Who are the most common suspects? Without claiming to be a perfect representation from the statistical viewpoint, these appear to be the top runners.

To ERP or not to ERP? The introduction of an ERP System.

The ERP topic is leading the race, hands down! No matter what your poison is – whether you are contemplating Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or NetSuite, the decision about it is not an IT topic. At the risk of stating the obvious (which probably is needed as the topic keeps popping up), ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. Thus, an ERP – any ERP, as a matter of fact – is nothing but a tool which will represent your business processes. If you will, an ERP is a second derivative of your business model, your processes being the first derivative. Your business model is not the topic on which you want to delegate the decision-making process to your IT department, no matter how lucky you’ve been hiring the most brilliant techies out there. You define your business model, which in turn defines your processes and you need a good understanding of these processes. Are they similar? Have you already brought them to a common denominator and is it the state-of-the-art process? Do you have enough volume that would justify the introduction of a massive ERP system? What if you are looking at such an oriental carpet of colorful yet diverse processes between different organizations within your holding that introducing a massive ERP tool will be like launching a carpet bombing – not even canons – on a bunch of sparrows? So many questions and so few answers… While IT department can and should help you answering some of them, the ultimate answer to the Hamletian question must come from you as a business leader.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude master data.

The second runner up is master data. Maybe it is the word “data” hiding in it, maybe the implicit reference to the Master, but the topic of master data management and especially the responsibility keeps coming back to the IT department. At the same time, just as process to the business model, master data is the essence and the bone marrow to the operational backbone of an organization and its business processes. Hence, even though IT will certainly help you with certain initiatives to enhance master data management and provide the technical infrastructure and tools, the ownership and the ultimate responsibility will stay with the luminous beings from respective functional areas.

Who let the mail out? Data and compliance breaches.

While IT is certainly responsible for providing technical tools and measures, statistics are ruthless when it comes to predicting who will bring about your next data breach (spoiler alert: not IT). No matter how ingenious your tools are and how much robustness your systems show, all the firewalls and all the lines of defense will fall apart like a house of cards once an average Joe decides to unleash his creativity (feel free to replace the word “creativity” with any term of your liking). You need awareness, you need leading by example, you need training and “dress rehearsals”, you need to strike a good balance between the level and degree of process optimization in daily operations and the ability of your employees to react in an adequate manner on the situation at hand. Most importantly – you need a healthy culture when it comes to mistakes and errors.

What is common between these situations? In all these cases IT provides you with a tool and gives you a technical solution. However, it cannot replace neither the decision making nor the human factor in the background. The confusion is happening for a variety of reasons. First off, it’s a combination of unwillingness to take a decision and wishful thinking that we are already at such a state of technological development that there is a way to take care about such issues in an “automatic way”. The “technological bias” that has been prevailing in recent decades also contributes to it. Ultimately, when things go South, finding a scapegoat hidden somewhere in the server room, at a service desk or in the ivory tower of the IT department provides at least a short relief and one can continue taking care of more exciting topics. However, issues will start piling up and postponed decisions will get you so much South at some point that you will be greeting pinguins before you realize it…

So, what can we do about it? In the first place, being and staying aware of the problem is already half of the solution. That is why it is so crucial to keep reminding yourself and others of the virtues of the RACI matrix (i.e., revisit the responsibilities) and checking your reality against it. Is the ownership allocated correctly and are the owners fully aware? If you are on the “receiving” side of the issues, you must have open discussions as much as you can and keep bringing up the issue. Having said that – if it feels like you and your organization are stuck and having the same discussions over and over again, it is high time to recognize that you need a change manager and get some help from the outside. If so, I cannot wait to hear from you!