In the 1990s, significant ongoing business change is essential to remain competitive. While the personal computer has permitted rapid application deployment and productivity improvements, political and organisational constraints have often prevented businesses from achieving the full potential from their technology investments. Expected yields have not been achieved and, in fact, many applications could be classed as technical successes but business failures. For example, many studies have concluded that white collar productivity has not risen appreciably during the last decade in spite of extensive investments in technology.

Corporate executives have put extensive efforts into clearly defining their Vision and goals in order to:

• Meet the challenges of increased domestic and foreign competition,
  
• Satisfy a more sophisticated and increasingly fickle clientele,
  
• Meet more stringent government regulations, and
  
• Satisfy employees who are better educated and more demanding and concerned about - their own success and career than that of the company.
  

Unfortunately, their investments in communications and productivity technologies have not resulted in successful two-way unfiltered communications between the board room and their front-line revenue generating staff. In fact, many layers of interpretation continue to frustrate the achievement of the unified company direction promised when the original investments were made.

The answer is not to retool our companies along the lines of our international competitors (for example, Japanese-style management was in vogue for a while). While we can learn from their successes, we must not ignore the root causes that made North America so dominant in the world markets (the "Cowboys" of international business). North Americans are innovative risk-takers who play to win. They are not followers. The solution to corporate renewal lies in the implementation of a holistic view of the organization using technology to re-integrate the conflicting local agendas and objectives that have developed in our vertically-specialised organisations. By capturing the many sources of knowledge that have developed in our corporate innovators, YTI can deploy technology to help release significant sustainable competitive advantage.

Automation of existing processes is only yielding marginal improvements and is often perpetuating the segmentation of corporate objectives by functionally-motivated management. Yorktown Technologies has developed an approach to improve harmony with corporate goals. We use advanced analysis tools such as process flow analysis, message flow diagrams, and object-oriented analysis and design to gain new insights into the processes in place at the customer interface today. We also use Systems Thinking to get at the root causes rather than continue to treat the symptoms.

Once we have clearly harmonised the executive vision for the company with the view of those front-line revenue generators, we can begin a rational change plan. In effect, YTI can help approach harmony with the corporate vision by incorporating its achievement into the automation tools in a transparent fashion. This improves buy-in by changing behaviour through automation rather than by corporate edict. This subtle approach is better suited to the rugged individualism so common to the North American culture and prevents underground resistance to desired changes.

Many executives encounter frustration in the long lead times needed to produce business improvement because of excessive times needed for implementation. YTI takes a practical approach. We quickly implement proof-of-concept projects that deliver results through knowledge capture systems and rapid iterative prototypes. The knowledge gained in these prototypes drives high leverage by the inclusion of this improved knowledge into the design of the more fundamental systems that are needed to sustain and propagate the changes throughout the organization.

YTI has a primary focus on skills transfer for our clients. Once an approach has proven itself, we are highly-motivated to make the client self-sufficient for future projects. At the same time, we understand that the impetus for change must be external. YTI has taken line executive assignments to assist with this change process and to accelerate organizational buy-in.

The very same forces that caused the compartmental thinking and actions in the first place will hinder rapid change from within. The combination of these business approaches allows us to move forward the state of the art in business process change. We make change itself a fundamental process to be engineered into the fabric of the organization. With each new project implementation, our clients gain improved positioning in the race for successful business change.

Copyright the authors and/or Keith Cowan