The advantages of aligning business processes with IT are so clear that it is difficult to imagine why they were not aligned from the very beginning. Consequently, it`s not surprising that most organisations are on a quest to achieve this alignment.
To satisfy the demand for the new prevailing wisdom, there has been a proliferation of software products and associated services to enable IT to meet the shifting needs of business.
The difficulty lies in the fact that most of the big vendors of software and services to manage business processes have identified the same needs and are offering the same solutions.
Typically, vendors claim to be able to improve IT`s ability to deliver value by providing deeper insight into business processes, IT resource allocation and system configuration.
Most vendors also claim to have modular offerings that allow organisations to use existing IT investments as much as possible that simply integrate with specific vendor components necessary to provide the whole solution.
The key differentiator appears to be an automated end-to-end solution that offers integration between all the IT systems and business processes within an organisation.
Once again, the difficulty lies in the fact most of the top vendors in this space claim to have a complete offering, with some arguing that their offerings are more complete than rival solutions.
As software and business solutions have become increasingly complex, enterprise-focused and commodotised, the purchasing decision has become proportionately difficult.
Warwick Ashford, technology editor, ITWeb
Where does this leave an organisation wanting to implement a business process or service management solution? Is it possible to have degrees of completeness?
Challenging some vendor representatives recently, they insisted their company had achieved a "complete stack" through a series of strategic acquisitions. While they did not argue a greater degree of completeness, they said their level of assimilation with the acquired companies and technologies was "more advanced" than competitors.
Buyers beware
As software and business solutions have become increasingly complex, enterprise-focused and commodotised, the purchasing decision has become proportionately difficult.
In the light of this fact, what seems to be needed is a totally new breed of software and services designed to help organisations make informed purchasing decisions.
In the absence of such a service, perhaps now is the time to get real about the importance of trusting relationships between vendors and customers. Without any solution standard or decision-making service or software, in most instances customers are forced to take a leap of faith.
Instead of promising to offer a complete stack, vendors should offer complete trustworthiness in terms of backward compatibility, interoperability, reusability and service level delivery.
At this point, personal relationships appear to be the only likely redemption for anyone in an organisation burdened with the increasingly complex responsibility of making a purchasing decision.
Fast-forward to old-fashioned trust
It is ironic that in this information age, when it comes to making important purchasing decisions, we are reliant upon the same human relationship building exercise that served our grandparents and great grandparents so well when buying something like a bicycle from the local general dealer.
It is probably no real co-incidence that vendors are tending to focus on tailored solutions that are designed to accommodate and optimise business processes rather than dictate change. Could it be that the vendors have realised that building long-term relationships based on trust is the only guaranteed strategy?
If this is true, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for the IT consumer. If vendors really have evolved from so called "box-droppers" to a new breed of relationship builders, they are less likely to market irresponsibly by making false promises and more likely to deliver consistently on their commitments to avoid souring the relationships they have built.
A trustworthy vendor is likely to ease the difficulties of making IT purchasing decisions, but there are degrees of trustworthiness.
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