COMPANIES have invested heavily in information technology (IT) while trying to maintain competitive parity and support business growth. The challenge that these organisations now face is to gauge the value derived from IT, identify pragmatic options that will allow them to minimise risk and drive growth, while transforming IT to streamline costs and improve performance. To see how companies are coping, BT asked a group of technology heads about their experience.

Amit Roy Choudhury: How do you structure IT to support and enable growth in line with the overall organisation's business strategy through initiatives that drive improved efficiency and effectiveness?

Han Jok Kwang: Let me reword the question. In our perspective, the key question for any organisation to ask here is, "How does IT help drive business outcomes?"

For instance, is there a clear understanding of what "growth", "improved efficiency" and "effectiveness" is within your organisation? Once your organisational goals are identified, you can then deploy technology, people and processes at an organisation's disposal to meet these targets.

IT today is uniquely positioned to provide insight, control and analysis on vital information flowing through an organisation. By putting in place rock-solid business intelligence and data lifecycle management capabilities, organisations can begin to discover and prioritise amongst key business priorities. Getting the information to the right stakeholders throughout project lifecycles enables the team to make better business decisions.

Kenneth Thean: The Information Services Division (ISD) in Parkway Health is a support department centrally run as a corporate resource. We have recently changed from a facility-based organisation to now be a matrix organisation cutting across all business units, and aligned across eight clinical programmes. We are on the road to having a central IT system to support the organisation's growth.

Currently, we are implementing an Oracle e-business suite in a central data centre to support our Singapore operations. This will be linked to a custom-designed Parkway Hospital Information system currently being developed. The same configuration is designed to be replicated to support growth in a "cookie cutter" manner.

Eddie Ng Wai Keung: Hong Kong Fire Services Department (HKFSD) is an emergency department of the government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. Obviously, our business strategy is to provide the public with efficient emergency services and associated publicity on fire safety rather than to increase business opportunities or revenue from our services.

In 2003, the department had commissioned a consultant to conduct a departmental IT plan for the department and a series of IT projects were recommended with a view to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the department. Meanwhile, some of the IT projects were already implemented, whilst the remaining projects are in the pipeline for implementation.

In operational terms, the department has commissioned a state-of-the-art command and control system known as Third Generation Mobilising System (TGMS) in 2005 for the efficient deployment of resources to handle emergency incidents.

The TGMS helps in searching for the nearest resources to respond to the scene of incident, thus enhancing our operational efficiency and meeting the target of our performance as pledged and committed to the public. Its capacity in handling the dispatch of emergency calls can be sustained until the year 2013 to cater for upcoming growth of calls without any additional resources of the command centre.

Pete Karolczak: Hewlett-Packard (HP) is focused on three areas: targeted growth, efficiency and capital strategy to establish HP as the world's leading information technology provider. A significant part of achieving our business goals depends on a successful transformation of the IT organisation.

The company has an operating framework that revolves around three simple things: to grow and scale specifically in markets where we have a strategic direction to lead, to be effective and efficient with our capital, and to be as cost-conscious as we can be. The goals of the HP IT transformation are closely linked to this framework.

First, we had to lower the cost of our IT. Following rapid internal growth through years of acquisitions, we were managing an increasingly complex IT infrastructure that was getting more difficult and costly to maintain. We were spending 80 per cent of our resources to keep the existing infrastructure running, and just 20 per cent on innovation projects. We are flipping this around to focus on innovation and lower IT management costs.

Second, we needed to give our executives timely and accurate information so that they can set management goals, and make business decisions based on a consistent set of data and view of HP's entire business.

Third, we had to lower the risk of HP with every move that we make, to ensure we have continuity in our IT system at every point.

Amit: How do you lower costs and yet drive up customer satisfaction and service levels? How can IT add value to the company's bottom line?

Jok Kwang: Customers want good, reliable products through quick, efficient service. An effective programme of customer self-service through a variety of channels, for example the Web or voice-assisted telephony, can help lower support and service costs in the long run. This of course, must be supported by an efficient and skilled service organisation.

It's an ever changing game, as customer needs and business priorities shift constantly. From the organisation's standpoint, you need to make sure staff are able to multi-task, believing and applying the principles of continuous improvement. Continuous innovation and best practice are necessary principles to ensure companies are efficient and productive.

To create significant benefits to the organisation requires breakthrough innovation and differentiation which are difficult to emulate. Because of IT's central role - it touches everything in a company - it is often in a good position to spot and push innovation as a first mover.

Kenneth: Our medical industry is highly transactional-based and highly repetitive in nature. IT is a great enabler to decrease this repetition. We seek ways to automate as many of these processes as possible to drive down costs and improve efficiency. This also results in much better service and quality of care.

For instance, by being able to link all the patients' records together in a single central system, patients no longer have to repeatedly fill in their personal information should they visit our other hospitals. At the same time, critical clinical information is immediately shared across the systems, potentially avoiding medical errors, or repeating an already done test. We are moving to using more and more self-service staff applications to increase efficiency, give our users more control, and provide a faster response time.

Another area that IT helps us is in business intelligence. The ability to collate information, measure, analyse and track improvements is critical in our quest to be "top-of-class" and give first class healthcare. With greater efficiency, accuracy and more automation, we are able to attract and cope with an increasing patient load, and this does contribute much value to our company's bottom line.

Eddie: In order to drive up customer satisfaction and service levels, efficient services provided to the public will be of paramount importance. To achieve this objective, lowering of operating costs for HKFSD in particular to operational aspects is fully applicable and would perhaps be at the expense of public safety, bearing in mind that fires/accidents can happen at any time and at any place and our resources have to be in full readiness to handle any unforeseen situation.

In addition to its statutory duties, the department has served the public with more value-added services under its existing resources, that is "do more with less". With the provision of IT facilities such as the Internet or a website, messages of the department can effectively be disseminated to the public or vice versa. The commissioning of TGMS has further enhanced the efficiency on deployment of resources to scenes of incidents.

Pete: Lowering costs does not necessarily imply cutting corners on service delivery or availability, but I do acknowledge this balance can be extremely challenging - and the goal needs to be a balance between lower costs and acceptable end-user productivity. It's challenging because the means to this end requires change in the behaviours and expectations of the end-user community - and that change does not happen automatically.

The ultimate goal is a set of end-user services that are always on, self-recoverable, never create confusion/questions and never require assistance. In such a perfect world, we would have ultimate productivity at the lowest possible cost so this remains the ultimate goal. But in reality, end-user challenges do exist - so we must deliberately understand what issues create confusion or end-user incidents - and to systemically eliminate them. This takes time and sometimes requires behaviour change management as much as technical solutions, but it's the key to striking the balance.

Amit: How do you minimise disruption to business?

Jok Kwang: No organisation plans to fail; often times we fail to plan adequately. The key is preparation. At the technology level, organisations should make sure the core mission critical system is robustly configured and that any unforeseen fallover will result in a soft landing with minimal impact to the business. A decent business continuity plan to augment the basic system always helps.

People are an important, and often overlooked, factor when dealing with disruption as large-scale projects unfold. You need to communicate project and policy objectives clearly, get buy-in at all levels and ensure familiarisation and training programmes to have staff at all levels of an organisation ready to cope with new systems and processes.

Kenneth: Our business is highly dependent on IT. We have service level agreements with our internal customers that we have to consistently meet to provide the operators with the necessary uptime. The company understands that this is a critical requirement and is willing to invest so that Parkway Health has a robust network architecture with a good, reliable technology platform.

Eddie: Given that the department has to provide emergency services to the public round the clock, all facilities associated with the emergency services have to be maintained with no disruption at all. In IT aspects, particularly the mission critical system TGMS, all provisions are made with fully-resilient design and with fall-back mechanisms to ensure its high reliability and availability.

Pete: It comes down to winning people over. Such management communications by our CEO, CIO and our line of business executives at employee coffee talk sessions and through our employee portal helped to get people on board. We have been talking a lot to our employees. We also get the right change agents within different business teams, so that they can be the change advocate. We are consistent and transparent in our communications, which helps end users understand what changes they are seeing.

Amit: How do IT executives engage their firms in dialogue about how and where IT drives business?

Jok Kwang: The common misperception is that IT is IT, and business is business and never the twain shall meet. Embed yourself as close to where business activities take place, and understand the challenges business executives face. It is also crucial to consult business leaders on IT projects, and get their inputs and experience to enhance the way business processes are designed.

Many successful organisations run cross-functional IT oversight and project management committees to ensure that all divisions within the company are represented on major projects. Once this domain knowledge is gained, it's easier for the IT specialist to enable various technology options to drive the business.

Kenneth: IT is represented in all the company's leadership committees. Presentations are done every few months to various senior executive groups of the company. Decisions are made jointly by the senior executive team to determine the best strategy to choose moving forward. When there are competing demands for resources, the same team would be engaged to prioritise, come up with an agreed action plan and execute this. It is always a team approach and decision.

Eddie: Not applicable to HKFSD as IT is mainly used to improve the working efficiency of the department but not for driving the business.

Pete: Getting all of our employees aligned with change has been an important part of our IT transformation. We were clear at the outset about what we intended to do - how fast and how important that was to the business. How important it was to get our cost structure right so we would be in a position to reinvest those dollars in better market coverage. From the get-go, this was seen not as an IT initiative but an HP business strategy.

Amit: How do you drive change and obtain buy-in? How do you align employees behind this massive change, and across different business groups and countries?

Jok Kwang: We are all creatures of habit. New systems and processes created by large-scale IT transformations create fear, uncertainty and doubt, because people are in unfamiliar territory. To instigate change, we have to always re-visit the basics: asking why we do what we do. Getting buy-in is not difficult so long as you can demonstrate tangible benefits.

Start with the most enthusiastic group to embrace that change. Work down the line all the way to the least enthusiastic. Sometimes, the most effective way to communicate change is to show how and why new approaches will help make it easier for individuals to do a better job. Have project champions who can influence co-workers and help them understand why changes are taking place.

Kenneth: We have found that medical business is never at a standstill. Our IT can, therefore, never remain static. The industry is constantly evolving, and our users will always seek IT's help, and we respond accordingly. Aligning across the different business groups in Singapore has been made much easier following our change to a matrix organisation.

This is fairly new to us and we are slowly evolving to include the other countries. The organisation embraces change and the staff are constantly engaged. This is the most important critical success factor.

Eddie: HKFSD has a series of two-way communications channels between the management and staff. Change management including staff consultation will usually be conducted prior to implementation of any changes in policies or daily workflow.

Amit: What are the critical success factors to ensure that transformation can be a continued process?

Jok Kwang: Proper definition of project goals, good IT governance and a regular programme of review and user feedback help establish problems or bottlenecks with new systems, and eventually help form a more holistic assessment. More importantly, transformations need to be future- proofed.

At every level, from people, processes to technology, IT organisations must scenario plan for the future. Are systems and processes nimble and scalable enough to meet new business drivers a few years down the road? Does the organisation have the skills pool to sustain the future support and growth of the system?

Ultimately, organisations must embrace the principle that the road to success is always under construction.

Eddie: Commitments from both the management and staff is essential. For such a complicated system as the TGMS, it is critical to have a good technology partner that not only provides a robust system but also one that can give valuable input, and suggest improvements to ensure that the system stays relevant for longer.

We have found, in ST Electronics, a partner that is experienced in implementing mega-systems and who are willing to pass the benefit of their experience to their customers.

Pete: We are in the final year of a three-year transformation, and there's plenty of work to do. Some highlights are that we'll have 80 per cent more processing power with 30 per cent fewer servers, double the amount of storage with all data replicated at half the cost, 300 per cent faster network at half the cost, 60 per cent less energy used in the data centres, and the list goes on.

Our goal is to also dramatically improve the time-to-value of business investments. By globally standardising, consolidating and transforming our application portfolio, new business capabilities can be introduced to more lines of businesses in more geographies much faster.

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