The Untold Secrets: To win over BAIF!

Introduction

My best wishes for the New Year to all you readers! Another year has come and gone. Now that the terrible things that happened in Covid are in the past, we need to make peace with it and accept the "actuality of coexistence" so we can move on with our lives.

We've been getting glimpses of increased problems, despair, gloom, wrongdoing, and strange behaviour, but we're still very confident.

Few people brag by listing their accomplishments with ecstasy and joyous excitement, which they are doing in the context of calculating their successes. How often must one be reminded of this before they finally believe me?

However, the story of a larger group stays the same. They suffer in silence, afraid they will fail at their goals shortly. The disaster or occurrence that caused their projects to die, along with having dreams about their "troubled" implementation journey, generally comes before the extreme sorrow and misery and the sensation of anguish that follows it.

Is there any significance to this prognosis at all?

Is it an ideal dream for the year that you force yourselves to battle with to implement and reach a noteworthy milestone to "succeed" with your information technology project in the New Year, driven by lots of thoughts, plans, and a desire that feels like "fire in the belly"?

Isn't this somewhat analogous to a parable, a brief, pedagogical story in prose or verse that highlights one or more educational lessons or principles that define the success or failure of putting an information technology project into action?

Hi! I am Ramanathan Subramaniam, a professional turnaround strategist with over 35 years of diverse experience, including 14 years of onsite experience across various organisational domains in the United States, the Middle East, and Europe providing result-oriented solutions to complex problems, including successful rescue of failed implementations. My expertise spans the areas of readiness assessments, gap assessments, audits, IT strategy planning & roadmaps, process simplifications, people performance system design and implementations, and the rescue of failed application implementations.

I have considerable experience deploying information technology, in particular enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, across a wide variety of business settings. Click here to learn more about me. linkedin.com/in/srnathan and www.vechange.com .

In the coming weeks, I will be publishing a series of posts detailing my experiences tackling one of many failed implementations and successfully resolving it to the delight of the owner firm while abroad on assignment.

Let's begin with my views on Technology-Driven Implementation Challenges.

Technology-Driven Implementation Challenges: an abstract view

Businesses and organisations worldwide have been investing in IT to speed up their internal operations and delivery of goods and services to consumers. One of the most critical parts of getting there is adopting and making the most of cutting-edge technologies, especially considering the world's growing digital interconnectedness in recent years.

However, putting together technology-driven projects is challenging for organisations because of costs, overruns, gaps between what is said and done, and other types of failure, as well as a need for more experts with the proper credentials, skills, and organisations to do the job.

In this work, I use fiction to talk about real-world events, and I use that fiction to talk about the simplest possible case of implementation problems. As a result, you'll gain a deeper appreciation for the subject.

Disclaimer:?The information presented in this article and in the series of postings that will follow on this topic is intended solely for educational purposes and does not constitute professional advice. These posts' opinions or points of view represent the author's view. They do not necessarily represent any standards, official position, or policies in implementing or managing a Project. These posts may contain links to external websites that provide additional information. These blogs in no way constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. The depictions of individuals or organisations that may be mentioned or portrayed in these blogs are for illustrative reasons only. They are not an endorsement of any kind.

Before I tell you the rest of the story, I should explain what BAIF stands for in case you haven't heard it before: Business Application Implementation Failure.

Episode 1: Board Mandate

XYZ Manufacturing Company

XYZ Manufacturing, which makes edible oils and vanaspati, among other products, was founded in 2002.

XYZ has manufacturing plants in five cities across India and sells its products to 30 countries worldwide. Headquartered in Mumbai, XYZ is a public limited company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and employs nearly 3000 people.

The company has a board of directors, a chief executive officer, and other key management personnel. Its annual revenue is around 300 crores, with a 9% average growth rate over the last three years.

XYZ has created positions for people with expertise in finance and accounting, sales and distribution, and research and development; it also uses quality control on its products before distributing them throughout the country and abroad.

Once a leader in its field, XYZ has fallen on hard times and seeks financial assistance from banks and other institutions. However, everyone has turned it down because of its poor credit rating.

Board Meeting

Every year and as needed, XYZ holds board meetings to assess the performance of the business, take appropriate action, and decide on strategies for future expansion.

In 2020, the company held a board meeting to discuss issues related to its information systems' reliance on outdated legacy software.

Complex problems require multifaceted, futuristic solutions. So they thought using Blockchain (BC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and other new technologies would help them figure out how to solve business problems.

Also on the agenda to be discussed were XYZ's business, the need for more timely information, and ways to use advanced new technology systems that cover many business functions in all locations. New applications should be deployed across the enterprise within 18 months at most.

Current Challenges

XYZ uses different business applications and systems to refine the data and information it gathers to give each department the necessary information. Thus, XYZ has separate systems that consolidate all this detailed knowledge into one place: Management Information Systems (MIS).

The biggest problem for the business is that it relies on functions and processes that work in silos, which exacerbates operational issues and reduces visibility in already complex international trade processes. Moreover, some of these processes are complicated and manual, and many people are employed to execute them.

Addressing these complexities would mean overhauling some time-tested processes and replacing them with newer, more efficient methods. Unfortunately, business functions often resist changes due to the significant effort involved in executing such initiatives.

CEO Challenges Ahead

Unhappy with the findings, Mr. Ramprasad Samson (RPS) was upset with the Key Management Personnel (KMP) and added pressure to address this before the next board meeting, planned for mid-2022. The outcome of this would seriously impact his performance.

Board Resolution Execution

RPS, in an unpleasant mood, called his assistant, Ms. Sailaja Arun (SA), to arrange immediate meetings with three people: KMP, Mr. Nanda Joseph (NJ), and the CIO – for the next day, July 5, 2020. Stressed but obediently, SA asked him for their agenda; however, RPS didn't answer her question. Instead, she informed the KMP and NJ about a meeting tomorrow; she planned to share an agenda later in the evening. She felt relieved since RPS was speaking on the phone with someone and laughing; a little relaxed, she asked for the proposed agenda that would direct tomorrow's meeting.

RPS said that the mess they're currently in resulted from yesterday's board meeting, so SA immediately took her phone and informed KMP and NJ that it might be a daylong meeting tomorrow.

Everyone had assembled in the conference room by 10:30 AM the next day for the meeting. When RPS walked into the room, he said, “Thanks for creating this mess”. “The board is unhappy with us, and you all have bungled up everything”. “You left me standing there with my face hanging down during the recently concluded board meeting.”

“If you don’t want to tackle issues that face XYZ, then your skills and experience are useless.” “How will you clean up this mess?” “If you can’t handle it, here’s a suggestion: look for another job because I won’t put up with incompetence anymore!”

"Last but not least," RPS stated, "anyone who wishes to question the current situation and bring about the required level of change might remain and present their plan on July 7, 2020," giving everyone, including KMP and NJ, two days to do so. RPS departed after this brief meeting.

As soon as RPS got up and walked out, everyone else in the room began to blame each other for what had just happened while laying extra blame on NJ.

SA calmly interpreted NJ’s question and stated: “I have known you very well for the past seven years, and I am aware of your immense potential as an individual. However, things would be different in this instance, and it would be necessary to draw on your previous expertise to unite both sides as a cohesive one. So, think calmly over the next hour and figure out ways to address it together. I’m sure we can make that happen!”

"I am confident we can find ways," NJ said to her and the team. "Let's meet tomorrow to explore further with a calm mind, and in the meantime, I will start working on this."

The next day, July 6, 2020, all the team members met and worked out a plan to go about this with their respective roles and decided that NJ would play a vital role in this plan. SA consolidated the many inputs received during the meeting. Then, SA and NJ started working on the presentation and completed it around 1 a.m. on July 7, 2020, as they needed to meet RPS at 11 a.m.

Both SA and NJ returned to their homes and returned at 10 a.m., calling for a quick meeting with the team to brief them on the draft presentation. All were tense to see RPS at 11 a.m., but NJ said, "Not to worry"; they will do their best! At 11 a.m., RPS entered the meeting hall with SA and sarcastically said, "Hi!" "Good morning, everyone, "Am I going to listen to hell, or will you all start?"

NJ got to his feet and said, "RPS, I'll outline the suggestion to you as a presentation." "Then let's talk and come to a conclusion." The discussion continued for almost an hour, and everyone committed to working for a change to clean up the mess that XYZ was currently facing. They finally decided to investigate modern options and find a suitable partner within the next two weeks.

Summarising everything that has happened thus far, this is a classic demonstration of the relatively old but classic expression meant: 'Who is going to bell the cat?' You want to know which individual has the bravery to do something risky.

"Risky" means "how to swiftly pick a vendor and get on with the implementation" here.

The issue here is whether or not they were conscious of and in charge of their readiness to deal with the highly consequential implementation of a business application. Is there enough time, money, and resources to complete the project?

Let's see if their instincts were correct in assuming this was their best path forward.

We'll catch up with you soon. Stay focused on being efficient rather than laborious in your job until we meet!