Enterprise Newsletter
 
NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Mid-Market CIO Panel: Tips and Techniques for Improving Vendor Relationships

July 15, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

Secrets of Successful Vendor Contract Negotiations for the Mid-Market

Sept. 10, 2009, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

On this free public Council teleconference, Matthew A. Karlyn, attorney at Foley & Lardner in Boston, will share tips on negotiating tactics and new, creative contract terms to help mid-market CIOs make better deals.

Executive Competencies Assessment Tool

Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 
SUBSCRIBE TO CIO
 
Are you involved in setting the direction for your company's IT budget or strategy?

Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!

 
 

Getting Employees On Board for Automated Workflow

When Intria-HP of Toronto?a joint outsourcing venture between hewlett-packard and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce?was formed, its executives had a ...

 

March 15, 2002CIO

When Intria-HP of Toronto?a joint outsourcing venture between hewlett-packard and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce?was formed, its executives had a daunting task ahead of them: Transform an IT department that had been a cost center into a revenue center selling IT services to banks.

To aid in the transformation, the executives turned to professional services automation (PSA) software, which automates work assignments, billing and invoicing, time sheets and similar kinds of labor. The software is designed for organizations that provide professional services, such as global IT shops, financial services organizations, consulting firms or organizations with many far-flung consultants around the world.

In theory, the tool seemed ideal for Intria-HP’s overhaul. The reports PSA software creates can help a company closely track what work IT employees and consultants are doing, see what resources are free at any given time, and assist managers in determining whether their workers are ready to take on new assignments. The idea is to allow managers to more effectively use their existing workforce.

But Intria-HP soon found that theory clashed with practice. The system just wasn’t working, says Bent Fink-Jensen, an IT executive whose official title is director of process and knowledge management. And it wasn’t working for a very simple reason: People weren’t using it. Rather than learn and adapt to a system in which they saw few benefits, people simply reverted to the old ways of doing things?and so the promised benefits of the software, which cost $345 per license ($550 in Canadian dollars), weren’t forthcoming.

Interviews with other CIOs who have used PSA software, and with consultants familiar with the technology, reveal that Intria-HP’s story isn’t an isolated one. While PSA software holds out the promise of increasing the effectiveness of businesses that provide professional services, employees often balk at using it, and the investment may be wasted.

"You can’t just drop this technology on your workforce and have people magically use it," says Dave Hofferberth, research director responsible for the PSA practice of the Aberdeen Group, an IT resource and consulting group based in Boston. "Executives so far have loved this. But if it’s an executive mandate, you’ll typically get resistance."

To forestall such resistance, CIOs must do some homework before they even invest in this kind of software. To begin with, they should have a thorough understanding of their company’s corporate culture and how the company assigns work. Companies that provide consulting or Web design services are often staffed by creative types who don’t cotton to a lot of structure, and may balk at attempts to compartmentalize their work. On the other hand, IT organizations that have employees who like structure and order may embrace workflow software.

 
 
Loading...
 
WHITE PAPERS

Global Change in the TV Industry

Capgemini and MediaXchange have captured key insight to the change across the TV industry.
 

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT PPM Applications

This report evaluates 19 vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision.
 

A Bottleneck-free Infrastructure

Storage bottlenecks have a significant impact on performance and productivity.
 

Investing in Business Analytics Technology

Find the answers to your questions about business anyalytics initiatives.
 

Document-Sharing Solutions

Examine the benefits and challenges that IT executives are facing and how they plan to control the changes.
 

How Can Your Organization Weather This Economic Storm?

IT executives are under intense pressure to cut costs, and that pressure is significantly increased by the current grim economic outlook.
 

WEBCASTS

IBM FileNet BPM - Application Simulator

Interact with scenarios that illustrate how to achieve faster time to value and lower IT development costs.
 

Managing Client Systems in the Enterprise

Keeping client systems costs under control is just one of the many initiatives IT must address when trying to manag...
 

Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Enterprise Cloud Computing: Ready for Primetime?

The progression toward enterprise cloud computing is happening today, as industry leaders deploy technologies that ...
 

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future

Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service? Wh...
 

Enterprise System Management Challenges in Big Organizations with Eli Almog

In this Podcast with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office, discusses how IT managers can know when it...
 

Resource Alerts

Get instant email notifications by topic when white papers, webcasts, and case studies are added to our library.

 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Maximizing the Business Value of the PC Infrastructure

Using Open Source to Deploy Web Applications

How Interactive Viewer Reduces the Effort to Meet Visualization Requirements

White Paper: 8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

Software Executives: Take Control of Your Organization's Code Quality

BPM ROI calculator

Oracle's Application Grid Technical Demo

Next-Generation Application Servers and Infrastructure

Application Infrastructure at Enterprise Organizations

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Craft a Strategy to Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership

A Natural User Interface for Enterprise Applications

On-Demand HR for a Global Organization

Four steps to populate your CMDB.

Delivering Secure and Reliable Data through Spreadsheet Automation

Open Source BI: Inexpensive Solutions for Developers

Gartner Shares Predictions for 2009

Reduce risk, gain agility. See how Progress can help your business.

Improve ROI, lower TCO and reduce energy consumption.

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

Accenture: Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage. More...

Better spam protection with Postini for just $1/user/mo

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

infoBOOM! - The Mid-Sized Company CIO's Exclusive Community

Revolutionizing Enterprise Application Deployment

Learn how to managing client systems in the enterprise.

Cloud Computing: Read about VMware's compelling vision & set of products

Top-line Performance that's Bottom-line Efficient

How Open Source is Changing the Face of Enterprise Software

BPM Survey Results: The Real-World Analysis

Ready to Act: 3 Recommendations for Agile Processes

Oracle WebLogic Server Technical Demo

Data Grids and Service-Oriented Architecture

Achieving the Impossible: Unlimited Application Scalability

A Middleware Foundation for Application Grid

Next Generation Enterprise Applications

A Truly Global HCM System

Learn how to provide complete Business Service Management.

Increase ROI of Your Application Portfolio

Financial Institutions Need Rich Internet Applicatons

Forrester: Implementing Rich Internet Applications

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

64-page prescriptive guide to security, compliance, and IT operations.

Get Google Enterprise Search for your business information.

Accenture IT Consulting: Enabling high performance. More...

Top Five CIO Challenges

Insight makes it easy to spend your Microsoft subsidy check.

Five minute business analytics assessment. Immediate results.

Dangerous Collaboration Practices: 5 Ways IT Can Minimize Risk