Who Should Enable Change?
Because IT works across business functions, it has an organizational view of processes as opposed to the isolated view by line of business managers have.
Vilas Pujari
ACG Worldwide, CIO
Business owners are better equipped to foster a strong cross-functional alignment that is needed to affect process change.
Prashant Veer Singh
Bharti Infratel, CIO
I.T. and specifically the CIO should play a major role in enabling process change. Today, IT has evolved from being merely a backroom data processing department to a function that can handle technology management and is strategically positioned to spearhead business process management. It works with various cross-functional users and hence it acquires the process knowledge cutting across diverse functions within the organization. This enables IT to get an enterprisewide view of processes as opposed to the isolated functional view that line of business managers have.
I also believe that IT is in a more advantageous position because it works closely with users. And hence, IT will have more buy-in. Also, IT, by virtue of its association with vendors—and access to information on best-in-class processes—is better positioned to convince users. So, I believe that IT can successfully undertake the task of change management.
Each process has controls—like security controls, for example—built in which serve the interests of both the end-to-end process and also of the organization as a whole. But a business manager would view this control as a constraint, whereas IT would look at it as a necessity to make the process robust. This view will help IT in protecting the larger interest of the organization. IT can work on all linkages to confirm and ensure that the day to day operations of the business are not affected.
Hence, IT is better suited to manage process change.
I believe business should take up the responsibility of leading process change. Business is equipped with a deep understanding of the reasons for process change. It has a stronger appreciation of the business landscape that drives the need for change, it’s perceived goals, the rationale behind it, and the scope of change. It can easily articulate the vision for change to the other business users.
Business also helps in clearly communicating the need for change to all other stakeholders and the business users. This minimizes change resistance. This makes it easy to navigate the change management issues that can often jeopardize a process change initiative.
If process change is led by IT, the end users tend to think that it is yet another exercise to bring in process efficiency. However, if business leads the change they see more value. Also, business can align the new processes with the business cycles. IT might not be able to do this.
Business processes are intricate and often depend on other processes and hence they are well understood by the business owners. IT might not be able to perform this task. I think the process owner should be responsible for change.
Sure, IT has the wherewithal to conduct risk analysis and mitigation. However, despite this inherent capability, IT cannot bring change and realignment to processes that are owned by business. IT comes to play only when it has to put in place the right tools and systems to affect the change. But it cannot undertake the responsibility of enabling process change.
Therefore, I strongly back the credence that business owners are better equipped to foster a strong cross functional alignment that is needed to affect process change. An effective collaboration can be achieved only when the business assumes the responsibility of enabling process change.
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