Principles and Practices for Orchestrating Digital Value Chains

This blog is a follow up on this piece in which I wrote on some of my experiences with IT shared services in the government sector. Here I want to write about two solutions which would improve the success rate of a shared service center. Practical example The organization is a grouping of local government agencies which have a long history of semi independence. Policy is partially dictated from a ministry and national politics, but there is also room for local decision making. To align, the governors of the local agencies gather on a yearly basis to agree on long term policy and cooperation. One of the decision was starting an IT-shared service center some ten years ago, because the processes of the agencies showed considerable similarities. However, these similarities turned out to be far fewer than expected and every local agency had a list with arguments why its deviations had to stay. The result was IT systems which had more custom code than common code. The SCC was in ...

To execute innovation for low cost and ‘lean customization’ more successful than next doors competitor, one shared ingredient is necessary: information dominance . Where achieving air dominance is crucial to decide a military conflict in your favor, will gaining information dominance be central in doing business in the years to come. It can be simple like soccer team AC Milan using a mathematical model to predict the chance players will get struck by an injury. Google uses self-learning algorithms to improve search results and present advertisements while the success of retailers Wal-Mart and Ahold is derived from knowing more of consumers and suppliers than their competitors. These organization have been able to get a grip on the massive data amounts and can predict to a high degree what an individual customer will buy next. Smart technology alone is however not enough as all relevant information was available on the terrorist who boarded the flight between Amsterdam and Detroit in ...