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Having technology and using it effectively are two
different matters. For instance, when multiple hurricanes
hit the United States this year, power companies in
the mid-Atlantic states were criticized for failing
to communicate effectively with their customers. An
audit of one of the utility’s performance concluded
that, while the utility had the technology to keep
customers better informed, the company had not implemented
it effectively during the crisis.
Such a breach between acquisition and implementation
has been termed an “assimilation gap” by
technology management researchers and authors Chris
Kemerer and Robert Fichman. When the gap grows too
wide between the expectations of the purchaser of the
technology and those who are trying to implement it,
the technology may end up on a shelf and the whole
investment can be lost.
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This article was published in the Fall
2004 issue
of Perspectives.
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of Use policy regarding acceptable use of
content on the ICF International Web site.
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 How can managers increase their chances
for success with new technologies?
As a start, organizations seeking to take advantage of
emerging information technologies should invest in rigorous
project management and software methodology training.
As successful
IT managers know, traditional project management techniques
are not sufficient to address the long period often required
for effective
IT implementation. In Fichman and Kemerer’s study,
for instance, only
57 percent of firms attempting to implement relational database
technology had achieved what they considered full-scale success
after four years.
A complex new technology often requires
significant organizational learning, changes to business
processes, and new attitudes and behaviors on the part of
managers and staff using the technology. This extended period
of adaptation to and assimilation of the new technology requires
implementation management, a discipline that focuses on the
period after the delivery or acquisition of the information
system.
Are there any keys or rules of thumb that
can help managers successfully negotiate
the challenges of this period?
Probably the most important
rule of implementation management is to encourage managers
to act like entrepreneurs—to
exploit opportunity wherever it may exist.
The traditional
manager, perceives he or she has the responsibility to be
the guardian of the existing enterprise’s interests.
In fulfilling his or her role, the traditional manager may
hesitate to promote adoption of a new technology if doing
so would appear to threaten (even in a minor way) the health
of a business line or strength of a customer relationship.
The
entrepreneurial manager, on the other hand, would act more
boldly. The entrepreneur would address the issue with a longer
term view—will the proposed new technology
eventually be better for the corporation and lead to even
stronger customer relationships? If so, the entrepreneur
would reason, adoption of the new technology should be aggressively
promoted.
Because of this broader perspective, the entrepreneurial
manager often better understands the usefulness of an idea
beyond the bounds of the immediate problem area. In addition,
the entrepreneur is willing to expend the effort necessary
to push the invention or new approach across the assimilation
gap and into the fabric of the
organization. And the entrepreneur is willing to tolerate
a somewhat higher level of risk in executing the project’s
adoption allowing for more creative approaches to in-process
problem solving.
Although acting like an entrepreneur takes
skills and attitudes that may be somewhat foreign to traditional
technical IT project managers, managers who want their projects
to succeed beyond the mere completion and delivery of the
system must accept the challenge to fill this entrepreneurial
role.
Learn more about ICF International’s capabilities
in program
management.
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