Better IT steer for manufacturing business leaders

Boards of directors are being offered a different approach to assessing and prioritising the IT they really need to meet their business strategies. Microsoft and Cranfield School of Management, have developed a methodology and tools that, they say, can provide full direction and cost/benefits analysis. So far, Microsoft has used the tools with its reseller community to flesh out and configure its Axapta ERP offerings for the CPG, pharmaceutical and construction sectors, providing appropriate additional functionality. But Simon Holloway, Microsoft’s European manufacturing industry lead, says its analysis has also resulted in specific general developments, including systems for health and safety management, environmental impact auditing and collaboration around tender production and management. “We’re bridging the gaps that still exist between business people, their drivers and their vocabulary – and the IT they might need,” he says. And while he concedes that’s hardly a new aspiration, he also insists that the modelling system, based on a ‘benefits dependency networks’, provides a rather more scientific approach than has been available. “Our tool is about identifying the context of the business requirement, the business changes required, the likely benefits and only then the IT that might best support that… Businesses need to be able to quantify all that. The system enables them to do that graphically.” It sounds, and there’s no doubt that getting away from second guessing, assumptions and attention to fashionable initiatives is a good thing. Holloway also makes the point that we know what we know – whereas the system has captured best practice from across industry and business/IT initiatives, so provides a detached and structured view. However, you only get access by going the Microsoft route – at least initially.