the people-ready business whitepaper - forbes · 2008-02-27 · a people-ready business whitepaper...

The People-Ready Business

The Next Stage of Workplace EvolutionAgility Delivered by Empowered People

Whitepaper

A People-Ready Business Whitepaper

Bob AndersonManaging DirectorMicrosoft IW Business Strategy Consulting

Greg RiveraMicrosoft IW Business Strategy Consultant

Published: January 2008

For the latest information, please e-mail: [email protected].

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this docu-ment does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places and events depicted herein are fictitious, and no association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place or event is intended or should be inferred.

� A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

The Next Stage of Workplace EvolutionAgility Delivered by Empowered People

TABLE OF CONTENTS

� Abstract

� Introduction

6 Allowing More “Right-Brain” Work

8 Corporate Mindset Shift

9 Workers Expect Web 2.0 Technology

11 IT Needs to Help Ensure Adoption

12 Head in the Sand

1� So, How Does IT Transform for Future Success?

15 The Next Steps

17 Glossary of Terms

17 About the Authors

18 For More Information

ABSTRACT

Automation of repetitive processes has already delivered broad efficiency gains, but the next wave of competitive advantage will accrue to firms that reduce the effort required for ad hoc and unstructured tasks. Empowering information workers to be more creative—and to create more business value—takes a corporate mindset shift.

INTRODUCTION

Information workers are paid to provide insight and drive business value. In reality, though, much of their time is wasted on mundane, nuts-and-bolts tasks. These workers can often spend hours a week searching for information, finding the right people to collaborate with on the problem, or responding to e-mails. All because companies have not figured out how to create or provide tools or solutions that enable this kind of “unstructured work.”

Most investments in IT solutions, in contrast, are spent on applications for structured work—enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and plant-floor systems, for example, have been used to automate tasks and improve the productivity of workers who do repeatable tasks dictated by processes. These processes are well understood and any problems that arise can be solved by discreet, but expensive technologies. Furthermore, the return on investment (ROI) for such automation projects can be calculated relatively easily.

Because the unstructured work commonly performed by information workers cannot be handled by large transactional systems, IT has devoted relatively little time and effort to ‘automating’ the bulk of information tasks. In most organizations, for example, thousands of information workers spend hundreds of thousands of hours a year manually preparing status reports, because this task involves a number of smaller discrete processes for which no single complete solution exists. To complicate matters, each group within the organization likely performs such common tasks differently, using different tools and different formats. This unproductive use of information workers’ time is repeated day after day in a variety of activities.

Typically, unstructured tasks are conducted as part of a series of steps in a business process, like interviewing a new employee candidate. (See the following diagram, “Unstructured Collaboration.”)

Because the unstructured work commonly performed by information workers cannot be handled by large transactional systems, IT has devoted relatively little time and effort to ‘automating’ the bulk of information tasks.

� A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

Unstructured CollaborationInformation workers do unstructured collaboration between the defined process steps in their workdays.

Source: Microsoft Corp.

Information workers spend much of their time creating workarounds and ‘solutions’ to process problems that have not yet been easily or consistently enabled by technology.

Hiring Manageridentifies hiring

need

Recruiter sendsscreened resumes

to manager forreview (email,

Word)

Hire?

No No

Yes

Yes

Candidatenotified(email,Word)

Interviewersprovide feedback

to recruiter oncandidates (email,

phone, ad-hoc)

Unstructured

Offeraccepted?

Negotiation (phoneemail)

Begin On-bardingprocess

Recruiter and manager meet to

discussrequirements / job

description (ad-hoc, email, Word)

Recruiter performinitial screening(phone, e-mail)

Interviewscheduled withcandidate andinterviewers

(email, Outlook)

Job opening andjob desription

posted for internaland external

recruiters

Recruiter updatescandidate profile

throughoutscreening/

interview process

Offer lettergenerated

Recruiters searchthrough system forexisting and new

candidate resumes

HR Recruiting System

Manager selectscandidates to interview and

preparesinterviewers

(email)

New headcountadded to ERP

Recruiter notifiedof new job requisition

ERP

Consequently, information workers spend much of their time creating workarounds and ‘solutions’ to process problems that have not yet been easily or consistently enabled by technology. They tend to be leveraging more of their “left brain” skills to solve algorithmic process challenges rather

than their “right brain” skills, which address creative approaches to business challenges. Left-brain work has characteristics of the left hemisphere of the brain: It is sequential, logical, and analytical. In contrast, the right hemisphere of the brain is nonlinear, intuitive, and holistic.

A People-Ready Business Whitepaper 5 A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

As the technology expectations of the workforce continue to change, consistent with evolving consumer experiences and tools, IT will no longer be able to simply procure and deploy technology.

linear, computer-like capabilities” of the Information Age are giving way to the “inventive, empathetic, big-picture capabilities of the ‘Conceptual Age,’” Pink says.

In this white paper, we will explore how leading companies are approaching the challenge of unstructured work from the perspectives of the business user and the IT department, because both are necessary. As the technology expectations of the workforce continue to change, consistent with evolving consumer experiences and tools, IT will no longer be able to simply procure and deploy technology. The depart-ment will need to better understand the needs of business users and their working preferences.

This knowledge will create an opportunity —and quite possibly a requirement—for the IT department to transform itself. IT workers will move beyond their traditional roles of provisioning systems and desktop technologies to more fully embrace the goals and expectations of the business units. The department will become relevant by ensuring the adoption of those deployed desktop solutions that provide information workers with more structure and consistency in their daily creative processes, because those workers will seek to focus more on transparent and contextual integration of processes and solutions and less on manual manipulation of data.

For example, information workers devote many hours a week to organizing documents and converting information into different formats to make use of that information in various applications. All of this “left-brain” effort takes away from the time information workers can devote to “right-brain” tasks, such as analysis and finding solutions to business problems that drive business value.

Daniel Pink, author of the books A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future and Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself notes that people who do not nurture their right brains “may miss out, or worse, suffer” in the economy of tomorrow. Pink says the individuals—and the companies they work for—who will thrive in the dawning “Conceptual Age” are those who devote attention and resources to harnessing skill sets that emphasize analysis and intellectual work rather than the mundane repeatable tasks and processes needed to achieve this work.

“The defining skills of the previous era—the ‘left-brain’ capabilities that powered the Information Age—are necessary but no longer sufficient,” Pink says. Organizations need to take steps and implement technology to allow information workers to devote more time and energy to the “right-brain” qualities of inventiveness, joyfulness, and meaning. The “logical,

6 A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

Liberating information workers to do more “right-brain” work has huge ramifications that could affect the very nature of how applications are developed and maintained.

Allowing More “Right-Brain” WorkThe idea of automating routine repetitive tasks wherever possible may seem like common sense. In the case of information workers, though, automation requires a significant corporate mindset shift—for both those who occupy the executive suites and those in IT.

Liberating information workers to do more “right-brain” work has huge ramifi-cations that could affect the very nature of how applications are developed and maintained. It may help contain pro-liferating “shadow applications.” These are programs outside of the control of the IT department. They are developed and managed by individuals or business groups to solve the unique problems of these workers, and they represent a huge potential compliance problem.

Automation also demands a rethinking of the division between applications and platforms, because the new generation of tools that can enable the discreet disparate processes of information tasks are a combination of the two. Previously, the distinction between an application and a platform was relatively clear. This is quickly changing, however. For example, the latest generation of spreadsheet software can act as both an “application,” when it is used for creating a balance sheet, and a “platform,” when it is used to develop a custom executive dashboard reporting solution.

All of these changes raise a new set of issues for IT, which has traditionally been focused on applications or “transactional” solutions. Now, as both the technology and the level of information workers’ technological awareness, sophistication, and use expectations improve radically, today’s applications and platforms present powerful opportunities and challenges. Who can do what, with what flexibility?

How can chaos be avoided given the potential for uncontrolled empowerment? And, in addition to its own functions, what will be the evolving role of the IT department in enabling the empower-ment of information workers?

Ironically, as enterprises become inundated with more information, the return on that information is decreasing. The growing complexity of business informa-tion has made it difficult to structure, organize, and process data in a way that provides insight. Information workers who are being paid to use their brains to solve business problems are, instead, often devoting too much of their time to stitching together tools to do their work. The extent and the cost of this problem are just coming into focus.

As Tim Jennings, research director at consulting firm Butler Group, points out in his article “The Cost of Information Work”: “For all that we talk about living in an information economy, I think that this applies principally at an organiza-tional level and that we have not yet experienced the full impact on the way that individuals work.”

Indeed, in 2006, market intelligence firm IDC surveyed 600 companies to identify how their information workers’ time is wasted by repetitive steps that could have been automated. Estimating the average annual salary of an information worker at $60,000, IDC Analyst Susan Feldman figured that a company with 1,000 information workers loses $5.7 million in time a year just from employees reformatting information as they move among applications. One key cost driver: searching for information. This task accounts for more than $14,000 per information worker per year. (See the following table, “The Cost of Information Tasks to the Enterprise.”)


The research found that 50 percent of staff costs are allocated to information work, but that many of the employees completing such work waste up to one-quarter of their workday merely looking for the information they need to complete a task.

The Cost of Information Tasks to the Enterprise

Average Hours Per Worker Per Week

Cost Per Worker Per Week ($)

Cost Per Worker Per Year ($)

E-mail: read and answer 14.5 418 21,753Create documents 13.3 334 19,853Analyze information 9.6 277 14,402Search 9.5 274 14,252Edit/review 8.8 254 13,202Gather information for documents 8.3 240 12,482

File and organize documents 6.8 196 10,201

Create presentations 6.7 193 10.051Create images 5.6 163 8,461Data entry to e-forms 5.6 162 8,446Manage document approval 4.3 124 6,451

Publish to Web 4.2 121 6,301Manage document routing 4.0 115 6,001

Publish to other channels 3.9 113 5,851

Create rich media 2.8 81 4,201Translate 1.0 30 1,545

N=234Note: Costs per worker per week and costs per worker per year are based on average salary plus benefits, totaling $60,000 per year ($28.85 per hour in a 40-hour week). All workers do not perform all tasks.

Source: IDC’s Proving the Value of Content Technologies, 2004

Feldman’s informative report—“The Hidden Cost of Information Workers” (IDC #201334, April 2006)—notes that nearly one-quarter of information workers’ time is spent search-ing for and analyzing information, “making these relatively straightforward candidates for better automation.”

A Butler Group study came to the same conclusion. The research found that 50 percent of staff costs are allocated to information work, but that many of the employees completing such work waste up to one-quarter of their workday merely looking for the information they need to complete a task.

Another chunk of information workers’ time goes to collaborative tasks, such as reviewing and editing material, which take up more than one workday per week for the average information worker, according to the IDC study.

Feldman also notes that the use of software tools to streamline such collaborative process as review and approval can reduce or eliminate waste in version control issues, reduce management overhead for document approval and routing, and potentially reduce edit and review time. She says that automat-ing these content workflow or business processes would free information workers’ time for efforts that produce business value.

Adds Butler Group’s Jennings in his article: “In many respects, these business processes are still set in the ways of the Industrial Revolution. We perceive them as linear, static, and functionally oriented, but applying information and collaboration to a job does not work in that way, because we need cross-functional access to both explicit and tacit knowledge from inside and outside the organization.”


To perform at optimum effectiveness, infor-mation workers need to be empowered and enabled to tie together processes that span unstructured work and highly structured work—from people to systems—with agile support from their desktop technologies. This need corresponds with a change that is happening in the overall software/tech-nology market, where there is a dramatic shift both in the types of capability enabled (what tools, what integrations) and in the modes of interaction (desktop/connected to mobile/multidevice/occasionally connected).

Initially, companies relied on best-of-breed software for various business functions, whether procurement, supply chains, or human resources. In the next evolution, ERP combined various applications into suites. Microsoft® Corp. leveraged a similar approach when personal productivity software Microsoft® Office Word, presen-tation graphics program Microsoft® Office PowerPoint®, and spreadsheet software Microsoft® Office Excel® were combined into the Microsoft® Office System.

Now, the 2007 Office System extends this by providing a platform that supports

Corporate Mindset Shiftthese applications and includes content/document management, business intel-ligence, and collaboration capabilities that can be accessed through the Office client. The new user interfaces and XML formats provide access to and management of enterprise information, thus blurring the line between applications and platforms.

This provides a single point of access for employees, customers, and partners, so they can easily find the information and services they need to allow their information workers to automate their unstructured work. Organizations can provide common capabilities that address multiple processes through a standard interface and tools that information workers already use.

The following diagram depicts how a portion of the new employee recruiting process, as previously described in this white paper, can be automated by leverag-ing technology tools that are commonly available to information workers today. This example shows how a simple Web-based interview feedback tool can be implemented to help automate unstructured work during the candidate interview process.

HR sendsresumes to HMs usinga resumefeedback

form emailtemplate

HRschedules

interview incalendar

withmanager

andinterviewers

HM reviewsresume and

respondsusing email

form

Manager assignsinterview focusareas to eachinterviewer

Managers reviewinterview feedbackand make dicision

Interviewersreview theirassignments

Interviewers logfeedback afterinterviews via

email form

Interviewschedule flows

into interview tooland creates newfeedback site forcandidate basedon job ID form

Recruiting system

HiringManager isnotified via

auto-email toassign

interviewfocus areas infeedback tool

Interviewers arenotified via auto-email about their

interviewassignments

Figure 2: Example of how a simple interview tool and other common IW tools can be inplemented to help enable the unstructured workflow of the recruiting process.

Interviewers reminded via auto-

email to logfeedback

Managers and HRprovided regular

updates on feedback loggingvia auto-emails

Appropriate datais fed to recruiting

system at conclusion of

process

Using Common IW Tools to Help Enable Unstructured Workflow During the Interview Process

Inte

rvie

w T

ool

Inte

rvie

wer

Hiri

ngM

anag

erH

R

Using Common IW Tools to Help Enable Unstructured Workflow During the Interview Process


Information workers need to be empowered and enabled to tie together processes that span unstructured work and highly structured work... a change that is happening in the overall software/ technology market, where there is a dramatic shift both in the types of capability enabled (what tools, what integrations) and in the modes of interaction (desktop/con-nected to mobile multidevice/occasionally connected).


From the podiums at IT conferences and in the pages of IT-focused magazines, the mantra that IT needs to become more business- focused is unrelenting.

Technology consulting firm Capgemini studied 35 early adopters of the 2007 Office System and found that those companies creating the most positive movement in key performance indicators (KPIs) demonstrated a “mindset shift” in how they thought about processes, technology, and capabilities. The focus of these companies was on enabling “enterprise productivity” for information workers, which largely involves bringing automation to their unstructured work.

Companies that have taken this approach are growing profits, turning compliance from a requirement into a competitive advantage, reducing errors, and improving employee morale.

Here are some examples from the first wave of companies that are benefiting from the new corporate mindset shift of automating the unstructured work of information workers. (See the following table, “Case Study Examples.”)

Case Study ExamplesAmpacet. Traditionally, R&D processes at this 1,400-employee specialty chemical manufacturer were isolated and inefficient. A solution that utilized Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server, Microsoft® Office InfoPath®, and Office Excel was imple-mented to improve collaboration and coordination of product development across the enterprise. The revamped R&D processes reduced the new product development cycle by 50 percent, and it is expected to yield 12 to 15 additional

new products over three years, increasing revenues by $60 million.

National Aviation Authority. Surveillance auditors at the National Aviation Authority spent much of their time on repetitive manual tasks that required them to capture information on paper and reenter the infor-mation later through an online system. A solution designed around the 2007 Microsoft Office System automated these chores. The National Aviation Authority estimates that auditors’ time will be 16 percent more efficient, and the organization expects an improvement of 5 percentage points in both surveillance information maintenance and the accuracy of that information, thereby ensuring greater safety for airplanes, pilots, and travelers.

TGE Gas Engineering. In their haste to meet timeline requirements, engineers at this company, which builds facilities for transporting and processing gas, rushed through the highly detailed and complex technical documentation needed for natural gas plants. They often ignored templates, formatting, and other requirements speci-fied in individual contracts. TGE deployed a 2007 Office System solution that inputted frequently used custom text and allowed the dynamic smart documents to automatically update by connecting to TGE’s databases. This ensured the documents were done to spec, thus eliminating delays that could bring late delivery penalties or lower customer satisfaction.

Sources: Microsoft Corp. and Capgemini

Workers Expect Web 2.0 TechnologyFrom the podiums at IT conferences and in the pages of IT-focused magazines, the mantra that IT needs to become more business-focused is unrelenting. While IT is being told to become more familiar with business, in practice, the opposite is happening with far more regularity: Business people are becoming increasingly comfort-able with technology.

The incoming generation of workers, who have been raised on PCs and video games, expect access to Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis. Indeed, access to these tools is even becoming a factor in recruiting and keeping the most talented workers. Unlike previous generations, modern information workers refuse to


ccept dictates from IT about what features and functions are necessary in the technology they use.

Author Daniel Pink finds that most generational divides are overstated, but he believes the demand for custom-ization is one key element that clearly separates the newest generation of workers. “If you grew up with Tivo, you have the same expectation that the tools and technology you use at work will be fitted to your individual needs and work style,” he says. “For people who are under 25 or 30, individual personal-ization is an innate behavior.”

The tools of the modern information worker, Pink notes, can be more closely compared to those of craftspeople than those used by assembly-line workers. “A blacksmith wanted a hammer or anvil beaten into the form he wanted,” he says. “In the same way, the information worker wants his technology to conform to his style of work.”

This customization flies against IT’s drive for standardization. Perhaps it is for this reason that most IT departments have not yet demonstrated an intimate knowledge of how information workers do their jobs.

Michael Schrage, formerly codirector of MIT Media Lab’s eMarkets and currently a researcher at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, believes the biggest error IT managers make is simply listening to business users instead of examining how they actually interact with the systems they use to do their work. Consequently, he notes that IT departments rarely know such key information as the most used or the least used functions of the systems they oversee or the biggest changes in system usage over the past two years.

“Business users come to IT with 500 requirements,” Schrage says, “but after IT actually builds the systems that users asked for, they turn out to be not what they really want.”

The rising empowerment of the infor-mation worker further complicates this observation. Why? Because in this “New World of Work” IT is not “building” the systems, and the systems being built are often dynamic and more personal-ized instead of static and generalized. Information workers can no longer wait months for a solution. More often, because of the nature of their tasks, their requirements keep changing. As a result, IT must provide tools, prescriptive guidance, and best practices that enable information workers to “do their own thing” while the department also maintains a robust governance and support infrastructure. (This theme is explored in more detail in the white paper “Realizing the New World of Work: Enterprise Adoption of Information Worker Capabilities.”)

The practice of building prototypes and using iterative development to create systems should be honed to users’ actual work processes. However, if users’ habits are not continually observed after the system rolls out, Schrage notes that usage often falls off dramatically over time.

In addition—and this parallels the preceding point—if the actual use patterns of information workers are not observed and captured as best practices, there will be little opportunity to share this knowledge and, perhaps more importantly, enforce and maintain consistency with growing regulatory and compliance requirements.

IT must provide tools, prescriptive guidance, and best practices that enable information work-ers to “do their own thing” while the department also maintains a robust governance and support infrastructure.


Frustrated information workers have increasingly “rolled their own.” The proliferation of these shadow applications, which are outside of IT’s control, demonstrates a huge unanswered need—a gray market—that information workers have for the automa-tion of their core tasks.

IT Needs to Help Ensure AdoptionAs IT has more awareness of and interaction with the empowerment of particular workgroups, the department will also need to make available a catalog of tools and best practices that helps expose these examples to a broader array of workers across the enterprise. This catalog will encourage awareness and adoption of the included technologies and their associated best practices. It will also extend the role of IT from procuring and deploying technologies to empowering workers and helping en-sure adoption—closure that has typically been lacking in the desktop space.

This is why, to date, frustrated information workers—finding no automated or established approaches to their discreet individual processes in the standard portfolio of IT offerings—have increas-ingly “rolled their own.” The proliferation of these shadow applications, which are outside of IT’s control, demonstrates a huge unanswered need—a gray market—that information workers have for the automation of their core tasks. At any large organization, for example, hundreds of employees have built macros to help generate a weekly status report in a spreadsheet.

Although this practice has traditionally been accepted by many IT departments as a “necessary evil,” companies are just becoming aware of the consequences of letting users fend for themselves. Applications and data that used to be isolated on one individual’s desktop can now interact with other systems throughout the organization. More often, shadow applications are touching other applications. For example, a macro

that a few years ago ran on an Excel spreadsheet on an employee’s desktop would begin and end on that desktop. Now, that application is touching databases elsewhere in the enterprise, grabbing and updating information—and potentially breaking other applications.

Forcing information workers to become their own IT specialists raises many more issues. For example, information workers are becoming wary of upgrading ap-plications, fearful that new versions will force them to relearn ways of doing everyday tasks. And yet by missing out on an application’s new functions and features, companies are left at a competitive disadvantage.

In addition, information workers who delve into systems on their own do not always understand the full capabilities of those systems. For instance, one firm was planning to make a significant investment on a product for meta- tagging information in documents, because a business unit did not realize that the Office InfoPath information- gathering program the company already owned could provide 85 percent of the needed functionality and in a more robust manner.

Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and other compliance regulations, which mandate that business processes be transparent and accessible, could become the impe-tus that forces IT departments to address the issue of shadow applications. Says MIT’s Schrage: “I predict a major division of a Fortune 500 company will trigger a regulatory investigation, because it had undocumented applications running.”


Enterprises need to appropriately empower their IT organizations and to provide them the resources necessary to start tackling new challenges.

Thus far, some IT departments have taken a head-in-the-sand approach. IT simply refuses to roll out certain tools to information workers. As a result, the department can completely disenfranchise itself from business units and fail to meet the needs of information workers across the organization. In some cases, business units have responded with end runs around the IT department, going to consultants for their automation needs.

For example, the human resources department of a large bank used the Office SharePoint Server portal to handle a problem with on-boarding new employees. The result was so successful that the HR department wanted to take advantage of more of SharePoint’s functionality, using it to pull data from the bank’s ERP system. That initiated a technology war about how SharePoint should be used. The IT department tried to impose the plain vanilla version of Share-Point by fiat, but tech-savvy information workers refused to comply.

This problem does not lay solely with IT departments. When business units are unable to clearly articulate their problems, IT may be reluctant to prod them to find a solution—for an understandable reason. Most IT departments are seeing their budgets slashed and being asked to do more with less. As a result, IT is hesitant to search for problems, especially those that fall outside of the huge transactional systems that touch large numbers of workers.

Head in the SandIndeed, many IT departments are aware of the desire information workers have to automate their unstructured work, but they fail to meet these needs. IT is either unsure of how to address them, or the depart-ment simply has not been given the resources to adequately tackle the problem. Most IT departments consume the majority of their resources just trying to keep the engine running. Enterprises need to appropriately empower their IT organizations and to provide them the resources necessary to start tackling new challenges.

Furthermore, IT departments—and the technology industry in general—are not designed to deal with application issues that seem to touch only a limited number of users, even if those issues are costly to the organization. Rather, IT traditionally has worked with large systems integrators, firms that make a significant amount of their income from consulting services and that are often focused on large transactional applications such as ERP. This may present an opportunity for small nimble consultants who want to make unstructured processes for information workers a priority. Or it may present the opportunity for a transformation of IT into a department that is more tightly coupled with information workers.

A People-Ready Business Whitepaper 1� A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

An emerging trend is for IT to develop a service-oriented framework for identifying, developing, implementing, and managing solutions for information workers.

Typically, IT departments are not designed to easily deal with disparate individual processes. IT knows how to assist a unit of 300 people who need CRM. A unit of 13 workers who want to automate a manual process they use once a week, however, is a different matter. Such a unit may not even bother to contact IT about this type of need, either because it thinks IT will not respond or because it is unsure of with whom in IT to deal. In most cases, the smaller unit would be left to fend for itself—ignorant, perhaps, that one of its existing desktop tools could deal with the issue.

An emerging trend is for IT to develop a service-oriented framework for iden-tifying, developing, implementing, and managing solutions for information workers. This framework often can be managed by either an internal Center of Excellence or distributed as a shared service across the organization, depending on the structure of the enterprise. If IT is able to spend more time observing the business and understanding the challenges information workers continue to face as they perform unstructured work tasks, the department can begin to catalog the most common solutions required to automate unstructured work. By developing this catalog, IT could offer a menu of choices that would, for instance, provide 90 percent of the functionality a business unit needs off-the-shelf when it requests a solution for an unstructured process.

A common example is the development of a standard reporting dashboard solution. Today, many information workers are developing shadow applica-tions to help automate the aggregation, manipulation, and presentation of data used in regular reports for management that require input from multiple— often unstructured—data sources.

This type of solution could be an item in the IT department’s catalog of information- worker solutions that could be easily customized to meet the needs of multiple business units across the enterprise rather than a shadow application individual groups develop to solve their problems.

Developing an information-worker solution is only the beginning. Getting information workers to use a better solution for an unstructured process may require a behavioral change. Consider a team of information workers who implement a solution for collaborative document creation using a centrally located team workspace. For proper deployment of this solution, team members must refrain from saving duplicate copies of collab-orative documents on their local hard drives. Otherwise, adoption might be poor or the solution might fail altogether.

IT needs to help drive this behavioral change. (For a deeper exploration of this theme, see the white paper “Realizing the New World of Work: Enterprise Adoption of Information Worker Capabilities.”) Indeed, IT should check in at regular intervals after a solution is implemented to measure its continued use and “stickiness” and to determine if further changes need to be considered.

The key is to first validate this approach. One large organization, under the auspices of the CEO, had representatives from the lines of business identify two to three areas for business process improvement. For instance, closing the books at the end of the month can be a costly area that has a significant impact across the organization. Once a service-oriented approach to IT has been established for these types of projects, IT can begin to meet with the business units and to develop a catalog of processes that now often fall through the cracks.

So, How Does IT Transform for Future Success?

1� A People-Ready Business WhitepaperA People-Ready Business Whitepaper

If IT is able to spend more time observing the business and understanding the challenges information workers continue to face as they perform unstructured work tasks, the department can begin to catalog the most common solutions required to automate unstructured work.

In the proving phase, choose a business unit or group that can be a poster child for the rest of the organization. Go with either the “bad” or the “beautiful.” The ideal unit either is aggressive, cutting-edge, and open-minded or has a lot of problems that will motivate it to deploy new technology.

The resulting catalog might offer a list of solutions, each denoting its level of

complexity and the department or industry for which it is suitable, and each including checkmarks that indicate its benefits. (See the following table, “Snapshot of a Sample Information-Worker Solution Catalog.”) This type of catalog approach can help IT and information workers begin to talk about and address the issues that are now dragging down productivity.

Snapshot of a Sample Information-Worker Solution Catalog

Solution Name Description ComplexityBenefits Addressed

Reporting Dashboard

Aggregates, manipulates, and presents data from multiple sources in an easy-to-use reporting dashboard.

Medium to High

A, E, F

Automated Status Reporting

Provides a standardized form for individuals to report regular project status. Enables managers to automatically aggregate and summarize multiple status reports into an executive summary document for senior management.

Medium C, E

Automated Document Review and Approval

Provides an automated workflow for the review and approval of documents, including automated e-mail notifications.

Low C, E, F

A. Helps diverse teams work together and share unstructured information.B. Enables collaboration around formal, structured processes and data.C. Eliminates redundancy in paper-based and time-sensitive processes.D. Manages complex documents.E. Creates intuitive and automated processes.F. Assists with compliance, confidentiality, and privacy.



Too many information workers are left to fend for themselves, finding their own ways to automate the discreet individ-ual processes that make up their jobs. Many companies do not realize the huge amounts of time such an approach wastes.

Many companies have reaped huge benefits from automating manufacturing processes. But the idea of extending this approach to the unstructured tasks performed by information workers has just begun to penetrate corporate thinking.

Now, too many information workers are left to fend for themselves, finding their own ways to automate the discreet indi-vidual processes that make up their jobs. Many companies do not realize the huge amounts of time such an approach wastes.

Liberating information workers from “left-brain” tasks and allowing them to concentrate on more “right-brain” analysis and efforts that drive business values requires a firm commitment from both business and IT. Organizations need to appreciate that the new generation of tools can enable them to break away from the old, unproductive manner by which the IT department supported information through technology and embrace the idea of IT as a department that provides the company a competitive advantage in the economies of today and tomorrow.

To Do List Historically, IT departments and the IT industry in general have not focused on automating the discreet individual processes involved in information tasks. Consequently, information workers are wasting time and energy on repetitive mundane processes that could be automated. To improve productivity, organizations should take the following steps to automate the unstructured work done by information workers.

1. Observe information workers and understand how they perform their jobs. IT needs more intimate knowledge of how information workers perform their jobs today to determine how that work can be improved in the future. This means going beyond just listening to user requirements and observing the actual day-to-day work—both before a solution is rolled out and after. This will allow best practices and shared learning to be aggre-gated using a “Center of Excellence” approach or a framework that can be adopted by numerous groups.

2. Embrace the rise of the consumer nature of technology. IT departments must realize that the new generation of workers—who have been raised on PCs and video games—will not accept dictates about what technology features and functionality they can have. Their need for Web 2.0 collaborative technologies should be embraced, rather than viewed as a threat that needs to be locked down. These technologies are desirable, because they make the life of information workers easier and more effective. They can also be a factor in recruiting and retaining talented employees.

3. Get a handle on shadow applications. The growing number of information workers’ unmet needs has led to the proliferation of shadow applications, which in turn presents various challenges for IT—from compliance to maintenance to integration. Companies should act now, before these problems multiply.

The Next Steps

To Do List:

1. Observe information workers and understand how they perform their jobs. 2. Embrace the rise of the consumer nature of technology.3. Get a handle on shadow applications.


To Do List, continued:

4. Determine how new tools can facilitate unstructured work. 5. Develop a strategy to manage unstructured work. 6. Move to a services-driven approach to deliver information-worker capabilities.7. Engage the business to drive adoption of information- worker capabilities.

Creating an inventory of shadow applications can help reduce future compliance and, possibly, integration issues. Furthermore, the needs and capabilities of these applications are a useful indicator of where IT should focus its efforts.

4. Determine how new tools can facilitate unstructured work. Information workers are wasting time and energy on repetitive tasks that could be automated. This situation provides IT with an excellent opportunity to proactively bring high-value capabilities to the business. A new class of tools has emerged that can help facilitate the unstructured work performed by information workers. These tools blend the notion of applications and platforms, because they com-bine aspects of both. Reviewing these tools systematically will assist in ultimately identifying where their benefits could be most useful to the business.

5. Develop a strategy to manage unstructured work. Unstructured work is the next area for significant productivity improvement in the enterprise. IT historically has not focused on addressing the discreet individual processes involved in information tasks. The enterprise needs a unified approach to deal with these issues, and it should provide a roadmap to give this

core group of users a powerful set of capabilities.

6. Move to a services-driven approach to deliver informa-tion-worker capabilities. Because information workers cannot always articulate their needs clearly, IT should provide a catalog of services that demonstrates the functionality available to help automate their work. Through observing information workers and understanding how new tools can facilitate unstructured work, a capability framework can be developed that translates users’ needs into solution delivery. This can lead to the development of an inventory of services that is under-stood by both IT and the business.

7. Engage the business to drive adoption of information-worker capabilities. IT departments, increas-ingly told to do more with less, need the full support of the business to develop and drive information-worker programs throughout the organization. Enterprises need to empower and broaden the focus of their IT departments to address this issue by providing appropriate budget and resources. To realize substantial productivity benefits, IT must work with the business to plan and ensure the effective adoption of these capabilities.



Application. Software program that performs a specific task, such as word processing or payroll.

Platform. The hardware or software (or both) on which an application or a solution runs.

Right/left brain. The right hemisphere of the brain is nonlinear, intuitive, and holistic. The left hemisphere is sequen-tial, logical, and analytical.

Shadow application. Programs that are outside of the control of the IT department. They are developed and

Glossary of Termsmanaged by individuals or business groups to solve their unique problems.

Solution. A combination of software and hardware that is applied to solving a specific issue.

Structured work. Tasks that can be divided into a series of easy-to-delineate steps and processes that remain constant, such as generating a customer invoice.

Unstructured work. Tasks in which the steps to accomplish the objective can vary significantly from individual to indi-vidual, such as searching for information to prepare a report.

Bob AndersonBob Anderson has 35 years of business- focused, technology-enabled consult-ing experience. He currently leads the Microsoft Information Worker Business Strategy Consulting Group, which is focused on driving adoption of the Microsoft Office System via proven value propositions related to customer business challenges. Mr. Anderson was a founding director of Lotus Consulting and the Chief Evangelist at Groove Networks, among other business-focused management consulting lead roles.

Greg RiveraAs one of the original members of Microsoft’s Information Worker Business Strategy Consulting team, Greg has worked with several enterprise customers

About the Authorsto help them realize more value out of their investments in Information Worker technologies. Greg has designed solutions to help automate unstructured processes within financial services, marketing, human resources, operations, and IT while also working with clients to help measure the business value of Infor- mation Worker solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Greg held several strategy consulting, project management, and sales positions with both startup and established IT firms in the software and e-commerce industries. He began his professional career as a software developer for Pitney Bowes after graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. Greg resides with his wife and three children in Fairfield, Connecticut.


Please refer to the following resources for more information on the topics covered in this document.

“2007 Office System Document: Bringing Web 2.0 to the Enterprise with the 2007 Office System.” Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp., December 2006.

www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b48bd31-f043-4ab4-96eb-c6e958fe4ec9&DisplayLang=en

“Deploying the 2007 Office System at Microsoft.” Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp., February 2007.

www.microsoft.com/technet/itshowcase/ content/office2007.mspx

“Working Together in the New World of Work.” Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp., September 2006.

www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F38AD00F-ED59-4411-BD9B-1E438DD5CC6B&displaylang=en

Chappell, David. ”Understanding Workflow in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and the 2007 Microsoft Office System.” San Francisco, CA: Chappell & Associates, September 2006.

For More Informationwww.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DBBD82C7-9BDE-4974- 8443-67B8F30126A8&displaylang=en# QuickInfoContainer

Edwards, Ken. “A Winning Formula: Driving Business Value With the 2007 Microsoft Office System.” Paris, France: Capgemini, April 2007.

Feldman, Susan. “The Hidden Cost of Information Workers.” Framingham, MA: IDC, April 2006.

Greville, Jon. “Realizing the New World of Work: Enterprise Adoption of Information Worker Capabilities.” Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp., 2007.

Jennings, Tim. “The Cost of Information Work.” East Yorkshire, England: Butler Group, March 2007.

Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.

Pink, Daniel. Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself. New York, NY: Warner Books Inc., 2002.


The business.

A people-ready business is one where people can apply their unique skills, insights and experience to create new products and services, work responsively with customers and partners, and drive operational excellence in every aspect of the business. People-Ready businesses support people with knowledge, practices and tools so that they can add the extra value that helps differentiate successful organizations in a competitive, fast-moving global economy.

© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, Excel, InfoPath, PowerPoint, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

0108 Part No. 098-108963

the people-ready business whitepaper - forbes · 2008-02-27 · a people-ready business whitepaper...

Documents