Tech Forum

Converting technology to business benefit

Article summary

There is a feature explosion happening in the IT marketplace. In spite of this, the utilisation is going down. There is a gap between technical understanding and its effective implementation. This article highlights this gap and provides a set of guidelines of bridging this gap.

The feature explosion

I have covered this aspect in bits and pieces in many of my previous articles. However, it is high time I devote a full article for this. The industry is growing and growing fast. But if you notice the ratio of available technical features and their utilisation in a business context, the situation is really depressing. From what I have seen, a large number of features created by vendors are simply not noticed – by partners, service providers, training organisations, system integrators or customers. Bad scene.

Now, before we go further, let us define what a feature is. Products can be classified as programmable and end-user oriented. For example VB.NET or Java are programmable platforms. Word or Excel is an end-user product (although it is fully programmable).

• Features in Programmable tools

1. Every line of syntax is a feature. Further, every argument or parameter is a feature.

2. In addition, the GUI and command line parameters of the programming platform are also features.

3. Further, a combination of available syntax is also a feature. These are essentially infinite.

• Features in End-user product

1. Features are much simpler to count, because things are to be used as it is. There is no programmability. Every menu item is a feature.

2. Further, every toolbar button is a feature. Remember, there are many optional toolbars which are not enabled by default. These are extremely useful but never explored.

3. Every item on a dialog box is a feature.

Now that we know what constitutes a feature, let us try to quantify them. I do not know of any official number but believe me, there are crores of them – across the products you use for building solutions or use on a daily basis.

Division of labour

There are three entities in the IT utilisation business. They are expected to perform clearly defined roles. However, often these roles are themselves understood in a fuzzy manner by people. Here is a simplistic list of who is supposed to do what.

Notice that item 9& 10 and 11 & 12 are the SAME. IT departments of companies and IT service providers are supposed to do the same thing. If customers can themselves learn all the technology themselves and then translate into business benefit for their companies, IT service providers are not required! This does not happen in reality because most customers and their IT teams do not have the time and manpower to understand and utilise all available technology.

I know this is a developer-oriented column and all these philosophical thoughts seem to be out of place here. But trust me on this and read on. This article is actually for every IT professional – from the trainee developer to the CEO of IT services companies. As we go ahead everything will fall into place.

• Quantifying the utilisation of products

I am sure all of you have faced situations where the customer finally says ‘this piece of IT did not generate enough value’. This happens across platforms and technology. Why does this happen?

This is because people count the money invested and expect a proportional return. However generation of value is not automated. Yes, you spend money. But to utilise what you purchased effectively requires additional time, energy, money and most importantly knowledge of what you purchased.

Here is an example of how things happen:

1. A company purchased some technology, say, development tool or database or Office or whatever

2. They spent money for it. Additional money was spent in deploying it.

3. Training was given to the target audience.

4. Now the technology is supposed to generate business value.

5. How much of available feature set was covered during training? Typically a very small fraction – say 5% (for argument sake)

6. Now, after training everyone knows that 5% and they utilise it for business purposes.

7. The problem which nobody notices here is ‘what happens to the remaining 95%?’

8. Therefore, the value generated is going to be proportional to the 5% that is utilised. Not the 95%

Just to illustrate this graphically, look at this diagram.

As you can see, a lot of money is spent on procurement, little bit on deployment and training.

Now, because you have spent approximately Rs 125 on all this, you will expect the generated value to be more than that amount. However, you have paid the ‘full cost’. But there is no ‘full utilisation’. Therefore, the value generated will be proportional to the utilised portion of the technology. Here is the same graph after the technology is rolled out and in place for a substantial period of time (say one year).

As you can see, the customer expects a substantial value – say Rs 300. But actually they get only Rs 25. This is pathetic and depressing.

Now what happens? Someone has to be blamed for this abysmal ROI. There are many scapegoats available to pass on the blame. These include the end-users, vendor, technology in general, system integrator, company policies and so on.

The reality is simple. If you want great benefits, you have to spend time, energy and money in “Effective Utilisation”. Nobody has this as the core focus of their service offerings. Don’t take my word for it. See these examples. Given below is a list of well known technologies – from any vendor. For each technology, the features which are commonly used / deployed are mentioned. These are most commonly used features. A particular set of users may be using more than these. But this list is the base, average usage.

Operating System (IBM, MS, Linux)

1. File and print

2. User authentication

3. Networking

4. Security

5. Web server (if it is a part of OS)

Messaging

1. Sending and receiving mails

2. Attachments

3. Calendar

4. Signature (NOT digital signature)

5. Reply to all (misused!)

6. Delivery and Read receipts (misused!)

7. BCC (misused!)

Now compare this with what the products have to offer. This is a minor fraction of what is available. Do you agree? Still customers have no plan of action to explore beyond these base features. So what happens to the remaining ones? They die a silent death. So does the Potential ROI. The pathetically low ROI which does get generated is really not ‘Return on Investment’, but ‘Return on Ignorance’!

This may sound very harsh and negative. But I urge you to give it a thought – in your own context and estimate the amount of under-utilisation which exists.

• Defining under-utilisation

Let me define what ‘under-utilisation’ means. I am often asked why vendors make so many features. People expect vendors to create subsets of products which contain only the features that are used. This way the products would be substantially cheaper. Great idea. But slightly misplaced.

Consider a hypothetical product containing 100 features. You end up using only 5 of them. Now, if you know what each of the 100 features do, and then you have chosen the 5 features because only those are relevant to you, it is absolutely fine. This would not be called ‘under-utilisation’. In this case you are consciously using these 5 things.

However, here is the reality. There are 100 features. You end up using 5 by accident (not by design or conscious filtering process). In this case, you do not know what the other 95 features do. In fact you do not even know the total number of available features. This is ‘under-utilization’.

Now, the problem is that who knows all the features? The answer is obvious. The entity that created the features – the product / technology vendor. So whose job is it to propagate each of these features? Obviously the vendor’s. Right?

Wrong! The responsibility of making sure each feature is noticed, understood and utilised effectively cannot be the vendor’s job. Why so? Consider any international product. Why be generic? Let us consider the largest of them all. Microsoft.

Microsoft makes 220 products (as per the product list on their website, as of one month back), each has an average of 3 versions, hundreds of features and many are available in many languages (especially the business products). Imagine the sheer size of the feature set! Now let us see what is the customer base. The official number is around 330 million users world wide (and mind you, this is the ‘official’ number!). Now, how will Microsoft, with approx. 30,000 customer facing employees (total is 65,000) ensure that each feature is targeted to each end user? It is impossible. Every vendor faces the same problem in differing proportions.

• The gap is born

Due to this problem, the gap between features and utilisation grows enormously over time. Remember our good old days, where a new version would come after 3 years? And when products were not very feature rich? It was nice because everyone had enough time to go through the finite set of features and master these over time.

Now, the feature set is large, upgrades come by more and more quickly, and more products are introduced at a very fast pace. Why is this so? The answer is simple. Because vendors survive on their products. If they do not enrich their products, their sale goes down. There is also a catch up game to be played between competitors.

Bottomline — the gap is widening day by day.

Lose–lose situation

We always talk about win-win situations in business. But this scenario is a lose-lose situation. Why? Here are the losses.

Actually the solution is very simple. At least conceptually. Someone needs to bridge the gap between what is available in technology and what is used effectively.

• Who will bridge this gap?

Now we are asking the right question. Only three choices – vendor, service providers or customer? Now, I want all of you to think about this. Take your time. If nothing else, I am sure I have stirred your thoughts. Think about it, discuss it internally. In the next article, I will provide you with a logical, common sense based solution to this problem which is eminently feasible. What’s more, if this could be adopted by the industry, we will actually reach a Win-Win situation amongst vendors, service providers and customers. Nice thought?

See you next time.

About the Author:Dr Nitin Paranjape is the Chairman and MD of Maestros (Mediline). He is a consultant with many organisations, covering appropriate technology utilisation, business application of relevant technology, application architecture and audit as well as knowledge transfer. He has authored more than 650 articles on various technology-related subjects. He can be contacted at nitin@mediline.co.in