Practice - Is it just a buzz word??

After having worked for more than 18 years in CoE aka Practice teams at different levels, responsibilities and technologies like CRM, SFA, DW/BI, Cloud and DevSecOps, I wanted to take step back and think, “Is the CoE/Practice model really adding value to the organization?”, "Are they really meeting the purpose which they were actually intended for?", "Is the organization really understanding what CoE or Practice teams can do for them?", "Does the CoE/Practice team get the due recognition for what they do?".

During my first experience with a CoE (CRM) team way back in 2005-06, the concept was new. Organizations were very keen in establishing core technical competencies in some niche areas like application development, data/business intelligence, IT infrastructure, packaged apps (like CRM, ERP) etc. There was backing from the business, leadership and a focused drive towards achieving excellence. For nearly 13 years I was in CRM, SFA, DW/BI space and most of my experience was in a CoE structure. Over a period of time, the intensity reduced and that could be attributed to industry's learning curve, adaptability and value realized.

Then came the advent of cloud computing, and it changed the way IT is seen by end customer enterprises, SI partners, ASP, ISV etc. The word "Practice" has borne significance ever since.

Is the CoE/Practice Model really adding value to the organization today?

In a nutshell, the following can be seen as core focus areas of a practice unit today, especially a cloud practice:

• IP development & Innovation - Building unique and valuable reusable components, tools, processes, methodologies, frameworks etc
• Competency development - Up-skilling and Cross-skilling on core technical areas at scale by establishing excellence academies dedicated to a specific customer or across multiple customers. Ensuring partner credentials
• Revenue generation - Direct and Indirect responsibilities to bring business from existing or new customers in collaboration with Sales, Pre-sales, GTM (Go To Market) and Delivery units. This includes proactive and reactive support to customer opportunities (RFx)
• Capability building - Building IP's, reusable components, accelerators, propositions, eventual excellence in niche areas of digital transformation.
• Partner management - Enabling partnerships and growing them with hyper-scaler and other product/services vendors. Apart from this, achieving competency credentials and specializations from hyper-scaler and other partners based on the areas of focus.
• Delivery support - Enabling Day-0, Day-1 support for any new cloud engagement. Augmenting resources, including ad-hoc requirements, on various customer engagements.
• Community building - This is a very important aspect of any organization to be successful. Establishing a common collaboration platform for tenured as well as aspiring technical and functional SME's across all geographies. Focus will be to collaborate, learn, mentor and eventually excel in various capabilities across different cloud platforms and other digital transformation areas.

As it could be seen, Practices have a huge responsibility on their shoulders to deliver. They have the onus to enable the organization excel technically as well as propel the organization forward in terms of long term customer partnerships. The degree of value addition depends on how successful the practice unit is across different areas of focus.

Are they really meeting the purpose which they were actually intended for?

In order to assess this, we need to get a 360 degree view. This needs feedback both from internal as well as external stake holders. The internal stakeholders comprise of: Organization's Technology council/community, Sales & Pre-sales teams, Delivery units, Leadership and most importantly the larger community within the organization (at all career levels). While most organizations strategize on quarterly tangible targets (planned Vs. actual numbers), it is also important to recognize the intangible returns (examples: official certifications/credentials achieved, company branding, visibility and acknowledgement from the larger industry community)

The external stakeholders comprise of Customers, Partners, Industry analysts and most importantly the promoters/investors of the organization. There is a strong deliberation on numbers, ROI and significant achievements/milestones when it comes to external stake holders.

Is the organization really understanding what CoE or Practice teams can do for them?

For any organization that is keen to promote a CoE or a Practice model, it is important to realize that the larger organization should buy into that idea. The success of the model depends on the acceptance and support from the larger organization. For example, if an organization is implementing the cloud practice, the delivery units, IT support functions and organization support functions (Sales, GTM, Administration, Finance, HR etc) should acknowledge, understand and collaborate with practice team.

Some of the key areas I would like to highlight:

Empowerment of Practice: In often cases, practice is seen as an atomic entity and an adversary to the interests of, especially, the delivery units. While it is misconstrued, the top management/promoters and the organization leadership also have a moral responsibility to empower the practice team enough and drive down the necessity of collaborating with practice to be successful, keeping aside political and personal favoritism and bias. Ultimately organization goals and results are priority.

Patience: Given that practices in most of the organizations are established as cost centers, rather than revenue centers, the scrutiny and expectations are always on the higher end. Organizations should understand that there is a gestation period and they have to be patient.

Investment & Trust : One other important aspect is the openness of the top management/promoters to invest in innovation and IP's. What most organizations fail to realize is the value that they reap out of staying invested in great ideas and innovation. They tend to be short sighted aiming quicker results, which is understandable from top/bottom line perspective. But, strong value realization comes with a price tag, it's not a freebie or a residual output.

Skilled Resources: Today's resource market is wide open and a there is a scarcity of the needed skills, especially cloud. This is where the larger organization should realize that they have to support up-skilling/cross-skilling programs and start thinking out of the box. They need to be bold enough to talk to the customers about the state of the market and why they can't always be expected to churn tenured resources for all requirements. Customers do realize this and acknowledge, while this may not be generalized with all of them. This is where the practice can add value by establishing a focused workshop/academy based model in collaboration with talent development, HR, delivery etc. The first hurdle to cross will be tougher, but once done, the model becomes repeatable and scalable. Any exercise bears an amount of risk and organizations need to be bold enough to take the leap of faith.

Does the CoE/Practice team get the due recognition for what they do?

Given the areas of focus for a practice are many, it is not always possible for practice teams to be equally efficient and produce equal results in all of them. While their achievements need to be rewarded, the areas which need improvement need to be understood and supported appropriately to turn the results around.

Some areas where practice can be given due recognition are:

1. Identify and reward key champions who have been instrumental in the practice teams achievements. Example: Achievement of partner certifications/credentials, Delivery excellence, Delivery enablement (via up-skilling/cross-skilling & making them job ready), Community heroes (single collaboration platform across organization, and who played a vital role in mentoring/grooming and keeping the community active)
2. Identify and reward the innovation/IP of the year.
3. Recognition on direct/indirect contribution to revenue (Sales/Presales support)
4. Customer excellence awards

In fact, we should take this one step further where an industry level governing council/body is established for practices across different IT services sector organizations. Use this forum to share the value realization achieved by each one of them, and reward those who deserved it.

Conclusion

This article is a honest reflection of my personal experiences over the last several years. I have focused on some key aspects which organizations fail to realize and why the mind set should change to make the practice organizations successful. To conclude, practices do add value to any organization and it is important to develop that maturity to accept, be inclusive and collaborate with them to tap into their potential.