Enterprise Software: The Balance of Power Between Users and IT Staff

The University of Massachusetts suffered a major ERP failure in 2003. The university had begun work on the $10 million dollar project in 2000 as a replacement for the older ERP system (Rico, 2010). Under the previous system, each of the five University of Massachusetts’s campuses had its own systems that included the software, hardware, and project teams. Each was independently ran, modified, and maintained by its respected campus. The University of Massachusetts identified the need for a centralized ERP system that could standardize the many processes within it across all the campuses.

As recognized by leading research and consulting firms with knowledgeable, skilled management, advanced state-of-the-art IT affords extraordinary opportunities for greater efficiencies, cost reduction, higher productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability. Sophisticated IT applications realize their full potential with highly specialized technical knowledge and management skills readily available only in smaller firms focused primarily or exclusively on such applications.

When Peter Solvik joined Cisco in January 1993 as the company's CIO, Cisco was a $500 million company running a UNIX-based software package to support its core transaction processing, including financial, manufacturing, and order entry systems. At that time, Cisco was experiencing significant growth. However, the application didn't provide the degree of redundancy, reliability, and maintainability that Cisco needed to meet the business requirements anymore. The current systems may be good for $300 million companies, but they were

As a result, the IS people weren’t a particularly happy lot...no one really had a great deal of respect for them.” (Brown & Vessey, 2001) This shows that business users were disconnected with their IT development counterparts and most often blamed IT for not doing enough to fix problems with the applications. They failed to realize that the problems they were seeing with their systems was due to the business users requesting a lot of adhoc changes to be made to the system without engaging proper change management

This case study goes through the evolution of IT governance at Cisco and the related project management. This case is a classic example of the result of a decentralized governance of business units. What happened to CISCO due to the decentralized governance, how the business processes were modified to overcome the chaos created by the decentralized governance and how the employees and management reacted to this change in CISCO’s business governance? This case clearly illustrates the effect of a totally decentralized governance and how changing to a centralized governance leads to unrest and resistance. It also illustrates how the cultural/managerial change effects the business decisions needed to be made

“Here is a spoon. Please dig a 30-foot trench in the next couple of hours, please.” To most people, this is a ridiculous request as there are a vast amount of better suited equipment available to complete the job within the specified time. Yet, when companies do not align their Information Systems (IS) and Architecture with organizational business and strategic needs, their processes, equipment, and efforts prove ineffective and costly. For this reason, companies need to invest time and money into planning, investigating, and selecting the right software solutions, architecture and vendors to help them achieve high productivity and return on investment.

IT and technological awareness will always be two of the prime strengths of a CIO, but many have had to change their philosophy to make up for a lack in managerial aspects. While jobs in the past were often black and white and strictly technical, current problems require more creative solutions. Problems today often involve people rather than equipment and require direct management. Sometimes all the information will not be there and the CIO will need to make a decision on what is available at that moment. CIOs are increasingly taking a larger role when it comes to creating a business strategy.

In the market today, business is showing growing interest to partner with IT to make sure they get the value for investing huge in technology. But, still there is a gap between the two departments and the IT folks think that they do not have enough support from the business to ensure the value is realized for the organization. A good example of deep integration of IT and business is the recent firing of the Apple maps chief. The ill-fated Apple maps was the failure of both the IT folks who couldn’t develop an efficient app for maps and also the business who couldn’t gather all the requirements and couldn’t manage the project to achieve the desired output. As a result, the Apple exec Richard Williamson was blamed and fired for the disastrous project and humiliation for the organization.

In this way, competitive use of IT will no longer happen and each specified IT groups can be more concentrated on specified tasks which improves the efficiency, what’s more, the alignment between BU-CIO and EVP facilitate the formation of visioning network, which is vital to IT governance. Thus IT resources and priority are well managed.

When the CEO launches two new strategic initiatives requiring integration across all business units, the organization – whose IT decisions have been largely delegated to its business units in proportion to their revenue generating capacity – now faces the dilemma of how to prioritize its IT projects in order to support the new strategic “enterprise” vision.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) has an imperative role in decision making and leadership capabilities, which include developing and implementing Information technology (IT). “The term CIO was introduced by Synnott and Gruber in 1981. Synnott defines CIO as the highest-ranking executives with primary responsibility for information management.” (Moghaddasi, & Sheikhtaheri, 2009) This includes a multitude of roles in improving the effectiveness in both administration and clinical processes. Peppard (2010) elaborates on CIO competencies such as leadership, which emphasize the influencing of key stakeholders as well as driving and developing their own leadership team. The visionary to advocate new technology and visioning new opportunities of both operational and strategic. CIO has the ability of strategic thinking while contributing to the holistic view of the business while encouraging relationship building by showing and expressing empathy. The CIO is also very diplomatic in collaborating with colleagues to build and effective personal network. The main focus on the CIO’s competencies are emphasized in IT services.

Over the past 10 years my work experience has been focused on IT work both from a technical standpoint and as a leadership role. While not dealing with pressures public companies face in terms of financials, there are parallels that can be drawn to how IT practices are done. Information Technology, as well as in many other professions, there is always the constant pressure to meet objectives quickly as possible to meet internal and external customer demands. In these moments opportunities present themselves to make the shortcuts in those tasks to not meet your responsibilities. Example areas include areas such as security, documentation, and the quick fix vs the solution. These decisions and consequences are considered

The CIO is able to identify the needs, systems, and operations of the organization in order to implement the right technology to advance the organization. The CIO has the ability to directly lead the organization in effective implementation ensuring the program’s success through solid leadership. By outlining the steps involved in achieving the IT goal the CIO outlines the value involved with the IT program. The CIO is the liaison between users both inside the organization and outside, and works to ensure all are satisfied with the system. The CIO is responsible for developing and recruiting top talent in IT to have an effect and high performing team. A final and important responsibility is building and maintaining industry wide relationships. These relationships assist with identification of new products, breakdowns in current products, and workflow design collaboration.

Due to outsourcing, the CIO’s role has become less technology-centred, they instead act as the connecting factor between technology and the strategic needs of the organisation. (Gefen, Ragowsky, Licker & Stern, 2011). In the past, the CIO would provide IT solutions and infrastructure, and there would be minimal collaboration between their IT department and other departments within the organisation. Now, the CIO must be more collaborative with the business and become the business integrator, using their IT knowledge to adopt and adapt useful technology and outsourced IT

There is a drastic improvement in the IT industry from the past few years. CIO’s responsibility is to concentrate on the matters that are very important for the development of their organization, also the business purchases and business savings. Today 's CIO faces a cluster of other tasks like competing with the improved technology and securing their data. They are given more responsibilities like budget cuttings and taking care of global downturns. Many CIO’s these days are finding it difficult to maintain and balance their key roles as technicians and business person successfully. This paper explains briefly about the roles of CIO’s, the responsibilities of CIO’s in any organization, impact of CIO on the organization and difficulties faced by them.