Conclusion: The New Payments Platform will change transaction processes in a substantial way. For organisations it should deliver greater efficiency and better means of transacting information related to payments. At a higher level it could produce a productivity benefit to the extent that efficiencies are boosted for all transacting parties.
Organisations have a long time to consider how they will approach the introduction of the platform and how they might utilise it to improve processes with various stakeholders.
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- Guy Cranswick
Workforce transformation embraces far more than just mobility: it embraces not only where work gets done, but how, when and by whom. Much has been written about the fact that many jobs will cease to exist, while many others will transform beyond all recognition. And the impact these workforce changes will have on hiring practices and the structure of business is significant.
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- Joseph Sweeney
Conclusion:
Prominent this month were reports of outages and system failures which impacted on critical operations for several businesses and government agencies. These types of failures can become costly with the increased reliance on technology and more complex environments that underpin many basic business processes. Outsourcing agreements and protocols can provide frameworks for averting or responding to service interruptions, but cannot cater to all variables that cause unexpected problems which are difficult to resolve. Triggers for serious disruptions this month have included human error, software misconfiguration, failed fire alarms, contravention of standard consultant protocols and ISP failures which had flow-on effects for large companies which rely on networks. It is not always possible to prepare effective responses for the types of disruptions that are not predicted, making it essential for both vendors and customers to conduct more thorough and regular reviews of environments, as well as establish strict protocols for public responses to avoid further damage to vendors or clients depending on outsourced services.
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- Irene Pimentel
Conclusion: While there is a limit to what organisations can do when criminals misappropriate corporate brands to run phishing campaigns against customers, this does not absolve organisations of all responsibility. Crime on the Internet continues to be an entirely foreseeable risk, so organisations should review their customer engagement processes to ensure they are not training their customers to be easy targets for criminals.
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- James Turner
Conclusion: Business prefers certainty to doubt and some issues now appear to be clear:
- Full deployment of Australia’s National Broadband Network now seems likely within about 5 years.
- Its funding method and construction costs will create broadband access with higher prices than current ISP charges and those of Australia’s trading partners.
- Enterprises now need to act in self-interest to review and plan their access networks for branch offices and customer service.
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- Geoff Johnson
Conclusion: The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) was created two decades ago to provide visibility of the total cost of IT assets. It was targeted at IT organisations running an in-house mode of operations. While TCO can provide a good understanding of the internal IT asset cost, it could not estimate the cost per service because the IT budget was never based on service delivery. As a result, it was neither adequate to buy external services nor sufficient to assess the value that an IT organisation can bring to the business lines. IT organisations should adopt the Total Cost of Service (TCS) model to accurately estimate services’ internal costs, benchmark the external services cost and justify the services costs in terms of business imperatives.
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- Wissam Raffoul
Conclusion: Community Clouds can provide the expected value of using “Cloud”-based services in a shared environment that may be more economical than a closed private Cloud or privately owned and managed IT solutions. But economics may not be the driving factor. Identifying a common “customer” need or client base can be the main driver to getting similar organisations to agree to use shared resources or services.
The effort in getting organisations to recognise the opportunity to work together and to actually implement a community Cloud should not be underestimated. As in arranging car pooling, whilst the benefits may be clear, there is still the challenge of finding the other participants who all want to go to the same place, at the same time, and with agreed cost sharing. A “lead” organisation is necessary to help coordinate the required effort to create a Community Cloud.
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- Peter Hall
RBA tech chief highlights constant cyber security threats to innovative strategy - AFR - 26 Oct 2016
The Reserve Bank of Australia's top technology executive has said the central bank's networks are being probed by potential hackers every two seconds and that almost 70 per cent of the emails received by RBA addresses are malicious.
In a wide-ranging speech to an annual conference held by technology research giant Gartner in Queensland, RBA chief information officer Sarv Girn highlighted the conflicting challenges involved with running an innovative tech strategy, while also remaining secure.
He said the RBA's tech strategy was a delicate balancing act between the need for resilience and the need to innovate and react to changes being wrought by the numerous disrupters in the booming start-up fintech sector.
"Whilst attaining digital reliability has been a crucial need for many years, the impact and consequence of getting this wrong in today's economy can threaten the very viability of an organisation," Mr Girn said.
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- James Turner
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Joseph Sweeney
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Alan Hansell
Commonwealth Bank of Australia's technology chief has led calls for increased cooperation among businesses and public sector agencies regarding cyber attacks, following the release of a government report highlighting increasing threats.
The government's peak cyber security agency the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), released an annual threat report on Wednesday morning, warning that government agencies were being compromised by hackers and that many businesses were too secretive about the threats they were facing.
While security industry insiders said the report did little to provide new information or practical advice about well-known threats, CBA's chief information officer David Whiteing told The Australian Financial Review he viewed it as an important contribution to a nation-wide effort to uplift the awareness of security teams and the general public
The report provided anecdotes about recent assistance that government departments and private sector organisations had needed from The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) in tackling cyber attacks
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- James Turner
Conclusion: The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ annual innovation survey gives financial evidence to the rhetoric on innovation. The data presents strategic directions which could produce wider changes too, such as full casualisation in employment, coupled with technology investment by large businesses and structural underutilisation and deskilling, although more trend data is required to qualify such a view in future.
Senior technology executives ought to take note of this economy-wide picture of investment strategies in order to understand their own initiatives in a wider context. It may help with policy setting, with business cases, and provide a better view of planning evolution over the next two years.
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- Guy Cranswick
Conclusion: ICT vendors invest in training their Account Managers or Sellers to be “Trusted Advisors”. The training is to improve the seller’s skill to be able to help their clients achieve success both in business and at a professional level. A client organisation’s expectations are that the vendors should at best be “Competent Advisors” in terms of the solutions or products they represent. Few, if any, employees in client organisations are relying on or expecting their success to be based on the strength of a “Trusted Advisor” from a vendor.
Few sellers can ever achieve the highly valued position of being a true “Trusted Advisor”. The way vendors manage and reward their “sellers” generally has nothing to do with the client recognising them as a “Trusted Advisor”.
Sellers from vendors know their primary measures are on their sales results. This is what their management really expects them to be focusing on and achieving.
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- Peter Hall
Conclusion: The drive for digital disruption has forced many organisations to implement contact centres’ online chat facilities (or equivalent). The rationale is to instantly connect customers with service experts and to resolve inquiries at the first contact whenever possible. While customers enjoy the ability to initiate a chat anytime and from any device, the ability of service providers to resolve inquiries to customers’ satisfaction remains unfulfilled in many cases, especially in the telecommunication carriers industry. Organisations should realise that a digital transformation is not only about implementing online facilities; it requires significant business process re-engineering to improve end-user experience across all types of inquiries.
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- Wissam Raffoul
Conclusion: This month, the integration of businesses and expanded service offerings has been especially prominent. In particular, the combination of technologies and managed services to provide more variety and highly specialised IT service offerings targeted to customer strategic initiatives. Vendors are reaching beyond service implementation to deliver full, high-value solutions in innovative ways, including partnering with competitors to expand capabilities and improve service quality. This type of flexibility is critical and indicative of an environment where delivery models, innovations and offerings change at a fast pace and underpin high customer demand for new solutions.
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- Irene Pimentel
Conclusion: Even though stakeholders may support ‘Digital’ initiatives – due in no small part to the all-encompassing nature of the term ‘Digital’ in today’s market – many of these initiatives will fail to deliver on the original intent. This is because the term ‘Digital’ enables stakeholders to reinterpret the intent of an initiative in a number of different ways. This can cause stakeholders – both within ICT groups and within the organisation more broadly – to take actions that deviate from the original intent, or that resist attempts to change. Even when organisations have put in place governance and processes to reconfirm stakeholders’ understanding of the initiative’s intentions, reinterpretations and misaligned actions can still occur.
By understanding the types of ‘mutation’ that stem from the use of ‘Digital’, and by appreciating the limitations of traditional methods of checking stakeholder alignment, policy and program leads can minimise the risk of projects being implemented in unexpected ways.
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- Joseph Sweeney
Conclusion: To be effective a cyber security program that controls access to hardware, software and data needs to be comprehensive and include all stakeholders. The challenge for IT and line management is to shape the message to the audience in terms they understand so they take their responsibilities seriously.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: This research note sets out and describes the Security Leadership capability maturity model. In using this model, organisations must be honest about their current level before they can even speculate on the benefits of working towards a higher maturity level. Working towards higher levels of maturity has clear benefits for both IT and the business, as well as business alignment of IT. However, a critical part of the journey will be dealing with any resentment from business units about their experience to date. Security Leadership cannot emerge unless prior bad experiences around service delivery are acknowledged and addressed, because it is a commitment to trust and resilience from the organisation as a team.
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- James Turner
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Alan Hansell
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Wissam Raffoul
- Gain valuable insights into how security leaders are positioning cyber-security and risk within their organisations
- Be able to self-assess how your organisation measures up on the IBRS capability maturity model for security leadership
- Learn how to position cyber-security so that it is aligned to business priorities
"This Master Advisory Presentation is designed to guide and stimulate discussion between business and technology groups, and point the way for more detailed activity. It also provides links to further reading to support these follow-up activities." James Turner, Author of the Security Leadership MAP.
For a deeper understanding of how security impacts the way business is done, download your copy now.
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- James Turner
A security leader understands today’s cyber risks, how these apply to their organisation and market, and has management’s confidence to address these risks responsibly. A security leader guides the organisation through the realities of the new business environment, aligning the organisation’s practices and technologies to its risk appetite, and ensures these controls match and support the organisation’s desire for growth and innovation.
This MAP is designed to guide and stimulate discussion between business and technology groups, and point the way for more detailed activity. It also provides links to further reading to support these follow-up activities.
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- James Turner
All too often mobility solutions are developed or procured in isolation to address narrow business needs, without consideration of how such solutions will scale-up into production or fit within the larger ICT ecosystem. Over time this hinders ICT’s agility in providing mobile solutions and increases the risks of project failures.
A Mobility Solution Delivery Framework can help maintain agility in mobility solution delivery and reduces risks. Moreover, it ensures a close alignment between business needs and investments in mobility.
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- Joseph Sweeney
Conclusion: The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ annual innovation survey quantifies the efforts of businesses in all industries. The status of innovation is quite mixed, between small businesses which tinker at the edges and larger enterprises which are more thorough.
Innovation is not one thing – it is a variety of actions which can be implemented. Improving technological capability is not a high priority and that could be a concern for CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and vendors because the purpose and value of technology, and related investments, appear less directly important to business.
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- Guy Cranswick
Conclusions: Many enterprises are simply not capable of implementing the ICT programs and projects that they attempt because they lack the sophistication, skills and organisation to address these developments adequately.
The ‘fix’ is at governance level. Businesses must assess their native capability to contemplate, manage and complete the IT solutions planned to support their business operations.
Conducting a fundamental high level appraisal of a business’ ability to undertake IT tasks may be the most valuable contribution that most management teams and boards can make for the modern enterprise.
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- Geoff Johnson
Conclusion: This month, online Census solutions failures prompted the government to launch a review into outsourcer IBM’s performance. Debate regarding causes for the outages commenced, and uncertainties again highlight the need for a solid and structured framework to be established in contractual arrangements, as well as protocols for implementing services and responding to difficulties encountered. Frameworks are more critical now as rapidly changing technologies and solutions are in high demand, combined with the new, often complex customer environments vendors must cater to. Problems can be compounded by an under-appreciation of costs, different vendors working together and time overruns. It seems as though a higher number of contract failures are being reported, but it is a natural output of outsourcers delivering hybrid solutions in large, complex and foreign environments with evolving technologies and solutions. These types of factors that can result in problems for both customer and vendor necessitate a solid legal and operational framework for conducting the contract.
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- Irene Pimentel
Conclusion: All too often mobility solutions are developed or procured in isolation to address narrow business needs, without consideration of how such solutions will scale-up into production or fit within the larger ICT ecosystem. Over time this hinders ICT’s agility in providing mobile solutions and increases the risks of project failures.
A Mobility Solution Delivery Framework can help maintain agility in mobility solution delivery and reduces risks. Moreover, it ensures a close alignment between business needs and investments in mobility. This paper outlines the essential components of a Mobility Solution Delivery Framework.
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- Joseph Sweeney
Conclusion: Deciding to stop investing in a business system is a decision no manager likes to make as it could have an adverse impact on staff, suppliers, clients, stakeholders and the Board. Before making the decision, management must assess all options and conclude they have no alternative but to act now and stop wasting scarce resources.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: The introduction of Software Defined Networking (SDN) offerings touted a number of benefits around simpler and more agile network management and provisioning, lowering capital and operational costs.
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- Peter Hall
Conclusion: IT organisations driving their business transformation should mature their as-a-Service capability to deliver IT services at commercial standards in a timely and cost-effective manner. This should lead to effective delivery through the integration of business and IT processes.
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- Wissam Raffoul
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Guy Cranswick
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Wissam Raffoul
You have probably already started some mobility initiatives for your organisation, and that is a good thing, because mobility has the potential to be truly transformative to many, many industries.
Not only does it change where work gets done, but in many cases it can change how work gets done, and even who does the work. It can actually alter the structure of your workplace. So mobility clearly is something that you want to look for, if you're striving for innovation.
But one of the things that we've noticed with many, many organisations that we have dealt with and many, many case studies we have been involved with, is that over about two or three years tops, many mobility initiatives start to bog down. It starts getting harder and harder and harder for organisations to really keep up that speed of development, to maintain that rate of innovation.
This is so common that we have a term for it: we call it the Burning Rabbit syndrome,
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- Joseph Sweeney
With the recent issues that the ABS has experienced trying to execute an online census, IBRS is sharing an Advisory Paper by James Turner which reviews a practical framework that helps organisations make better decisions with their information assets and service providers.
Applying the Five Knows of Cyber Security is a must read for organisations that may be exposing themselves to risks through their supply chain.
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- James Turner
IBRS iQ is a database of Client inquiries and is designed to get you talking to our Advisors about these topics in the context of your organisation in order to provide tailored advice for your needs.
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- Alan Hansell
Conclusion: Organisations considering applications migration to a Cloud service provider may lack the experience to understand potential risks or how to select a service provider. This may result in budget overrun or inability to meet business needs.
While planning to engage a service provider, a “Plan B” (to invoke in case of failure) is needed to strengthen the project plan’s foundation and mitigate risks. The process of developing the alternative plan helps define potential risks to consider, and what success or failure will look like. Costing out the alternative plan will also help in assessing the financial benefits and costs.
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- Peter Hall
Conclusion: It is widely recognised that public sector organisations do not have the same market drivers as private enterprise to be able to innovate in the same way. Drivers such as competitive forces and profit incentives stimulate and support breakthrough innovation. However, by understanding the elements that are active when breakthrough innovation occurs and reframing it within the context of the government sector, significant benefits and progress can be achieved.
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- Sue Johnston
Conclusion: Communications vendors’ product shipping reports show that a disappointingly large number of Australian enterprises continue to re-invest in obsolete telephony solutions. In most organisations, this approach is a major waste of business opportunity and a misdirection of communications responsibilities given that popular and effective alternative unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions are so readily available.
UCC has become known as simply ‘collaboration’ and telephony needs to be seen as a supported part of the collaboration environment rather than as a first choice communications technology.
Do not re-invest in obsolete telephony solutions. Strong collaboration solutions abound.
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- Geoff Johnson
Conclusion: While activity based working can deliver a better ambient environment and cut some fixed costs, it is the less easily measured outcomes that are the objective. These objectives tend to come under the heading of collaboration.
Public sector organisations need to see beyond the initial phase of ABW and look to the longer term in order to achieve the promise of activity based working.
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- Guy Cranswick
Conclusion: Discussions regarding new executive appointments, acquisitions and partnerships have been prominent this month with managed service providers adopting a more calculated approach to reformation. In order to meet emerging challenges and demands, vendors must match both operations and offerings to provide solutions which can cater to new customer priorities. These priorities have increasingly dictated vendor investment decisions to build capabilities and portfolios through acquisitions and partnerships with specialist service providers. Heightened demand for industry-specific digital business models has driven much of the investment and transformation; in particular, end-to-end business solutions, digitally unified systems or the provision of new solutions that cannot be obtained using existing customer systems.
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- Irene Pimentel