IT Governance Efforts Struggle to Gain Business Buy-in

Computerworld -

COCONUT GROVE, Fla. -- Effective IT governance can help companies scrutinize and monitor their IT investments wisely and thus generate substantial cost savings. But according to several IT executives who spoke at the IT Governance Summit held here yesterday, convincing resistant business leaders to buy into these practices -- even when anticipated cost savings have been made clear to them -- can still be an uphill battle.

For example, there was some initial resistance from some employees to an IT governance framework established by senior business and IT executives at Michelin Group, said Raja Patel, North American director of integration services at Michelin North America in Greenville, S.C. Patel did note that support for the framework has been consistently strong among top executives.

The effort began 18 months ago, when business and IT managers launched an analysis of the company's four separate supply chain systems in an effort to identify opportunities to cut costs. The study determined that a single supply chain system used in France could provide most of the functionality required by each entity.

Patel said much of the initial apprehension toward the plan by some business managers centered around opposition to using a standardized supply chain system. "A business leader in South America might ask, 'How can a supply chain management system developed in France meet our business requirements?'" he said.

Patel said the concerns were minimized because leaders from the company's major product lines and all its geographic entities jointly showed users the key advantages of a common architecture. They told users worldwide that the common architecture would speed the process of developing new applications and improve purchasing power for IT services worldwide.

Although IT organizations such as that at Michelin need to create a formal structure to drive effective IT governance, "at the end of the day, relationship building will ultimately drive success," noted Akiba Stern, a partner in the global outsourcing practice at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, a New York-based law firm.

Some IT managers, such as Lance Freedman at Lockheed Martin Corp., have applied a bit of ingenuity to get users to accept the IT governance message.

To help drive home the importance of a 2005 global IT governance campaign to the tens of thousands of scientists and engineers at Lockheed Martin, the IT organization created customized pens with a pull-out slide that explained the program, Freedman said at the conference, which was sponsored by the New York-based International Quality and Productivity Center.

"Every scientist and engineer keeps a pen in their pocket," explained Freedman. "You've got to give [end users] tools and explain what you're doing and why," he added.