"Opinion Piece" was introduced in 2004. Each month an industry specialist was invited to share their view on that month's Community theme. In this Opinion Piece, Brian Haverty wonders: Technologies and tools?
I hope I don’t get anyone in trouble when I say that I think the title chosen for this month's topic is a tad redundant. Technologies are tools, and where we get into trouble using new technologies is when we expect them to be more than that.
I can’t count the number of technology horror stories I’ve come across where the cause of the troubles stemmed from a misconception of what some new technology was going to do for an organisation.
Let’s take CRM (Customer Relationship Management), for example. A couple of years ago, CRM packages started to appear that were going to “solve all your customer relations issues” and “help your organisation trounce the competition”. Maybe these weren’t the exact words vendors were using, but they’re not far off.
Amazingly, some very smart -- and very big -- enterprises fell for these hyped up promises in a big way. You remember the headlines: “CRM Not the Solution”, “Why CRM Fails”, “CRM Disaster Stories” - the list goes on.
And when I say “fell for”, I mean “made the classic mistake of assuming that a new technology was going to take over the handling of a job process”. In almost every failed implementation of CRM there lurked a situation where the customer relationship management solution did not work the way the company worked, or the company had no initial customer relationship business practices in place at all!
In the growing number of cases where CRM is working, the organisations realise that the technology is a tool designed to help them do what they already do better and more efficiently (there’s that “tool” word).
A very important step in the implementation of any new tool, therefore, is taking the time to analyse what jobs you need it to do, and to be sure you understand the capabilities of the tool so that you can confidently say that it’s able to do the job. If the tool doesn’t work exactly the way you do, are you willing to change the way you work, or is it time to start looking for a different tool?
Of course, you can replace the word “tool” with “technology” in the above paragraph and it should make just as much sense - very obvious sounding, I know, but still it’s as step that a great many organisations fail to take.
Technology solutions have been touted as the answer to educator’s prayers too. How long has it been since “Multimedia Education” or “Online Training” solutions first appeared on the scene? And where are those revolutionary technologies now? Still only making progress where educators had the right programs and curricula in place so that the delivering technologies could succeed at reaching the students and trainees.
And on top of all that, being able to fully understand underlying processes and jobs in an organisation is essential to its very success. I once took a trip to the US and queued up at the car rental desk to pick up my pre-booked car. I was told the “system was down” and that I was out of luck. I was amazed. There was a phone on the desk, but the staffer didnt even reach for it -- he hadn’t a clue who to call or what to do to circumvent the problem.
So I apologise if you expected a column full of descriptions of exciting new technologies just around the corner that will change the way you live and work. They’re arriving almost daily, to be sure - data handling technologies, search technologies to make sense of all that data, faster and more expressive means of communication, and the technologies needed to ensure those communications are secure. But the important thing to remember with all of these is that they are tools, not made-to-order solutions to all of our problems.
Brian Haverty is Editorial Director of ZDNet Australia and oversees both the print and online editorial teams. He has launched such publications as Technology & Business and C|Level in Australia, and has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Australian editions of PC Magazine and Windows Sources.
