South African companies lack initiative when it comes to investing in new technologies and tend to be followers rather than leaders, says Mike Steyn, director of Trivector, a business process management (BPM) solutions company.
From an IT perspective, he says, infrastructure investment involves establishing and maintaining the technology infrastructures that form the foundation for running application systems which enable business processes.
Steyn says infrastructure investment benefits companies by improving effectiveness as well as giving them a competitive advantage over other concerns.
“The basic benefit that can be gained is a stable infrastructure that would ensure the necessary service levels are maintained. These will ensure that the systems can operate at a level necessary to ensure efficient functioning of business processes.
“Investment in new technologies, such as radio frequency identification technologies, can enable new types of business processes, leading to greater effectiveness and improved competitive advantage,” says Steyn.
According to him, most South African businesses have adopted a cautious approach with regards to infrastructure investment, principally because of tight IT budgets. “To some degree, it seems to be in our nature. We seem to look elsewhere for innovation rather than driving it ourselves.”
He adds that most local organisations apply little governance when it comes to deciding which modelling techniques, standards and conventions to apply to their BPM solutions.
“Some have implemented the necessary governance mechanisms to encourage compliance to the standards and, for many years, this level of governance was considered adequate from a business architecture perspective. But this no longer holds true,” he adds.
Steyn explains this is primarily because two key industry trends have begun to question this paradigm. First is the widespread adoption of BPM suites to automate the orchestration of business processes, while the second is the adoption of the services-oriented architecture (SOA) style of architecture.
According to Steyn, SOA is a discipline which focuses on designing solutions in such a way that they maximise reusability and enable agility of business processes. For business, he says, it comes down to a design philosophy aimed at reusing system assets and increasing the businesses ability to react quicker to changes.
“Business processes form the backbone of any business and the same is true for ICT operations,” notes Steyn. “Businesses should start by understanding their ICT processes, introduce appropriate processes-oriented measurements to identify areas of inadequate performance, and drive process improvement initiatives to address these areas.”
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