Leading Through a Pandemic

 “Leading Through A Pandemic: Identifying and Realizing Value from IT Investments”

By Miles Sovell 

Executive Summary

Over the course of the past year, how, when and where we work has been challenged across all organizational layers. How are we now supposed to know whether we have the appropriate resources, both human and capital, to ensure we realize value from our IT investments? The reality is most organizations struggle with successful deployment of software applications. Because they fall short on successful deployment and adoption of new technologies, the value they expected the solutions to deliver never materializes. The result is a lack of confidence in both newer technologies to address pain across an organization and in delivering desired business outcomes the solutions were expected to deliver. Furthermore, while emerging technologies at the Intelligent Edge and in the Intelligent Cloud (Microsoft, 2021) are needed to solve real and growing challenges in the new economy, any delay in realizing value from IT investments reduces a company’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities the new economy is offering. This article is intended to address this too often occurrence and provide recommendations for how to maximize value from technology investments during a time of increasing disruption. We will explore the Business Value Continuum and provide guidance on how best to orchestrate across it via virtual, curative experiences.

Identifying Business Value

According to Forbes, “More than 80% of business owners said that they don't keep track of their business goals- and 77% have yet to achieve their vision for the company.” (Westerwood, Ryan, 2020)

The data points to a real need to put methodology in place to set vision and then mechanisms to measure and track against that vision.

At Microsoft we recommend customers apply a human centered design thinking approach to create business value. Together the software provider serves as a facilitator and trusted guide to move customers along the Value Continuum to achieve more. As meetings have shifted to virtual during the pandemic, it has become increasingly critical to adapt and provide world class virtual experiences for customers. Microsoft designed bespoke experiences that follow an incremental innovation methodology for identifying value, deploying new technologies and realizing value from those digital investments. The three phases along the value continuum leverage the best of collaborative software, like Microsoft Teams and Klaxoon. You can read more about how to build a business case for technology investments here. (Lindsey, 2017)

 The Business Value Assessment Workshop methodology defines six key elements:

1.      Why an organization is considering new solutions to growing challenges. It allows the customer to align across its line of business leadership teams, as well as across IT, in a collaborative virtual workspace.

2.      Business outcomes the company expects the solution to deliver.

3.      Tactics and enablers needed to support the business outcomes.

4.      Capabilities that uniquely digitize the tactics and enable business outcomes.

5.      KPIs that measure and enable the organization to predict and manage results.

6.      ROI for future investments

 Two assets produced by this engagement are the Value Map and Business Value Assessment ROI analysis, which are then leveraged by the customer to build both executive consensus within the organization, and a business case for digital transformation. They guide both the technology investment as well as the deployment of capabilities.

 Successful Deployment

According to the CIO Executive Board analysis on a typical project portfolio of $100 million, with an expected 15% rate of return, $22 million is lost due to low end-user adoption. What is driving this value leakage? The data shows that poor under interface, rollout deficiencies (support, communication) and an inability to absorb process changes. (CIO Executive Board, 2020)

 The second virtual experience Microsoft provides along the value continuum is a virtual workshop for customers after investments have been made called the Success Planning Workshop. The objective of the virtual experience is to align on deployment strategy, understand the complexity of existing environments, identify risks, and produce an action plan for successful deployment. The outputs from this virtual experience are leveraged by Leadership, IT teams and/or a system integrator to ensure successful deployment. The most common missing ingredient to a successful technology deployment is lack of both an engaged executive sponsor and a change management capability. Read more about the importance of leading successful change management practices here. (LaBelle, 2019)

Realizing Business Value

A Harvard Business School report states that top growth companies find the next S-curve to fuel their trajectory. (Harvard Business School, 2014). You can read more on S-curves here.

Microsoft delivers customer success after investments have been made by engaging customers in the third virtual engagement across the Value Continuum: Value Realization Workshop. This experience builds upon the work already completed in the pre-sales engagement, thus eliminating any duplicate efforts or extraneous commits from the customer.

The objective of the Value Realization engagement is to deliver a value path for continuous innovation. First, Microsoft helps the customer establish a baseline of performance across industry key performance indicators prior to deployment. Second, they benchmark performance against the customer’s peer group. This offers the customer deep insight into where performance gaps exist and helps to prioritize KPIs. Third, taking a human centered design thinking approach, the customer is led through platform ride alongs, user surveys, and interviews to understand how their current state technologies are being used, where user pain exists, and define what capability gaps exist. Microsoft then helps customers achieve more by accelerating time to value with best practices of adoption and capabilities to fill these gaps with the associated value potential for improving people, process, and technologies. Lastly, the cumulation of the value workstreams converge with periodic measurement of value realized, which quantifies the capabilities’ impact over time. This last step completes the 360-value continuum and can begin again by envisioning new solutions to customer’s business challenges. You can read more on how to envision here. (Kelly, 2020)

Summary

Microsoft’s vision for their customers is that they realize value from their investments. That they are empowered by Microsoft technologies to continuously drive innovation that helps them achieve more. By leveraging modern collaboration tools customers can expect world class virtual engagements that uncover and unlock value during times of extreme disruption. Microsoft delivers harmonious orchestration across the value continuum spanning all three phases of value: Value Alignment, Successful Deployment, Value Realization. Hear firsthand from Microsoft customers on the impact this orchestration has delivered and how it helped them to achieve more here.

Miles Sovell

Global Black Belt

Business Value Management

Automotive Practice Leader

Bibliography

CIO Executive Board. (2020). Sources of Value Leakage. CIO Executive Board.

Harvard Business School. (2014). Innovation Strategy: 4 key Tactics of Top Growth Companies. Harvard Extention School.

Kelly, T. (2020). Design Thinking in Software and AI Projects: Proving Ideas Through Rapid Prototyping. Apress.

LaBelle, G. (2019). Fueling the success of Dynamics 365. LinkedIn.

Lindsey, L. (2017). The 4 Pillars of Value Framework: How to Improve a Business Case for Technology Investments. LinkedIn.

Microsoft. (2021). The future of computing: intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. Microsoft .

Westerwood, Ryan. (2020). How to set business goals that yield a positive ROI. Forbes.