Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
IT Management
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Balancing Global Governance

Global enterprises need standard processes. Here are three approaches for creating equilibrium.

February 20, 2006 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - It seemed like a reasonable request. Six years ago, Pat Smith Fernandez, corporate vice president of worldwide IT and MIS operations at Stiefel Laboratories Inc., directed every business unit in the company's 30 subsidiaries in six countries to use a common code in its financial and sales systems for each of its 2,500 products. Stiefel is a pharmaceutical company that specializes in dermatology.

It was the first test in a plan to globalize IT and business processes in a company that, until that time, had allowed each of its five geographic areas to do their own thing. Common global product codes would make it easier to consolidate financial information and product sales worldwide. But employees abroad didn't see it that way.

For starters, Stiefel's subsidiaries already had their own product codes. What's more, they didn't understand the value of the information that could be gleaned by consolidating financial and sales data. It took three years of forums and discussions to get the product codes consistently adopted worldwide, and it served as a valuable lesson for Smith.

Pat Smith Fernandez, vice president of IT at Stiefel Laboratories
Pat Smith Fernandez, vice president of IT at Stiefel Laboratories
Image Credit: Andrew Itkoff/Silver Image Photography
"One thing I've learned is that top-down-driven standards and procedures will not get adopted," Smith says. "You need to sell, not tell, and the best way to sell is for them to own it."

These days, Smith takes a ground-up view of governance. She now sets target dates for adopting new standards and lets the IT staffers in each geographic area come up with a migration plan based on their own priorities. "Governance is now created by people who use it," she explains. "I haven't had any problem with adopting the standards at all."

Such is the balancing act of globalization. As more companies expand offices, distribution centers and manufacturing facilities abroad, IT executives are faced with the challenge and frustration of getting all employees around the world to do things the same way - from IT to business staffers. Long-standing regional practices, executive politics and a lack of clarity about what the business is trying to accomplish are major roadblocks, according to Gartner Inc. analyst Susan Dallas, who says that about 60% of companies fail to create effective governance.


Jump to comments

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!

Manager Experience Demo
Go beyond self-service solutions to perform more effectively. Watch Now.

Faster, Cheaper and Easier to Maintain
Can you afford not to upgrade your servers to today's advanced, energy-efficient technologies?  


IT Jobs