| | By Mick James
When some years ago a
nameless wag dubbed the
data processing industry
“information technology”
he unwittingly sparked
off a quest for the Holy
Grail. A way for
businesses to make
better use of a resource
which is both free and
unique – the information
they already have.
Customer enthusiasm
for the quest has waxed
and waned however, as
various approaches –
from the old EIS
(Executive Information
Systems) to Knowledge
Management – have failed
to deliver to
expectations.
Now there’s a
resurgence of that
appetite according to
Ramesh Harji, who heads
up a new initiative from
Capgemini which it calls
“Intelligent
Enterprise”.
“Volumes of data are
growing at a really
rapid rate, from 40% to
60% a year, but
businesses are still
struggling to get hold
of critical information
when they need it,” he
says. “The fact that
storage is getting
cheaper is not helping.
People have tried
throwing technology at
the problem, but it
hasn’t helped solve it,
if anything it has made
it worse.”
Capgemini is
advocating a new
approach, which takes
business outcomes as the
starting point.
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| | therefore begins with
information management –
many organisations are
surprised to learn that
customer or supplier
data can be duplicated
across 50 or a hundred
locations, some
structured, some not,
some digitised, some on
paper.
“The challenge is how
to get people to
appreciate that
information is a
business issue not an IT
issue,” says Harji. “We
used to say that the
reason technology
projects failed was that
they forgot about people
and process. Now we’re
adding information as a
fourth dimension. When
you put a system in,
when do you think about
what you are going to do
with the information you
will collect in it?
Often this is an
afterthought, by which
point the project could
be close to completion.”
The problem is that
people don’t know what
they know – what
information is already
in their technology
systems.
“In the absence of
this knowledge people go
and re-invent it, when
the answer might be in
the next room,” says
Harji. “Many businesses
are in their second or
third generation of ERP
systems – it’s time they
started extracting more
value from the
information they have
collected in them. It’s
the same with customer | |
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| | management systems.”
At the same time
organisations – whether
in the public or private
sector – are
increasingly demanding
that they take a single
view of the customer,
employees or suppliers
etc. This adds a new
dimension to the
information agenda.
“A lot of the work we
do is cultural,” says
Harji. “How do we get
people to work together?
How do we get
departments to share
information?”
Capgemini’s approach
has three strands – a
very strong
evidence-based approach
combines with a strong
architectural element
and a collaborative
style of working.
“The architectural
element means that if
they do nothing else
they’ve mapped the
organisation to better
understand where its
information resides and
how good it is,” he
says.
“The evidence-based
approach means that
customers get to see
some very compelling,
business outcomes based
business cases,” says
Harji.
With some strong case
studies under their belt
in both the public and
private sectors,
Capgemini is looking to
ramp up its capability
to take advantage of the
market demand.
“We’re looking for
people from a business | |
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| | background such as a
Customer Services or a
Finance Director role,”
says Harji.
“Additionally, they also
need to understand what
technology can do and be
comfortable shaping big
transformations.”
Those people are
rare, he says. “The
work requires a balance
of confidence and
humility which plays
very well to our
personality at Capgemini
of having a strong
capability but being
quite understated in
terms of our style.”
One of the
attractions, however, is
the way that the
Intelligent Enterprise
group works across all
Capgemini’s industry and
functional sectors, in a
way that is both
pragmatic and tailored.
“It’s a really good
opportunity, not just to
get to see so many
different types of
technology solutions,
but also so many
different types of
organisation,” he says.
“From a technology
perspective, different
vendors have different
pieces of the puzzle.
But whether it’s
document management,
business intelligence,
search engines or
process automation,
clients don’t care –
they just need help
bringing it all
together.”
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