Plan Before Implementing Enterprise Applications

By Carlos Garcia, Chief Information Officer, Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller

Over the past 16 years of my career, I had the pleasure of serving the constituents of Flagler County initially as the Director of Information Technology and later promoted to Chief Information Officer. As Chief Information Officer, I was third in command over the Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller operations. Although, my primary focus was to establish a resilient Technology Services Division.

During my tenure at the Flagler County Clerk & Comptroller’s office, part of my duties was to establish a 5-year strategic plan that provided leadership with a sustainable technology investment strategy. With a focus on modernization, the Technology Services team that I led, established a flexible network infrastructure that connected data center operations to our enterprise applications services team. The work at the Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller has been mirrored throughout the State of Florida by agencies seeking the same level of high availability of their own enterprise applications.

At this point in my career, I’ve invested a great deal of effort in modernizing resources for the Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller. I have noticed that our operations are effectually sustainable. Incidentally, I realize that my passion is building sustainable teams & resources that can be maintained by in house technology teams. So, what is the secret sauce for establishing a service orientated technology division that can research innovative technologies and implement leading edge technology to scale?

First and foremost, it is important to know what an organization considers its most valuable assets. Today, most organizations cannot operate without real-time access to their critical data. Understanding business processes and how data is used is critical in identifying how to deploy sustainable systems that provide access to operational teams. Understanding the day-to-day business rules can lead to the development of reliable business analytics that can help executive teams make financial decisions more accurately. With that in mind, the question organically materializes,

What investments in technology do an organization need to make in order to provide leadership teams with reliable data?

Innovation alone does not formulate solutions to critical problems in an organization without a purpose. Establishing a culture in an organization where technology innovation is not only adopted but encouraged at all levels typically presents opportunities that enable organizational growth. An organization must be invested in understanding the priorities of implementing enterprise applications that add value to the customers or, in this example, the constituents that the organizations serve.

Conversely, most technology executives are not always equipped to build the right solutions to solve business problems. For example, an organization may be operating on legacy enterprise systems on day one in a new career opportunity where the technology executive’s role is simply to create value from the existing legacy enterprise systems. At first sight, it may seem impossible to generate the expected value gained from existing systems. So often, a technology executive is challenged to create a consensus among executive leadership teams toward adopting a better way forward with more advanced systems that require a considerable investment. So how can the technology executive make his or her case?  

How important is access to an organization’s data by the operational teams that use it to produce a product? Discovery work usually is conducted by a workgroup or a steering committee within an organization by identifying key resources in the organization that can help derive a step-by-step business process for the way data is accessed and brought into a particular system. A technology executive can usually form a team of business analysts that can document critical processes for the purpose of setting up a new enterprise system. The team of business analysts can collaborate with technology resources (systems engineers) to identify the best method for implementing the new business system.

Incidentally, implementing a new enterprise business system can bring about a great deal of operational efficiencies only if deployed deliberately with sound controls and with proper consideration of the infrastructure it will reside on. Now returning to generating consensus with the executive team responsible for sponsoring a new enterprise system implementation. Most organizations fail miserably with an enterprise system implementation due to improper planning. It is incumbent on a technology executive to establish a workgroup or steering committee comprised of key stakeholders that are responsible collectively for contract negotiations, system selection, and resource planning. A technology leader can build an enterprise system using business analysts and systems engineers, but without key stakeholders making critical business process decisions, a project will usually fail. So how can a technology executive and his team realize success during an enterprise system implementation?

We’ve heard the expression used in construction projects where a contractor says, “Measure twice, cut once!” That metaphorically is how a workgroup, or a steering committee should operate. Gather all the business requirements before initiating the implementation of a system. During the enterprise system selection process, ascertain early the roles that each member of the workgroup or steering committee will contribute throughout the process. Encourage the members of the executive leadership team members to be open-minded when the workgroup or steering committee governing the project makes recommendations to hire more staff and request adequate hardware and software resources as recommended by the technology team.

So, what is the end game in an enterprise system implementation? Earlier it was mentioned that a technology executive’s goal was to add value by providing reliable data to decision makers to foster sound financial management of the organization’s resources. With proper planning, an organization can benefit substantially from a new enterprise system implementation that provides real-time data analytics, resource management, and financial savings in the long run. Mitigating risks early in the project by following best practices and adhering to deliberate resource negotiations will ensure the best experience possible for all stakeholders invested in the process.