Information systems

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Overall view

For more than 30 years, IS departments have rightly been seen as the company’s main support services whose main challenge is still to implement and ensure the operation of secure information systems so as to improve the productivity of organizations through the automation/dematerialisation of their work processes. Their overriding strategic concerns are to align information systems and business strategies, supervise and implement multiannual master plans, centralise infrastructure and move from a customer-supplier to a ‘business-partner’ model. In short, to industrialise, centralise and share, but without truly challenging the fundamental issues in corporate IT and therefore IS-based corporate organization and governance.

In fact, many consultancies have actively encouraged the outsourcing of technical aspects of IS and the internalisation of supervision skills. As a result, the value of internal resources has been objectified in terms of its ability to conduct projects within allocated budgets in compliance with the prevalent methodological norms. IS departments have not been responsible for planning and structuring their companies’ information systems: their resources have been limited to proper execution and compliance with procedure (and not creativity, responsiveness or initiative taking).

Yet now in the digital era, the ‘customers’ of IS departments are no longer a few thousand users, but millions of consumers. To us, this means we must radically change our way of looking at the issue of IT within a company. IS departments are not alone in facing the impacts of digital technology: marketing and communication are equally affected since information technology is now the main tool available to disintermediate existing chains of value.

In this context, how can we develop corporate governance to tackle IS issues, that are linked to productivity, as compared to those related to the ambition of developing new services? Once again, ultimately, it is about ensuring a new consumer experience. Is this not then the right moment to review the ‘partnership’ with marketing and communication and implement repositioning to take into account data and cloud-based IT knowhow?

Your concerns

Organization and governance aligned with new corporate occupational issues

Eurogroup Consulting is working to ensure that IT generates occupational value in itself and is no longer simply a commodity used to pursue an occupational strategy. Today, like ‘historic Internet start-ups’, companies must use IT to create market value.

The aim is to develop the positioning of the IS department to facilitate corporate cultural transformation and so the preliminary review of operational modes and traditional ‘dogmas’: resource sharing, sourcing, contractorship, etc.

A digital revolution impacting strongly on IS

Although the digital revolution can not and must not be limited to the IS field alone, Eurogroup Consulting is convinced of the need to review IS service organization in relation to two fundamental issues: on the one hand, accelerating and enhancing the service orientation of ‘operation’ responsibilities so as to satisfy the Time to Market demands imposed by digital technology, and on the other, to develop and sustain flexibility of response to occupational problems, while ensuring the durability of industrial models.

So digital technology incites us to review the IT field in terms of both its operational model and the relations it forms with areas of occupation.

A structured, mobilizing, innovative approach to IS projects

While IS projects involve multiple constructions with sometimes diametrically opposed patterns of approach – from a fully integrated system with a single player responsible for the project to a solution that conforms to client / main contractor / contractor / publisher roles – they have one thing in common: they are the ‘organic core’ that drives organizational transformation.

In this respect, conducting an IS project does not at all mean simply executing an IT project. Above all, if it is to be successful, all stakeholders must be mobilised and involved in the project while keeping it on course.

Based on this paradigm, we have come to firm conclusions and developed skills that have proved successful in conducting such projects.

Increasingly critical infrastructure and production issues

Convinced that IS operation and maintenance are initiatives whose strategic impact may all too often have been underestimated, Eurogroup Consulting is particularly keen to address two issues: firstly, optimising infrastructure capacity to provide value for the company’s final customers and internal users; secondly, taking advantage of technological developments to improve system manoeuvrability and flexibility.

Infrastructure is not only a cost centre. It must mainly be viewed as a source of value for the company and sometimes even as an essential basis for developer flexibility.

Defending economic balance and service performance of IS

For years, Eurogroup Consulting has been helping its clients’ IS departments to update and optimise their management systems, whether with budgetary, sourcing and capacity processes, or even by revising their analytical benchmarks.

Our experience in the field enables us to ensure that the solutions and systems we recommend are robust, but it also provides additional material for their development, taking into account issues resulting from the emergence of new methodologies in the digital world. Indeed, it is now up to us to determine to what extent demands for flexibility impact on the economic guidance of an IS department and what that means in terms of modernising modes of operation.