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Best Practice
The evolution in 'Best Practice' has promised exponential growth in business benefit,
differentiation, integration and reliability. Best Practices have become a viable
solution to businesses who do not want to venture into-, or are moving from in-house
solutions development. When following this route one needs to make sure that one
addresses the following critical issues:
- Best Practice as an approach.
The absence of holistic methodologies, as opposed to Best Practice business models has
been the cause of numerous failed projects, rocketing costs and severe business
constraints when business change is executed. What is required is a holistic
approach that enables a business to understand the intricacies involved, the new
solutions, risks and required effort to ensure success, and that embraces Best
Practice as a catalyst to delivering world class solutions in a fast and controlled
manner. Thus, a holistic change methodology should be the base-line approach with
Best Practice as the primary catalyst delivering speedy world class solutions. The
inverse is typically the approach that a Best Practice vendor follows:- Different,
diverse methodologies become the secondary catalyst to deploying a virgin version Best
Practice.
- Organisational uniqueness and current deficiencies.
Best Practices often do not apply entirely to any organisation's unique circumstances.
One should keep in mind that the current state of the organisation is a direct result
of the current executive community, of the staff, the current processes and systems,
current deals, competitors and their state, nature and diversity of the customer, and
other influences on the business. To simply stick a Best Practice on top of these
attributes would not necessarily address the current risks and challenges, but would
merely put a dressing on the wound and increase the risk of perpetuating these
attributes into the future, deploying inflexibility and potential fragmentation of the
approach.
- Fragmented methods.
Often different methodologies are incorporated for the different problem domains of a
new business model, new IT solutions, organisation behaviour change and project
management implied by such a transformation. This fragments the approach, postpones
the solutions, inflates the costs and delivers fragmented and inflexible solutions.
This is because different phases of the project are not integrated well through the
fragmented methods and deliverables from one phase is typically unusable by the next
phase. This in turn implies duplication of effort and cost and deliverables between
the sub-components of the projects. Thus, different method components may be utilised
as long as they are integrated in an overall holistic framework.
- Vendor selection.
All too often, when evaluating Best Practices that all satisfy the required business
functionality, the quality of the vendor’s presentation, price or package cosmetics
are the basis for decision. What about conformance to corporate architecture,
strategic direction, the strategic positioning of the business, flexibility in
customisation, etc.? Are these issues that need to be considered when deciding on a
Best Practice investment? As a holistic approach, the recipes and implementation of
our approach are designed to ensure that these issues are addressed, in some cases
subconsciously by merely applying a particular step / object in the recipe.
Only a holistic change method, which incorporates various Best Practice vendors and
their components of the total solution, and ensures capitalisation on inherent speed
and inherited benefits thereof, will ensure an "Integrated Best Practice Solution" for
that specific business in its unique circumstances and environment.
- Strategic differentiation.
Probably the strongest argument against Best Practice solutions is strategic
differentiation. In a business architecture that has such a high level of
integration, how can one ensure that the Best Practice, when implemented in my
environment will accommodate the factors that differentiate me from my competitors,
when they happen to implement the same Best Practice?
There is no silver bullet solution, possible strategies include:
- Scope differentiators outside the scope of the Best Practice solution and develop
the required application support.
- In the relevant areas, employ the Best Practice as an enabler, i.e. implement the
Best Practice in a manner such that strategic processes and applications can be
deployed as an architectural layer around the Best Practice.
- If the Best Practice architecture permits, invest in the customisation of the Best
Practice.
The issue here is that strategic differentiators need to be considered when designing
the implementation. If this is overlooked, the Best Practice may be the reason for
compromising my required differentiating edge.
- Premature Best Practice decisions.
Best Practice decisions should not be made until a comprehensive-as-possible
suitability has been assessed. Needless to say, the wrong solution will deliver
little business benefit and even less return on investment.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the evaluation of Best Practices could be costly.
To define the scenario more clearly, consider the following:
- Without thorough evaluation, a wrong Best Practice decision is probable.
- An over-expenditure in the evaluation phase may be overkill in terms of the
required solution.
- The multitude of combinations of industry-type and Best Practice offerings does
not allow for a clear definition of where to define the point where Best Practice
evaluation has achieved its objectives.
The only way of ensuring that we do not overspend on evaluation and yet not derive at
premature conclusions is to define our criteria correctly. In fact, the objectives of
defining criteria should be to disqualify Best Practice offerings as quick as possible
and as credible as possible.
- Legacy Exposure
What is legacy? In a real-world definition it is those processes, systems or
applications that are reasons for comments like,
"Well, it is there - we have to protect our investment"
"Yes, I know there are more viable solutions available, but unfortunately, it is still
a business critical system."
"If only we can we find an easy way to go live quicker on a more trendy solution, we
can get rid of the white elephant."
Very few Best Practice-specific implementation approaches or methodologies accommodate
legacy investments. Legacy is a fact of business and IT-life. If not addressed, we
may endanger the investment, which will probably lead to the best Practice being
customised, a serious cost consideration if legacy is not accommodated, encapsulated
and controlled within the Best Practice scope.
- Best Practice inertia.
The issues here are (i) the need for business change and (ii) the ability to change
within the Best Practice context. A Best Practicee that is in size comparable to Wal
Mart or Wallgreens has a typical implementation period of months or years. Imagine the
effort required in terms of change where we, as local retailer are venturing into
international markets. Multi-currency financial transaction support, shipping
logistics and market knowledge bases need to be scoped for the Best Practice. If the
window of opportunity is small, i.e. we have to commence marketing abroad within one
month to acquire a critical market share, the components of the Best Practice should
ideally be available within the same window.
Fine in saying that a Best Practice is flexible in implementation, but is it
implemented flexibly? Does the flexibility mean in business model or applications as
well? Best Practice customisability delivers flexibility in implementation, but not
necessarily flexibility after implementation.
The ability to adapt the Best Practice is seldom a design objective, hence the high
inertia factor.
- Misaligned Best Practice solutions.
Simply stated, the implementation has to be aligned with the strategic positioning of
the business. In application, business specifications and the resultant Best Package
requirements should be defined on the ideal level in the context of the strategic
positioning of the company. This is not the concern of the Best Practice
implementation team, it is a statement about the context of Best Practice projects.
If alignment is not ensured the Best Practice solution will over time render itself
less and less beneficial to the business. Hence, the short-term benefit delivered in
Best Practice solutions of today.
Categorically stated, the only solution to ensure alignment is to execute the project
within the context of proper business engineering exercises such as strategic
positioning, business strategic alignment and the establishment of corporate-wide
architecture.
- Lack of Best Practice understanding and Stakeholder commitment.
These are change management or organisational behaviour issues. Buy-in from
stakeholders is a critical success factor for any Best Practice project. After all,
they form the source of Best Practice requirements and the users of the solution. We
need to promote an understanding of the role, benefit and positioning of the Best
Practice in the business, if not, resultant project characteristics may include:
- Incompleteness, incorrectness in Best Practice specification.
- Incomplete criteria sets (i.e. criteria sets lacking in substantial ground for
decision making).
- Refusal in assistance with implementation.
- Reluctance in training and usage participation.
Emphasis in solution is placed on:
- Up-front positioning of the Best Practice as the solution
- Executive commitment
- Dedicated Change Management
- The deliverables of the exercise.
- A Best Practice solution that has long-term benefit
- An architectural foundation for all application implementations
- Stakeholder commitment to the Best Practice solution
- A means to measure the solution, measurement mechanisms and structures.
- A means to training and support in context of the Best Practice solution.
- The material and mechanisms.
- A Best practice solution that is strategically aligned with the business
- Objects that has long-term value
- Proficient Best Practice users and administrators
- Detail implementation designs.
- A non-biased Best Practice decision.
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