Technology Loses Its Drive In IT Innovation Processes

Computerworld - Listening to end users describe how they do their jobs and then watching them at work has led to some eye-opening moments for Franz Fruehwald, CIO for the Catholic Human Services unit within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Instead of just making untargeted, wholesale changes to systems, Fruehwald and his staff have learned lessons from archdiocese employees and worked with them to determine how to best meet their business needs.

"In the past, innovation has been heavily technology-driven, with IT being the primary driver," Fruehwald said last week. But that approach "had mixed results, with some users feeling that IT has forced certain projects and technologies on them," he added. "Today, we are more collaborative."

That mind-set was largely echoed by several other IT managers who, like Frueh-wald, plan to attend Computerworld's seventh annual Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, which starts today in Palm Desert, Calif. Beyond Flashy Hardware

In a survey of Premier 100 honorees and other prospective attendees that was conducted via the Internet in advance of the conference, 51% of the 162 respondents said that they think their IT departments are more innovative than their companies are as a whole (see chart). But in interviews last week, six IT managers said technology innovation nowadays involves much more than springing flashy new hardware and feature-filled software on end users.

To foster innovative thinking inside the Philadelphia Archdiocese's IT department, Fruehwald encourages all of his staffers to bring forth ideas, suggestions and recommendations, which are then considered and hashed out. "Oftentimes, we ignore the folks in the trenches who we rely on for the day-to-day operations, [but] their ideas and suggestions are as valuable as those of management," he said.

Fruehwald noted, though, that the process isn't limited to IT itself. By witnessing how end users worked, IT staffers learned that some were entering data into spreadsheets they kept for themselves, while others were writing information on paper and then filing the papers into three-ring binders. None of the data was available on an organizationwide basis, nor was it easily usable or searchable by other people who needed it, Fruehwald said.

The observations led to the deployment of client management software from Harmony Information Systems Inc. in Reston, Va., via a phased rollout that was completed last year. Fruehwald said the Harmony software stores data in a single repository that all the end users can access—something they could barely imagine doing before.

Todd Norrgard, director of IT at Watertown, N.Y.-based Car-Freshner Corp., agreed that IT innovation is only important if it increases business efficiency. "We've been told not to sell IT—just recommend solutions for known problems," he said. "There's got to be a tangible payback, or innovation isn't a sufficient business case for implementing something new."