Describe the problem at IFG as succinctly as you can.
Mini Case
Consumerization of Technology
at IFG3
“There’s good news and bad news,” Josh Novak reported to the assembled IT man-
agement team at their monthly status meeting. “The good news is that our social
media traffic is up 3000% in the past two years. Our new interactive website, Facebook
presence, and our U-Tube and couponing promotions have been highly successful in
driving awareness of our ‘Nature’s Glow’ brand and are very popular with our target
demographic—the under-30s. Unfortunately, the bad news is that our competitors at
GPL are eating our lunch with the new mobile apps they’ve developed.”
Everyone frowned at the mention of Grocers’ Products Limited, their fiercest com-
petitor, which had the largest chain of integrated food and retail stores in the country
and whose Premier Choice products were showcased on their shelves, making it
increasingly harder for IFG to get prime space for their top brands.
“Our web and social media presence has helped us to begin to develop a relation-
ship with our customers,” Josh continued, “but our Marketing folks are very worried
that we’re going to be falling behind, isn’t that so Tonya?”
Tonya James, manager of IT Marketing, nodded her head. As the IT person work-
ing directly with marketing, it had been under her watch that IFG had transformed its
dowdy online presence into something that was hip and trendy. Together, she and Josh,
now manager of IT Innovation, had begun experimenting with new media, creating an
innovation process that took a large number of new technologies and ideas for products
and services and created a protected “sand box” that enabled trial implementations for
employees only. Feedback and experience at this level then helped Josh and his busi-
ness colleagues select the best ones for development in full “heavy-duty” production
mode for the public, complete with privacy and security protection and following all
architectural standards. Only then would the chief technology officer, Rick Visser, who
was charged with protecting company data and systems, allow new technologies to be
fully integrated into IFG’s internal technical environment.
Mark Szabo, the newly appointed head of IFG’s Business Intelligence (BI) team
reported next. “As you all know, our executives are all screaming for more and more
information to help them but it’s not going to be easy. What we have here at IFG is a
data mess and it’s only going to get worse from what I can see.” The picture wasn’t
pretty he warned. IFG had thousands of traditional systems all of which produced data
and reports. The problem was that each used somewhat different definitions of impor-
tant company concepts, like “in stock.”
3 Smith, H. A., and J. D. McKeen. “Consumerization of Technology at IFG.” #1-L11-1-002, Queen’s School of
Business, December 2009. Reproduced by permission of Queen’s University, School of Business, Kingston,
Ontario.
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262 Section III • IT-Enabled Innovation
“If our goal is to improve the stocks of our products on the shelves, we’ll have to
go back to rewrite many of these systems. Some of them believe that a product is ‘in
stock’ when it’s on the shelves; others when it’s in our back room waiting to be put on
the shelves; still others when we have received the order from the supplier or when it’s
arrived at our regional distribution centers.” He went on to describe similar problems
with varying understandings of such core company data as “customer,” “supplier,”
“employee,” and others. “It’s hard to tell our executives how ‘sales’ are going when we
don’t have a single definition of what ‘sales’ are!” he said with frustration. “Right now,
I’ve got two people working full time on spreadsheets trying to reconcile data to answer
the questions we continually get from the 37th floor,” he concluded referring to the
executive suite. “We can’t tell them we don’t have the information but we need a better
way to get it, that’s for sure.”
The meeting droned on with the CIO, John Ahern, calling on all his managers one
at a time. As far as most of them were concerned, it was “business as usual” in IT. Josh
didn’t say anything else in the meeting but he cornered Mark as it broke up. “Have you
got time for a coffee? I think we need to talk.”
“Sure, what’s up?,” Mark asked as they headed toward the company cafeteria.
“I liked what you had to say in the meeting about BI,” said Josh. “You seem to be
one of the few managers here who understands that what we do in IT is going to have
to change dramatically over the next few years. And that a lot of our work is going to
focus on information—getting it; analyzing it; and delivering it in packages that people
can use for their work. I believe that there’s a data tsunami rapidly heading our way
and we haven’t got a clue how to deal with it.”
Mark grimaced as he filled his cup with what the cafeteria called “coffee.” “I know,
I know,” he agreed. “I’ve only been in BI a couple of months but all those articles and
books out there about competing on analytics and analyzing unstructured data, like
emails and tweets and blogs, are making my head spin. If we can’t agree on what a
‘customer’ is, how are we ever going to manage the rest?”
Josh made a sympathetic face. “You’ve got that right, but I’m afraid it’s even worse
than you think.” Over the next thirty minutes he described what he was seeing out in the
field as he looked for innovative new technologies and applications that could help IFG.
“You think we have problems with our existing systems, but there are guys out
there in our business units buying full-scale applications from the cloud with company
credit cards!” He went on to tell Mark about the pressure he was getting from the sales
guys to buy everyone iPads so they could write up orders on the road. “We’ve already
been forced by our C-team to buy them and the board iPads and so far, we’ve kept them
locked down tightly, but that’s going to change very soon.”
Users were also creating local “data marts,” which included copies of core com-
pany data as well as external data feeds, and then building complex spreadsheets with
information derived from these.
“Our business units don’t use the centralized company reports anymore,” he
stated. “They create their own. We’ve got the ‘wild west’ out there!”
Mark looked shocked. “What about our company data warehouse? Isn’t that what
they’re supposed to use?” He had spent a few years building the warehouse a while
back and the team had put a lot of thought into making it the best they could.
Josh was aware of this but ploughed on. He and Mark needed to be on the same
page about this if these issues were ever going to be resolved. “The world has changed,”
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Consumerization of Technology at IFG 263
he said gently. “Our business guys are online all the time now; software vendors are
targeting them directly and because of the low costs involved they can afford to make an
end run around IT; there are literally thousands of free data sets out there; and computing
power and storage cost aren’t an issue any more with the cloud. Our data warehouse is
seen as a dinosaur. It’s inflexible because we insist on reviewing all the data that goes in
there for quality and provenance and it takes forever (i.e., 30 seconds) to get a response.”
Mark looked down at the table and sighed. “So what you’re saying is that all my
work in BI is too little, too late?”
Josh thought for a moment before replying. “That’s not exactly what I’ve been
saying, Mark. What I meant to point out is that we in IT are caught in the middle between
two opposing trends. The first is the trend to analytics and business intelligence that
you’re working on. That’s important. The execs want to get at more information to run
the company and it has to be based on good, trustworthy data. There are whole busi-
nesses out there that are winning because they’ve found a way to do this.
But the other, opposite trend is what I’m seeing. And it’s important too. Everyone
working in our business is also a consumer of technology and when the devices and
applications they can use in their personal lives are more powerful and flexible than those
in their business lives, they naturally want to work around the clunky technology we
provide them with and use their own. And, since we’re now trying to build relationships
with our customers, we are going to have to start thinking and working like they do.”
“In some ways, this is just like the ‘old days’ in IT,” Mark smiled. “I’m a lot older
than you and I remember when those new-fangled PCs came in and everyone in IT was
worrying about how we were going to handle people working on their own comput-
ers at home. And then when the web first hit business, we had people running around
saying ‘the sky is falling’ and developing their own personal and localized websites. We
don’t handle new stuff well around here, do we?”
Josh grinned. He was notoriously frustrated with the IT “powers that be” that
always wanted to lock everything down and wrap it in layers of privacy and security
before allowing it out there. “Well, let’s just say that we’ve got some way to go before
I believe we can be as innovative as I’d like us to be. We’ve got to be aware of these
trends and how they’re going to hit us. Or our business model could change and we’ll
be out in the cold. Where are all the book stores, video stores and music stores these
days? What happened to those companies?”
“You’re right of course,” said Mark “but we have to get more people involved
in figuring out what we need to do here. This is a HUGE issue and we can’t ‘boil the
ocean’! Somehow we need to get our arms around the most important things to do so
we can make some sort of progress. Otherwise, we’re spinning our wheels and the situ-
ation’s just going to grow more and more out of control.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Josh. “Let me speak with Tonya. She’s terrific at stick-
handling these situations. I’ll get back to you with a plan.” And with that, they began to
talk about the upcoming company softball game as they cleared the table and headed
back to their respective cubicles.
Josh laid the situation out for Tonya at the first opportunity he could find in her
busy schedule. “So you see,” he concluded. “We need the discipline and rigor of BI and
all of the good things we in IT can do for our executives and employees if we get them
better and more trustworthy information. But we also need to keep moving ahead in the
mobile and social space for consumers without putting handcuffs on us. And we need to
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264 Section III • IT-Enabled Innovation
recognize that the business is likely already doing their own thing on the cloud without IT
and using their own personal devices, because it’s so cheap and easy to do and we don’t
help them! If we don’t somehow figure out how all this stuff fits together—especially the
data—we’ll never be able to use what we know either operationally or strategically.”
“You’ve done a good job articulating the challenges we’re facing,” Tonya said.
“I know that the Marketing people are putting lots of pressure on me to help them with
better information and tools. In my experience, when business is in turmoil they want
everything right away and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it now. What would you
say our biggest need is right now?”
Josh fiddled with his pen for a moment. He had hoped Tonya would tell him.
“Well. ..,” he said slowly. “We need to be seen to be doing more in this space. It’s okay to
work on the big systems and core data. In fact, that’s our main job. But we also need to
help the business help itself. With my tiny innovation team, I can’t possibly deal with all
of the ideas and technologies that are out there. And the business guys are seeing many
more opportunities than I can deal with. It’s really hard to tell what’s going to work
and what isn’t until they play with things. I can provide some of this in my ‘innovation
sandbox’ but I don’t think that’s going to be enough. And. . .,” he said as another idea
popped into his head, “we don’t have the right people to do some of this work. We need
information analysts, mobile developers, visualization specialists and lots of business
people to work with us and teach us about the business. I don’t have all the answers
here but we can’t stick our heads in the sand and let the world change around us. Are
we going to be reactionary or visionary?”
Tonya smiled. “There’s never a dull moment around here is there? You’ve got an
important point of view here but I think Rick Visser does too. Just in IT alone, we’ve got
a number of groups that need to have some input on this, in addition to my area. We
have to get ahead of this ‘tsunami’ of yours and be proactive in a way we’ve never been
before. This doesn’t mean that we throw all our tried and true practices out the window
but it also means that we should do some things differently around here and that means
John has to be involved. We need a plan to manage all these new trends and he’s in the
best position to help us because there are going to be a lot of cultural, organizational
and structural changes involved, not just for IT but for the whole business. But we can’t
dump this in his lap. We need to do our homework first. I’ll talk with him and tell him
what we’re doing and try to identify the stakeholders involved. Can you come up with
some key issues and preliminary recommendations about what you think we should be
doing and how we should do it? Sit down with Mark and get his ideas too. Then we’ll
see if we can get everyone in a room together to ‘talk turkey’ and hammer out a more
proactive IT strategy for handling this mess.”
Discussion Questions
1. Describe the problem at IFG as succinctly as you can. Use this description to iden-
tify the main stakeholders.
2. IFG can’t afford the resources to identify, define, cleanse, and validate all of its data.
On the other hand, building yet another data mart to address a specific problem
worsens the data situation. Propose a solution that will enable IFG to leverage a key
business problem/opportunity using their BI tools that does not aggravate their
existing data predicament.
Answer preview :
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