IT Strategy – Establishing a Standard Platform
It is a Political Challenge
By embracing a standard platform IT strategy, client organizations can save millions of dollars. While it might be the right thing to do, this concept is not new. It is also one of the most challenging things for an organization to do politically. Politics and economic logic do not always flow in the same direction. The only way to make it happen is with strong, collaborative executive leadership and alignment. Mid-level executives often pick their battles and focus on addressing the agenda that they are directly responsible for, versus taking into account what might be best for the overall organization. The C-Level executives are best positioned to take on this political challenge, doing what is best for the whole and managing through individual agendas and fiefdoms. While the CIO can provide a technical perspective, the benefits of a standard platform are very real for the CEO, COO and CFO as well.
Most IT executives agree that it is good for organizations to standardize on one primary “back office” system’s platform and to use that wherever possible, where it has at least an 80% fit to support your business processes. This applies particularly to the major apps like Human Resources, Payroll, Financials, Supply Chain Management and CMMS or Maintenance Management. This allows you to maximize both integration and system performance as well as minimize your on-going support costs, improving your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). In addition to TCO, this best practice approach means you only need one team of internal resources to support all of the system components that are within your one standard platform. You also minimize the number of vendors, contracts and request for proposals needed to round out your total platform of solutions.
If you would like more information on establishing a standard platform strategy using PeopleSoft please contact us. We are always willing to lend a helping hand and “do the right thing.”
