- Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager
3 Mar 10 | Presentation
BRMs have the difficult job both of meeting user needs and of managing expectations regarding service and project delivery. A number of people in IT have difficulty with the BRM role and are unable to develop the required relationship with their business partners. Our research indicates that these problems have less to do with content or technical issues, and a great deal to do with how the BRMs ‘show up’ in discussion. For a variety of reasons having to do with conflicting styles and perspectives, BRMs are often unable to have the conversations that they need to have if IT is to add maximum value to the firm. In short, they simply lack the personal ‘power’ required to make an impact.
Kirt Mead , who has played a lead role in developing our understanding of the issues surrounding the BRM role, discusses our findings and outlines the very successful education approach that we have developed for augmenting personal power and impact in BRM staff.
See event: The Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager (3 March 2010)
- The Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager
25 Feb 10 | Presentation
BRMs have the difficult job both of meeting user needs and of managing expectations regarding service and project delivery. A number of people in IT have difficulty with the BRM role and are unable to develop the required relationship with their business partners. Our research indicates that these problems have less to do with content or technical issues, and a great deal to do with how the BRMs ‘show up’ in discussion. For a variety of reasons having to do with conflicting styles and perspectives, BRMs are often unable to have the conversations that they need to have if IT is to add maximum value to the firm. In short, they simply lack the personal ‘power’ required to make an impact.
Kirt Mead , who has played a lead role in developing our understanding of the issues surrounding the BRM role, discusses our findings and outlines the very successful education approach that we have developed for augmenting personal power and impact in BRM staff.
See event: The Evolving Role of the Business Relationship Manager (25 February 2010)
- Closing the Gap with the Business - How the IT Function Can Build Better Relationships
23 Feb 10 | Presentation
As new technologies have enabled new ways of doing business over the years, different business/IT relationship models have emerged. In addition to the conventional IT Service Provider role, many IT organizations also serve as Technology Promoters (educators/evangelists) and as Business Partners (agents of integration and change). However, the conventional approach of appointing business/IT relationship managers is not enough to ensure the successful adoption and balancing of these three roles. CIOs need to understand and simultaneously invest in all three models (Provider, Promoter and Partner) in order for IT to fulfill its potential. Only then will the CIO and the Enterprise IT function rightfully earn its place at the top table as a true Executive Peer.
In this web conference, we draw on our latest research to examine the distinctive nature, relevance and demands of the four roles and draw on leading edge case studies to examine the organizational and human challenges that need to be addressed if IT executives are to provide stronger leadership within their firms.
See event: Closing the Gap with the Business - How the IT Function Can Build Better Relationships (23 February 2010)
- 2009 Study Tour Report: Doing Business in the Cloud: What it Means for Cost, Agility and Collaboration
15 Feb 10 | Study Tour Report
Cloud computing is becoming established, and enterprises around the world are beginning to deploy diverse workloads to public and private clouds, gaining benefits not only in cost savings but also in increased scalability and agility. Our 2009 Study Tour was designed to help delegates explore the issues and advantages of the cloud for their own organizations by visiting some of the leading providers and early adopters of cloud computing. This report summarizes what we heard on the tour, and the lessons delegates took away to guide their organizations’ steps into the cloud.
- A Workbook for Cloud Computing in the Enterprise
18 Jan 10 | Workbook
The most important value the cloud brings is not lower costs. It is improved agility, not just for IT, but for the business as a whole. The biggest cloud computing benefits are being gained in business effectiveness areas such as speed, availability, responsiveness and innovation.
This workbook is intended to help you get up to speed on cloud computing, considering issues such as quality, cycle time and customer/employee satisfaction, and then run a workshop jointly with business and IT staff that:
- Examines cloud opportunities.
- Reviews potential issues.
- Considers where and how specific information should be processed.
Related Links
The Workbook contains some tables for you to copy and use in your workshop. These tables are also available as Powerpoint files here.
Since knowledge about the cloud varies widely both within the IT community and within the business, we have found it useful to start a workshop with the Wall Street Journals cloud computing quiz. Download the Powerpoint version here
The Workbook concludes with some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). To view a full list of these questions and answers and to submit further questions of your own, click here
Further information
If you would like the LEF to support you remotely or onsite with running a workshop described in this workbook please contact your Account Representative.
We also offer tailored, bespoke Cloud Computing Workshops as part of our range of Advisory Services. If you would like more information on this service, including the benefits to be derived, please contact Tudor Rees in EMEA or Marc Posner in the USA.
- Cloud rEvolution: The Cloud Effect (Volume 3)
8 Jan 10 | LEF Technology Program Report
Where once it was important to understand the 'network effect' of the Internet on your business, today it’s the 'cloud effect.' The cloud effect is the influence of cloud computing - of on-demand, elastic, pay-per-use IT - on IT and the business. This influence is significant and far-reaching, for when a fixed asset like a computer becomes variable and on demand, all sorts of agility and new cost structures open up.
Cloud rEvolution: The Cloud Effect explores six cloud effects impacting IT and business:
1. The Stack Transforms to Services
2. Structural Deepening Expands the Cloud Ecosystem
3. Cloud Enables New IT Options
4. Mega Data Centers Power It All
5. Cloudonomics Provide Financial Incentive
6. Cloud Drives Business Value
The Cloud Effect is the third volume in the four-volume Cloud rEvolution series. The final volume, A Workbook for Cloud Computing in the Enterprise, will be available soon. The series is as follows:
Volume 1: Cloud rEvolution: Laying the Foundation
Volume 2: Cloud rEvolution: The Art of Abstraction
Volume 3: Cloud rEvolution: The Cloud Effect
Volume 4: Cloud rEvolution: A Workbook for Cloud Computing in the Enterprise
- Doing Business in the Cloud - What it Means for Cost, Agility and Innovation
15 Dec 09 | Presentation
The cloud is part of a 'bow wave' of multiple changes that are affecting every part of our organisations. The questions about cloud computing have moved on from last year's questions about the possibilities and the feasibility of cloud computing to this year’s questions about implementation. What should I move to the cloud? When should I do it? What layers of the cloud stack should I use? And how should I do it?
At this Discussion Group, Doug Neal, LEF's resident cloud expert, shared lessons learned from early cloud adopters, following the publication of our report on this topic where we identified a wide range of cloud usage in applications as diverse as testing and development, peak load support, streaming media, email, collaboration and many forms of social networking.
See event: Doing Business in the Cloud - What it Means for Cost, Agility and Innovation (15 December 2009)
- Findings from the 2009 Study Tour: Doing Business in the Cloud: What it Means for Cost, Agility, and Collaboration
24 Nov 09 | Presentation
Doug Neal and Donal O’Shea report on our recent Study Tour to Santa Barbara and San Francisco, United States. The tour investigated the topic of Doing Business in the Cloud: What it Means for Cost, Agility, and Collaboration, and visited Eli Lilly, Eucalytpus, Rightscale, Bechtel, Appirio, VMware, Amazon, Canonical, CohesiveFT, Cloudera, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com and Cisco. Participants on the Tour saw leading suppliers of cloud products and services, and also had the opportunity to talk with companies actually deploying the technologies and gaining real value from computing in the cloud.
In this web conference, we report on what we heard, and on the discussions we had. We also tell you how the Leading Edge Forum intends to continue this journey of helping our clients identify and address the issues as this transformational IT technology moves forward.
See event: Findings from the 2009 Study Tour: Doing Business in the Cloud: What it Means for Cost, Agility, and Collaboration (24 November 2009)
- Business/IT Co-Evolution - The Role of the Cloud
4 Nov 09 | Presentation
Once a mere adjunct to the organisation, information technology is now increasingly inseparable from the organisation it serves. We are used to thinking about the many ways that IT has changed business (e-commerce, e-mail, databases, etc), but we don’t usually think as much about the ways that business and societal forces — such as advertising, property rights and governments — are shaping the course of information technology. The LEF believes the phrase business/IT co-evolution provides a powerful metaphor with which to describe and anticipate this two-way process of change. Cloud computing will prove to be the single, biggest step in this co-evolutionary process thus far, as — through virtual and variable resources — it increasingly supports a unified model for business/IT agility and change. David Moschella will discuss the importance of business/IT co-evolution, and why we think cloud computing is such an unprecedented and important industry tipping point.
See event: LEF Client Forum: The Cloud rEvolution – Improving Agility, Cutting Costs, and Accelerating Business Innovation (4-5 November 2009)
- Rethinking Management and Employee Engagement - the Role of Enterprise Technologies
3 Nov 09 | Presentation
The economic recession has affected us all, but it was the outcome of the actions of very few people in very few organisations. By contrast, the more important disruption that is unfolding, in front of our eyes, is the outcome of multiple small changes in the behaviour of very many people primarily enabled by technology. Like all revolutions, it is a mass movement, even though many of the participants are sublimely unaware of the transformational role they are playing.
The last 20 years of business activity has been a dramatic story of strategic innovation and radically new business models, as industry after industry was revolutionised by competitive strategies that overturned long-standing assumptions about the formula for success in that industry.
The next 20 years will swing the focus to innovation in the way we manage and radically new organisational models, as companies discover that their long standing assumptions about how best to manage talented people and organise collective work are no longer effective.
In this half-day Management Update, Alan Matcham, Lee Schlenker and Jules Goddard outline the results of our recent study to explain the potential role of enterprise technologies to rethink management practice.
See event: Rethinking Management and Employee Engagement - the Role of Enterprise Technologies (3 November 2009)