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Software industry IT department leads a digital transformation
Software industry IT department
leads a digital transformation
It all started with a change in IT leadership.
The new leadership was tasked with helping reinvent how IT got done at this established maker of shrink-wrapped software.
Up until then, the IT function had been an order taker—a deliverer of discrete, technology solutions to functional clients across the organization who had learned not to expect much in the way of strategic thinking from the company's provider of tech support.
After all, for most at the company, creative thinking was the domain of the organization's software developers. The IT function, on the other hand, was the domain of the narrowly focused technical specialists you turned to when you knew what you needed done and by when. Everyone knew that the real business of the business was the responsibility of the folks in finance and operations and sales and marketing, not the tacticians in IT.
But all that was about to change.
You see, for years this software developer with a strong reputation among marketers and online creative types had experienced significant success doing what it did best: writing code, pressing it onto a CD, packaging it in a box, and shipping it out to retailers. More recently, the company had moved into direct-to-customer sales and enterprise volume licensing. Yet nothing had really come along thus far to force the company to rethink how it did business. It was pretty much smooth sailing.
Then, however, the demands of the marketplace and the ubiquity of broadband were beckoning the company out into deeper, rougher waters. This time the challenge would become how to deliver software-as-a-service direct to customers online, at a per-use price that customers would be willing to pay.
So the new leadership was actually facing a dual challenge: how to transform the IT function while at the same time working to transform the company's business model?
Enter Mike Pearl and Cornel Nolte from PwC.
Through ongoing discussions with the IT executives and the sharing of firm thought leadership about Digital Transformation, PwC was able to pique the client's interest. Soon they—and a larger team from PwC—would be asked by the CIO to help execute a new volume licensing program, while making some of the thinking previously communicated by PwC a reality at the company.
The work also came with an invitation—an invitation to "push back", to speak their minds, and to bring any and all issues, ideas, or concerns directly to the CIO at any time. Turns out, IT leadership was looking at PwC as a full collaborator, not simply a vendor that would be satisfied with doing what it was told.
The IT executives' concern wasn't the volume licensing project itself, Pearl and Nolte say. Rather, it was the sum of all the other projects that also needed to get done—projects that supported the new software-as-a-service business model but were formally separate from one another. Those projects included: product management, pricing, revenue recognition, regulatory compliance, infrastructure support, and the selling and marketing the new service. All of those efforts were mission-critical. And at the time, all of them were getting done, but in a haphazard manner—with no centralized coordination or dependency management.
"When businesses are going through transformation," says Pearl, "it's not usually the case that a CEO or another leader will one day say, 'OK, we're going to go and do a transformation now. Everybody get ready.' Instead, a strategic direction gets set, and then different parts of the business are set in motion at different rates. And at some point things just start coming together, and it all starts moving very quickly.
"That's when IT gets faced with a window of opportunity to have an enormous influence on the business. You either take the window, or it passes you by."
The new IT leadership wasn't about to let that opportunity pass by. But neither was the leadership sure about how the IT function should best take the lead in operationalizing the new business model, particularly when the organization as a whole wasn't accustomed to looking to IT for leadership. This was clearly a chance for the IT function to step up and help drive the change staring it in the face. But what to do?
PwC suggested going bold.
What the company needed was a clear direction and a shared road map for getting there. Pearl and Nolte suggested the client host a corporate visioning event: a facilitated, three-day, off-site forum to be attended by the 100 most influential, hands-on managers from across the company—managers who would then be accountable to execute the resulting blueprint.
PwC took the lead and worked closely with one of its alliance partners that specializes in planning and facilitating such events. An agenda was put together, invites were sent, and background reading and prep work were distributed.
On the day of the event, "attendees had to put their Blackberries aside for the duration. And they had to pay a fine just for picking them up," says Pearl. "Company executives were 'dis-invited' from the event at noon the first day. They were asked to leave the site and weren't permitted to return until the larger group was ready to present its findings and recommendations on the last day."
The result: not just teamwork, enthusiasm, and a clear path forward—but also a business that had now begun to look at IT in a different light. For the first time anyone could remember, IT was seen as a leader—largely, for its ability to direct the three-day exchange.
"Folks at the client still talk about that event, what they accomplished during those three days, and how they felt afterwards. And the excitement and goodwill generated can still be felt moving the teams forward," says Pearl.
Since then, the PwC team has been asked to expand its consulting to other areas of the client's digital transformation and business environment, with a team of more than 100 PwC professionals working in alliance with a development team from HP/EDS. After identifying the natural linkages between projects across the company, company leadership has decided to take a broader, portfolio-view of all the work being done—moving the road map from a mere list of projects to something more holistic.
And PwC hasn't limited the solutions it recommends to just those on the list of services it can provide with in-house professionals.
When Pearl, Nolte, or another member of the PwC team identifies a business need on the client's behalf, PwC's flexible delivery model gives the team the freedom to partner with the right resources to get the job done, regardless of whether those resources sit inside or outside PwC.
By integrating the work of multiple vendors and bringing them to bear on client need, PwC can orchestrate a collaborative partnership while providing a client with a consolidated, single point of contact.
"Bringing new ideas to the table while tying it all together as part of a single, manageable solution is where I think PwC can really add value," says Pearl. "Clients today enjoy the choice of a wide array of different vendors to help them with straight systems integrator work, but what I believe a client is really looking for is a business integrator—in the form of consultants with the courage and creative ideas to help the client take the leap to the next level and drive measurable, sustainable results across the enterprise."
leads a digital transformation
A software leader's IT function drives an enterprise-wide digital transformation while simultaneously reinventing itself as a provider of everyday tech solutions
It all started with a change in IT leadership.
The new leadership was tasked with helping reinvent how IT got done at this established maker of shrink-wrapped software.
Up until then, the IT function had been an order taker—a deliverer of discrete, technology solutions to functional clients across the organization who had learned not to expect much in the way of strategic thinking from the company's provider of tech support.
After all, for most at the company, creative thinking was the domain of the organization's software developers. The IT function, on the other hand, was the domain of the narrowly focused technical specialists you turned to when you knew what you needed done and by when. Everyone knew that the real business of the business was the responsibility of the folks in finance and operations and sales and marketing, not the tacticians in IT.
But all that was about to change.
You see, for years this software developer with a strong reputation among marketers and online creative types had experienced significant success doing what it did best: writing code, pressing it onto a CD, packaging it in a box, and shipping it out to retailers. More recently, the company had moved into direct-to-customer sales and enterprise volume licensing. Yet nothing had really come along thus far to force the company to rethink how it did business. It was pretty much smooth sailing.
Then, however, the demands of the marketplace and the ubiquity of broadband were beckoning the company out into deeper, rougher waters. This time the challenge would become how to deliver software-as-a-service direct to customers online, at a per-use price that customers would be willing to pay.
So the new leadership was actually facing a dual challenge: how to transform the IT function while at the same time working to transform the company's business model?
Enter Mike Pearl and Cornel Nolte from PwC.
Through ongoing discussions with the IT executives and the sharing of firm thought leadership about Digital Transformation, PwC was able to pique the client's interest. Soon they—and a larger team from PwC—would be asked by the CIO to help execute a new volume licensing program, while making some of the thinking previously communicated by PwC a reality at the company.
The work also came with an invitation—an invitation to "push back", to speak their minds, and to bring any and all issues, ideas, or concerns directly to the CIO at any time. Turns out, IT leadership was looking at PwC as a full collaborator, not simply a vendor that would be satisfied with doing what it was told.
The IT executives' concern wasn't the volume licensing project itself, Pearl and Nolte say. Rather, it was the sum of all the other projects that also needed to get done—projects that supported the new software-as-a-service business model but were formally separate from one another. Those projects included: product management, pricing, revenue recognition, regulatory compliance, infrastructure support, and the selling and marketing the new service. All of those efforts were mission-critical. And at the time, all of them were getting done, but in a haphazard manner—with no centralized coordination or dependency management.
"When businesses are going through transformation," says Pearl, "it's not usually the case that a CEO or another leader will one day say, 'OK, we're going to go and do a transformation now. Everybody get ready.' Instead, a strategic direction gets set, and then different parts of the business are set in motion at different rates. And at some point things just start coming together, and it all starts moving very quickly.
"That's when IT gets faced with a window of opportunity to have an enormous influence on the business. You either take the window, or it passes you by."
The new IT leadership wasn't about to let that opportunity pass by. But neither was the leadership sure about how the IT function should best take the lead in operationalizing the new business model, particularly when the organization as a whole wasn't accustomed to looking to IT for leadership. This was clearly a chance for the IT function to step up and help drive the change staring it in the face. But what to do?
PwC suggested going bold.
What the company needed was a clear direction and a shared road map for getting there. Pearl and Nolte suggested the client host a corporate visioning event: a facilitated, three-day, off-site forum to be attended by the 100 most influential, hands-on managers from across the company—managers who would then be accountable to execute the resulting blueprint.
PwC took the lead and worked closely with one of its alliance partners that specializes in planning and facilitating such events. An agenda was put together, invites were sent, and background reading and prep work were distributed.
On the day of the event, "attendees had to put their Blackberries aside for the duration. And they had to pay a fine just for picking them up," says Pearl. "Company executives were 'dis-invited' from the event at noon the first day. They were asked to leave the site and weren't permitted to return until the larger group was ready to present its findings and recommendations on the last day."
The result: not just teamwork, enthusiasm, and a clear path forward—but also a business that had now begun to look at IT in a different light. For the first time anyone could remember, IT was seen as a leader—largely, for its ability to direct the three-day exchange.
"Folks at the client still talk about that event, what they accomplished during those three days, and how they felt afterwards. And the excitement and goodwill generated can still be felt moving the teams forward," says Pearl.
Since then, the PwC team has been asked to expand its consulting to other areas of the client's digital transformation and business environment, with a team of more than 100 PwC professionals working in alliance with a development team from HP/EDS. After identifying the natural linkages between projects across the company, company leadership has decided to take a broader, portfolio-view of all the work being done—moving the road map from a mere list of projects to something more holistic.
And PwC hasn't limited the solutions it recommends to just those on the list of services it can provide with in-house professionals.
When Pearl, Nolte, or another member of the PwC team identifies a business need on the client's behalf, PwC's flexible delivery model gives the team the freedom to partner with the right resources to get the job done, regardless of whether those resources sit inside or outside PwC.
By integrating the work of multiple vendors and bringing them to bear on client need, PwC can orchestrate a collaborative partnership while providing a client with a consolidated, single point of contact.
"Bringing new ideas to the table while tying it all together as part of a single, manageable solution is where I think PwC can really add value," says Pearl. "Clients today enjoy the choice of a wide array of different vendors to help them with straight systems integrator work, but what I believe a client is really looking for is a business integrator—in the form of consultants with the courage and creative ideas to help the client take the leap to the next level and drive measurable, sustainable results across the enterprise."
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