Critical evaluation of CIO leadership and organizational transformation

CIO Magazine Analysis

Critical Evaluation of the CIO Magazine Article

The Whole . . . is More than its Parts

The article The Whole . . . is More than its Parts illustrates the complexities, challenges and decisions that must be made in order for an enterprise to unify its many applications, databases, systems and platforms to serve a common strategic purpose. The article was published May 31, 2000 when integration options within enterprises were comprised of creating hand-coded adapters and connectors which were often written within the companies who needed them, reliance on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or the use of XML as an integration standard. In 2000 when the article was written and published, Web Services were nascent and only in prototype form. Web Services began proliferating subsequent to the time when this article was written, given the rapid increases in programming languages and tools specifically designed for ensuring higher levels of real-time system and interprocess integration to the data schema and taxonomy level (Baghdadi, 2005). The intent of this article is to provide a critical assessment of the integration strategies enterprises have rely on, taking into account the critical success factors to long-term success of these initiatives and programs that are referenced in the article.

Critically Assessing Integration As Defined

One of the articles' most valuable points is that companies will often create a project management office that is given the task of coordinating the integration efforts company-wide. This approach to systems integration is critical because it provides the necessary senior management visibility and support, which is critical for any new initiative or program to succeed over time (Morabito, Themistocleous, Serrano, 2010). The article successfully defines how this specific strategy has drastically reduced the amount of confusion within companies implementing integration systems. The article however stops short of explaining how critical the project management office is in enabling change management to be effective within an enterprise. Often enterprise systems fail to be adopted and used within businesses due to a resistance to change and a lack of a well-defined and executed change management strategy (Morabito, Themistocleous, Serrano, 2010). This area of integration is not mentioned in the article and should have been quite frankly, as it would have provided a more realistic view of how difficult integration of systems is to translate into productivity and higher performance of any organization.

Second, the article defines dot coms and a lack of integration as the competing factors or the catalysts of change within these organizations discussed. In fact the lack of efficiency and the degradation of performance of core business processes, and the lack of continual process improvement is the far bigger cost factor dragging down profitability. Only in one instance is the cost reduction of better integration mentioned. This is prescient given the fact this was written in 2000, years before a global recession would completely change the value of integration, escalating its value significantly as a cost reduction and process improvement strategy. The motivation for integrating systems during the timeframe of the article was a fear of disintermediation from dot coms and the lack of customer relevancy, with the latter eventually providing to be more true than the former. The author misses the point that the greater the level of system integration, the more knowledgeable a company becomes over time due to the speed and accuracy of communicating more effectively. The benefits of intensive system integration making processes more efficient, reducing operating costs while transforming a business into one that competes on knowledge not just price or products, would have made this article more relevant in the long-term. The issues surrounding interprocess integration within Enterprise Resourcing Planning (ERP) have long been shown to increase overall company competitiveness (Brehm, Gomez, 2005). The article could have cited more examples of the payoff of investing in ERP integration to the process level, showing the Return on Investment (ROI) of these initiatives, yet it does not.