We seem to be living in an increasingly dynamic world where the meaning of risk continues to evolve. One does not have to really blog about the fact that disasters and other emergencies in a flattening world are more common today than perhaps in the past, a fact that hit home recently in the offshoring city [Bomb Blasts Hit India’s IT City Bangalore ]. Thanks in part to the resilience of Bangaloreans, the city bounced back almost instantly.
Middle-managers in sourcing organizations and offshoring firms probably read about the incidents in the news and realized that the disruption to their operations was (thankfully) minimal, reflected on it a bit and went back to their operational challenges. However, technology executives, consultants and sourcing specialists, risk management consultants and others are taking a harder look at the risks and associated risk mitigation strategies
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My team is working on a large proposal for a prospect that is looking for a revamp of its Enterprise Architecture Strategy. This prospect, and as other clients are also increasingly doing, asked to speak with a few past clients where we had done similar work. And here, it was not one or two but nearly half-dozen references they were asking to speak with. Those who have worked on pre-sales support initiatives probably realize the significance of such a request.
It is one thing to get an existing client to agree to use a reference to the work we have done as a case study but getting them to actually talk with another prospect; well that’s where things get interesting.
In my previous post, I talked about the extending role of Enterprise Architects at services firms into Marchitects. This ‘selling’ of architecture services is no different from what our peers in client organizations undertake too.
Enterprise Architects, many of whom report into a CIO/CTO organization are also under continual pressure to ensure that the organization derives an optimal ROI from their IT investments, which means they need to ‘sell’ the value of robust, scalable architecture, planning and roadmaps to their stakeholders, some of whom may be focused on the tactical: ensuring that the quarterly targets are met, budgets balanced and operational challenges addressed. Even the ‘strategic’ focus may sometime involve reacting to external trends (read between the lines: it is the economy, slowdown etc)
