Intelligence helps you by giving you enough ammunition to help make the stakeholders under­stand the importance of the ‘Why’ and hence get their buy-in.

During the design of the solu­tion, BI again comes in handy in testing the hypothesis within the frame of the larger vision. Also in understanding the impact that the change causes to the other stake­holders and how to address them and ensure the change is seamless for all parties. A simple example would be, when we want to offer the customers new digital payments, the process of reconciling these into the book of accounts also need to be thought of and the required changes made in the Enterprise Resource Planning to help ease the pain for the finance team. Many a time, the front end process is taken care of to delight the customer, while the back­end processes are not prioritized due to a lack of time to go to the market. This makes the solution half-baked and in time, the customer again feels the pain.

At the time of the Pilot, the ‘Why’ is tested and helps you prove to the stakeholders and remove any lingering resistance to the change. Also at times when it proves other­wise and we are back to the draw­ing board, armed with new data, BI helps you correct course and race through to your original goal.

The next step is very important to understand the overall impact that the change has brought about after go-live. In this age where con­tinuous improvement is the norm, a lot of data from this process will be fed into the next and understanding the impact helps in the next.

Today when every company em­barks on a digital transformation, a lot of effort and time is put in to help make it a success. Inevitably, the in­efficiencies in the process also bring down the efficiency of the transfor­mation. BI, is one of the most pow­erful tools to negate that effect and a good investment into it before set­ting on a path of transformation will make it very effective, optimising cost and time along the way.

 

 

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