SIDEBAR: Ready, Aim, Deploy

New technologies promise to be execution's ally

The coming of age of component-based software could prove one of execution's greatest allies. It's a seductive prospect: the ability to plug new front-end applications into a robust, component-based infrastructure. That at least is what the vendors sell.

Lynette Ferrara, the director of business research for CSC Research Services, has identified componentised software architectures and business process management software (BPMS) as important elements in successful execution. She recently published a report in association with colleagues Francis Hayden and Douglas Neal called Business Process Management: delivering on the promise. In interviews with nine CIOs she identified the arrival of componentised software architectures and business process management systems as real breakthrough technologies that were now delivering significant execution benefits.

She says that the BPMS systems were offering a level of visibility and control of the execution phase not previously available. This allowed both the business and IT side of an organisation to identify existing processes, define better processes and an optimal business model, then use the BPMS to actually generate usable code, which could be plugged into componentised software architectures. It was also possible - although more difficult - to bolt new processes onto legacy systems she says, using this framework.

"The reason business fails is not because of poor strategy but because there is poor execution of a good strategy," Ferrara says. She maintains that by developing first a process to support the business model, then a process to support the rollout of products or systems that would fit that model, and then defining and measuring a series of metrics along the way, good execution becomes more predictable.

"It is executing at a more granular level, but in the context of the business strategy," says Ferrara."These new technologies allow you to enable the processes and track the metrics."

According to Ferrara, this is far more important in today's business climate where a business process might have only a fleeting life before being replaced. She says though that CIOs are right to be sceptical about some of the marketing hype that surrounds componentised software and BPMS."In most cases these CIOs have found systems integrators who talked the talk but couldn't walk the walk," says Ferrara."We're advising these companies to get their suppliers to come in and do a bake-off. To pick a small project that will take a couple of weeks," which helps identify the right tools and skills for broader implementation.

Even before these new tools emerged however, Ferrara says that CIOs were getting better at execution because they had"a better sense of the business and what works. In fact, they are way ahead of the business in understanding issues such as the importance of process."