A new Beginning for Obama?
With the polls now shut, votes counted, and electoral college votes apportioned, we now have a new President-Elect in the U.S. It is a historic moment watched by all around the world, and as the previous blog entry discusses, it is one where the internet has played a pivotal role - in campaign funding, debates, electoral registration and voting. The new President-Elect will be tasked with implementing his programme as quickly as possible to harness this landslide win. However, it is easy to get lost in the detail, and this is where the parallel for MCC deployments is apt. While a grand plan and key actions are key, the devil will truly be, "In the detail".
The same is true for an Multi Channel deployment. In many ways, like an electroal platform which Obama will seek to implement, the 'Vision thing' is relatively straightforward, so too the main party planks to the platform. In business, the business case for working across channels to lower cost and map to customer preferences is again quite straightforward with a simple ROI through cost savings and increased sales. The design based upon leading technologies, and mapping to current processes is then undertaken with small changes to reflect unique differentiators.
So far, so good. Except like the larger problem Obama faces, having a plan, and submitting new ligislation is not the same as seeing those programmes implemented successfully. In Obama's case, he must still work with a Senate which has only a slight majority for his party, so filibusters will still be a problem. For a multi channel deployment similarly, while the design and deployment of a multi channel program may follow standard project deployment methodologies, how is an organisation to ensure the realisation of the benefits which were promised.
I recently finished a project in which the recommendations which the business required were relatively easy to produce. Unfortunately, in discussions within the business to arrive at the findings, any new recommendations were considered pointless as the business was not set up to handle any more fucntionality as it consumed the deliverables in a non-standard way. This is the 'filibuster' equivalent which any deployment will face, and more so for multi channel as new data sources are merged. This aspect of cultural change is not to be under-estimated, both for internal users, and for external customers. Questions will need to be asked, and answered: Which users will migrate to the new channels? What is the incentive for them to do so? How will the organisation be re-aligned to support the new channels? How will the channels aid pro-active customer contact, as well as reactive? How will the disparate data sources (and potentially data models) of the new channels be aligned? How will Customer facing gain access to the alternate channel data to ensure end-2-end Customer visibility?
It is worth remembering how a perfect project, a workable design, a sound business case for multi channel expansion can fail. Not from any oversight from a project delivery or original definition perspective but because the cultural change is under-estimated or even ignored completely. Just like the task facing Obama who is riding a wave of expectation as a 'unifier', make sure your plans are seen in their true context for the organisation so that all areas can be brought on board to ensure the success of a multi channel deployment and to prevent a very expensive program from becoming just one more toy or nightmare for IT!
