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Avoid The 70% Failure Rate Of Change Management Initiatives

Posted by Claire Schooley on August 31, 2011

You read that number right: seventy percent, a dramatically high rate of failure. It could happen to you unless you take into account that any business process change is strongly related to personal change — that means your people — and this is often the component that gets shortchanged. Organizations fail to realize the impact of change on the employees it will affect and do not plan and execute carefully enough to address the people issues through all phases of business process change management. Today’s business environment is constantly changing as companies work to stay competitive. But change only happens when workers change their thinking, beliefs, and behaviors. This is hard and requires constant effort from employees and executives.

Change management methodologies abound. Look carefully at ADKAR from Prosci and John Kotter’s The 8-Step Process for Leading Change; read Crucial Conversations by Patterson et al. They are rich in change theory and suggestions. Choose one methodology or components of many methodologies. What’s critical is that you do not miss any of the following six principles:

 

The change manager (managing the people change) and the project manager (managing the technology change) must plan together; they work in parallel but have constant interaction to make sure the initiative is moving ahead on both fronts.

To make your change management efforts work, follow these best practices:

  • Get project sponsorship from a leader who understands people change management.
  • Make sure you have the change management resources and a budget.
  • Communicate constantly with employees by engaging them in discussions and keeping them informed.
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Mobilize Your Content & Collaboration Applications

Posted by Ted Schadler on August 29, 2011

A quick reality check: our content & collaboration systems have been with us since we first put PCs on desktops. Today, these systems are pervasive in our workflow, our work lives, and our work cultures. Need proof? Here are some data from our recent survey of 4,985 US information workers:

  • 91% of information workers use email. Email's still the most ubiquitous and important collaboration tool, but hardly the only one that people use.
  • 58% of information workers uses their employee intranet portal. This vital resource is in the flow of daily work, particularly among Sales people and in the enterprise.
  • 40% of information workers spend an hour or more per day creating documents. We spend huge amounts of time capturing knowledge and process in documents.
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Conquering The Technology/Marketing Divide

Posted by Sharyn Leaver on August 29, 2011

Forget Brad and Angelina (or "Brangelina" for those that are more plugged in to pop culture than I), the new "it" couple is the CIO and CMO. Why? In the digital world we live in today, which Forrester defines as the Age of the Customer, empowered buyers demand a new level of customer obsession. That means firms must deliver marketing and technology solutions that have visible impact on the customer. CIOs and CMOs are best positioned to deliver because they have a broad, end-to-end purview of their businesses and they understand how to innovate. But, CIOs and CMOs also often come with conflicting expectations and priorities that can sabotoge well-intentioned collaboration efforts.

Charles Rutstein, Forrester's COO, recently sat down with my CMO Practice Leader peer David Cooperstein and me to discuss the role that CIOs and CMOs play in this customer-obsessed new world. See what we had to say here:

 

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Observations From Brazil

Posted by Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D. on August 26, 2011

My first whirlwind trip to Brazil confirmed much of what I’d expected.  Brazil is booming.  Traffic in the cities is horrendous.  The buzz of helicopters in Sao Paulo is incessant.  And, there is huge opportunity for IT vendors and services providers.  But contrary to what I had expected, IT preparation for the upcoming mega-events seems to be getting off to a slow start. 

Several analysts from Forrester traveled to Brazil this week to participate in events sponsored by the Brazilian Chamber of E-Commerce, the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communications Companies (BRASSCOM) and the Brazilian Association for Promoting the Software Export (Softex), and iO2. 

We also met with a distinguished list of Brazilian IT services firms in both Rio and Sao Paulo, including PromonLogicalis, CMP Braxis, Cast, BRQ, Dimension Data, CI&T, iO2, and Sedna Partners. 

What did we hear?

  • Good times for Brazilian IT industry, which was recently among the strategic industries given a tax break to promote its competitiveness.
  • Currently many Brazilian IT services firms are experiencing 30%-40% annual growth. 
  • And, many are looking to double their revenues in the next few years.
  • Unlike their Indian counterparts, they have built their businesses domestically with 80%-90% of their revenues coming from Brazil.  Great partners for vendors looking to enter the Brazilian market.
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Steve Jobs Is A Market Systems Master

Posted by Ted Schadler on August 25, 2011

I'll let others wax on wax off about Mr. Jobs' courage, taste, focus, vision. I'll merely point out that under Steve Jobs, Apple has been a brilliant systems thinker. The story starts with a whooping and winds up with market systems brilliance. Let me explain.

The vendor with the best market system wins. It's why Microsoft whooped Apple in the PC market. While Apple under Steve Jobs focused on its Macintosh closed system of hardware, software, and applications, Microsoft built an open market system on Windows: any hardware, any application, many ways to make money.

Mr. Jobs and Apple mastered the lesson: it's the market system that matters. A successful market system includes all the players, all the pieces, the end-to-end solution, the business model, the flow of money, the attractors, blockers, hardware, software, content, and services all wrapped into what we in 2006 called a single digital experience (what we now call a "total product experience").

With the launch of the iPod in 2001, Apple's market systems mastery shone through. Others had built great MP3 players. Only Apple built a great music market system.

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Is Social Software Relevant To Information Workers?

Posted by TJ Keitt on August 22, 2011

I'm not saying anything shocking when I say enterprise social software, has been a hot topic over the last five years. The set of technologies designed to flatten corporations have spawned dedicated blogs, press, and conferences. And our surveys of content and collaboration professionals show businesses are embracing these technologies: 42% of firms are making new investments in Enterprise 2.0 software, and 46% are investing in team workspaces (on which social technologies often ride into the enterprise). So, obviously we're over the hump and well into this new social era of business, right? Well...not so fast.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that businesses are not more social - at least, not in the broad-based fashion people envisioned when we first started talking about Enterprise 2.0 in the heady days of the mid-2000s. How could it be? According to our recent survey of 4,985 US information workers, 28% of the workforce uses a social technology. While you may be thinking to yourself this is a good start, allow me a moment to point out some key differences between Enterprise 2.0 users and the rest of the workforce:

  • They're your highest paid employees. Over half of this group earns more than $60k a year, compared to just 36% of non-users.
  • They're the most educated members of the workforce. Sixty-five percent of this group has completed at least a 4 year college degree compared to 55% of the rest of the workforce.
  • They're the leaders in your office. It's not surprising to see 49% of this group are managers are executives given management's enthusiasm about social technologies. Just 31% of non-users are in similar positions.
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HP's Reinvention Around Software And Services Will Be A Tough Transition

Posted by John McCarthy on August 19, 2011

  • 299 Recommendations

HP's big announcement yesterday that it was “exploring strategic alternatives for its PC and mobile businesses mobile devices discontinuing, exploring options for WebOS” to focus on software and services is a bold but extremely treacherous move. While the comparisons to IBM have been bandied about on the Web all day, in Forrester’s mind this is a very different time than when IBM began that shift almost 20 years ago. The market today is very different, making it much harder for HP to execute the pivot.

The services business, especially the outsourcing segment, has stalled out. There is no better example than HP’s own services business, which has shown negative growth over the last two fiscal years. It is becoming increasingly clear that IT shops think that pursuing a cloud strategy public or private is the way to keep control and not have to outsource.

The software business may be on the same brink of fundamental change as mobile and as a service combine to change the pricing, delivery model, and focus of innovation. There is also a fundamental shift away from spending on the traditional systems of record like ERP to systems of engagement with customers, partners, and the business decision-maker. The $10 billion Autonomy Corp deal is targeted at the analytics element that will underpin many of these systems of engagement. The analytics space is getting increasingly crowded as IBM, Accenture, and Deloitte seem to acquire an analytics software firm on a weekly basis.

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This Week's Economic And Tech News Points To A Tech Downturn in Europe, Slower But Still Positive Growth In US, And Boom In Asia

Posted by Andrew Bartels on August 19, 2011

  • 274 Recommendations

Picking through economic news this week (French and German growth numbers; financial market turmoil; scattered US indicators) and the vendor announcements from Dell, HP, Lenovo, NetApp, and Salesforce.com, four trends emerge:

  1. European economies are headed for a recession, and European tech market is already in decline. Eurostat (The European Union statistical agency) announced on Tuesday, August 16, that real GDP in the 17 euro area countries and the 27 European countries both grew by just 0.2% in the second quarter of 2011 from the first quarter. Annualizing these growth rates to make them comparable with US GDP growth rates, the numbers were 0.8%. France's real GDP showed no growth, while Germany's real growth was o.4% on an annualized basis. These were sharp slowdowns from France's growth of 3.6% in Q1 and Germany's growth of 5.3%. With worries growing about a financial crisis hitting European banks as a result of potential losses on their holdings of Greek, Portuguese, Irish, Italian, and Spanish bonds, ongoing government austerity programs in these countries as well as the UK, and feeble EU efforts to deal with the problems, there is a high probability that Europe will slip into recession in Q3 and Q4 2011.
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Are You Ready To Master The Customer Data Flow?

Posted by Nigel Fenwick on August 17, 2011

  • 328 Recommendations

If you read my last research report and previous blog post, you’ll know that I’m working with Luca Paderni on a series of research reports examining the IT and marketing relationship. In particular, we’re examining what IT and marketing are doing to master the customer data flow (see Figure 1).

 IT and marketing must collaborate to master the customer data flow

At the upcoming CIO and CMO forum, Luca and I will be presenting a keynote examining the readiness of IT and marketing teams in today’s organizations to master the customer data flow. The really cool thing is that you can help shape the outcome by participating in a very short survey we are conducting in conjunction with Forbes. The survey asks a number of questions around the interaction between IT and marketing and can be answered by either IT or marketing professionals.

Don’t put it off, please take the survey now,  share this post, and receive a complimentary copy of the summary results.

If you are a CIO or CMO of a $1 billion+ organization, please also consider participating in our ongoing research by contacting our research associate Lauren Blackburn at +1 617.613.6500.

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Google’s Motorola Acquisition Is About The Multidevice, Multiconnection World — And Patents

Posted by Charles Golvin on August 15, 2011

  • 325 Recommendations

 

 

Google today announced its intent to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. While Google assures its other Android licensees that the platform will remain open and license-free, product strategists at Samsung, LG, and HTC are certain to revisit their Windows Phone hedge strategy. We see two key reasons for Google to take the risk of alienating its other hardware partners:

  • Intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. Google brings little to the table in the form of patents relevant to handsets and tablets, forcing Android licensees to beef up their own portfolios in the legal derring-do that, for example, has Samsung Galaxy tablets locked out of the European market by Apple lawsuits. Motorola’s rich collection of patents greatly strengthens Google’s position at the IPR table.
  • It’s a multidevice, multiconnection world. Consumers are no longer reliant on one dominant device like the PC for their connection to the content, commerce, communications, and comfort that the Net provides. Instead, they have multiple choices sitting in front of them at any moment and are often connected to more than one — today it’s the PC, tablet, phone, and TV, but connections are beginning to pervade the car and myriad devices in the home. Android is present in most of these devices today and aims, with GoogleTV and Android@home, to be in all of them. Excepting the PC, Motorola has products in these market segments today and is the only large original equipment manufacturer (OEM) exclusively reliant on Android for its mobile devices.
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