Even today, in many organizations installing desktops, laptops, printers and internet is termed as IT automation. In such organizations, they use Ms Word to type their letter and Memos. Ms Excel is used for recording accounting information.
This scenario is not confined to small organizations alone. Though it will be difficult to digest, believe me, this subsidiary of a prestigious government organization didn't have any IT solution to perform even basic functions as late as year 2010.
It is not that government had been short of funds to automate one of its small departments. I believe, the leadership has been apprehensive about IT automation. The leadership felt some kind of personal satisfaction in signing a pile of documents every day. May be it gave them a feeling of power, which would otherwise be lost in the mesh of LAN cables. As a result, this organization used Ms Word for typing and distributing letters and memos. I must say they had a very efficient mechanism to manage these memos. For every small or big task or process with in any department they would prepare a memo and every memo had to be signed by originator, department head and finally the director of the organization. As a result, they have created a room full of papers. As I write this article their accounts are still maintained in Ms Excel.
Upon the insistence of the parent organization, ERP implementation started in this organization in the year 2010 and by the early 2011 ERP was implemented. However, did it really automate the organization or was it just change of tools that is from Ms Office to PeopleSoft?
Whenever an organization undertakes an IT automation project it must target to achieve following objectives.
1. Reduce number of steps by merging them or eliminating them to complete a process
2. Reduce time taken to process information
3. Reduce number of resources requirement to perform one task
4. Capture complete information in a systematic manner
5. Provide information in various formats for the decision makers to make knowledgeable decision
6. Reduce number of hard copy documents in every step
In our subject organization, the system didn’t make any difference. All the processes are still same as before. The only difference is instead of Ms Office information is fed into PeoplSoft. At the end it is failure of the virtue of IT automation.
It is high time for the organizations to undermine the benefits of IT automation. IT automation is a tool for business process improvement and it should be leveraged for the growth of organzation.
3 comments:
A lot of times, organizations are not sure of what they are going to achieve out of the application softwares. This gap could be attributed to the lack of knowledge either at the users end or from the implementation partner. Either way, organizations dont realise that when they are investing in the applications softwares, the capex is needed at the time of installation and there is an operation cost in terms of salaries of trained staff who can ensure effectiuve implemenations. This is also another pitfall which sucks the whole IT automation initiative.
Good blog though.
Sameer Sharma
Very true Sameer! You made very valid points.
Allow me to take your comments as a cue.
Firstly, it is important to appreciate the project objectives. The onus lies with the project sponsor (actually the one who pays the money) to repeatedly communicate the project objectives to all the stakeholders (all those who are benefitted directly or indirectly).
Secondly, often there is a belief that WE are paying for the software YOUR software should do everything on its own "on click of a button". They do not want to adopt or adapt to change.
Trust me! this is what I experienced working with a very prominent organization.
My 2 cents:
A very good article. I liked the way you have summarized in a quite articulated way the virtue of IT automation. In my experience, there is often another factor that can cause the implementation to fail (although not as catastrophically as you have described in your article). When you try and cater to all the requirements and cover all possible scenarios that the real world would probably throw at the implementation, the system is often too complex to be usable. Success rate of IT automation is not just on how much it “could” add value to business but is often more dependent on the user adoption of the new process / new system or how successfully have the users adopted the new system.
User Experience and Usability are the two factors often ignored by IT professionals in the corporate world. Too much emphasis on the process optimization and value addition to business alone while giving too little emphasis on adding value to the users can significantly hamper the IT automation’s success.
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