Digital Transformation: Information System Governance

By Jean-Louis Leignel, Thierry Ungaro and Adrien Staar

The main aim of this book is to offer companies a simple and practical method to assess their maturity in the Governance Information System, so that they are in working order to face the challenges of Digital Transformation.  How can companies effectively manage their investment in IT systems and make the most of their development?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Nov 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781119377979

Book preview

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Preface

No company today escapes the digital transformation any longer

IS governance represents the most effective lever to successfully achieve the digital transformation in enterprises

Objectives of the book

Acknowledgments

Part 1: Information Systems Governance at the Service of the Digital Transformation

1 Enterprise Governance: A Framework that Includes IS Governance

2 Challenges of Enterprise IS Governance

2.1. Value creation

2.2. IS risk management

3 Objectives, Approaches and Key Success Factors of Enterprise IS Governance

3.1. Objectives of Enterprise IS governance (EISG)

3.2. Approaches, frameworks and ongoing reflections

3.3. Benefits of the approach and its key success factors

4 How Can the Maturity of Enterprise IS Governance be Improved?

4.1. Scope of EISG and assessment of the company’s global maturity level

4.2. How can it be properly initiated?

4.3. What can be done once the diagnostics have been made?

4.4. How can the improvement process be initiated?

Part 2: Evaluation of the Maturity of Enterprise Information Systems Governance

5 Maturity Evaluation Criteria for Each of the 11 Vectors

5.1. Vector 1: IS planning and integration into the overall company’s planning process

5.2. Vector 2: IS urbanization at the service of strategic challenges in the frame of the Enterprise Architecture

5.3. Vector 3: Portfolio management of value creation-oriented projects

5.4. Vector 4: alignment of the IT organization with respect to business processes

5.5. Vector 5: IS-related budgetary management and costs control promoting transparency

5.6. Vector 6: project management with respect to business objectives

5.7. Vector 7: provision of IT services optimized with respect to clients’ expectations

5.8. Vector 8: prospective management of IT skills

5.9. Vector 9: IS-related risk management adapted to business challenges

5.10. Vector 10: management and measurement of IS performance

5.11. Vector 11: IS-related communication management

Appendices

Appendix 1: IT Scorecard

A1.1. AFAI source: Information System management dashboards

Appendix 2: Economic Steering of IT Department

A2.1. Expenses related to transformation projects (change)

A2.2. Expenditures related to recurring operations (Run)

A2.3. Expenditures relating to IT application evolutions

A2.4. Main reasons for challenging the IT budget

Appendix 3: Glossary

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

1 Enterprise Governance: A Framework that Includes IS Governance

Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.2.

2 Challenges of Enterprise IS Governance

Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.4.

4 How Can the Maturity of Enterprise IS Governance be Improved?

Figure 4.1. The 11 vectors of the IGSI

Figure 4.2. The different forms of maturity, represented for an assessed company

5 Maturity Evaluation Criteria for Each of the 11 Vectors

Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.4.

Figure 5.5.

Figure 5.6. The ITIL covers production and support phases for recurring services

Figure 5.7.

Figure 5.8.

Figure 5.9.

Figure 5.10.

Figure 5.11.

Appendix 1: IT Scorecard

Figure A1.1. Six IT scorecard perspectives

Figure A1.2.

Figure A1.3.

Appendix 2: Economic Steering of IT Department

Figure A2.1.

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Hecham Cherifi, Senior Manager at Natixis

Advances in Information Systems Set

coordinated by

Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux

Volume 6

Digital Transformation

Information System Governance

Jean-Louis Leignel

Thierry Ungaro

Adrien Staar

First published 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd

27-37 St George’s Road

London SW19 4EU

UK

www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

111 River Street

Hoboken, NJ 07030

USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2016

The rights of Jean-Louis Leignel, Thierry Ungaro and Adrien Staar to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950828

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-089-8

Foreword

When the authors of this book asked me to write the foreword of their work on the digital enterprise, I immediately thought that it was one more document on a fashionable topic in the technology and the business world of the 21st Century often addressed by consulting firms, some of which have aspired to become experts on the subject. However, a more careful observation reveals that an issue more important than the sole subject of the digital enterprise is: Is your company fully operational?, because this is the real topic. In order to create or manage a business that is up to date concerning the integration of the most advanced technologies, it is important to ensure commercial development, management efficiency and profitability in order to deal with competitors in a given market. However, whether it is digital or not, the computerized enterprise will not satisfy the most efficient objectives if, when implementing the technology, it does not integrate the concepts and the standards underlying the scalability and the good functioning of its information technology (IT) systems. This is precisely the purpose of this book, which has the merit of concentrating a very limited number of pages on addressing this kind of issue, highlighting and providing what is necessary to ensure that computers and technology are no longer considered as a concern, as a necessary evil, but as the indispensable tool for the success of a company and the development of its business.

I have benefited during my career in IT from serving large groups, some of which were English speaking and others which were French. I was struck to see the extent to which an American or a British group consider technology not as the necessary evil that I mentioned above, but as an unavoidable requirement to develop the business and conquer market shares, so as to always be more profitable. For them, technology is an indispensable factor for increased profits; they position it at the same level as marketing, as the commercial network, as financial management or that of risks. For one of the leading banks in the world, the organizational motto was the five I: Investment banking, Individual banking, Institutional banking, Insurance and Information technology. The IT professionals were very proud and extremely motivated to earn this recognition of our profession. I have not felt the same in the French groups which I have been part of, IT was often a political lever in a large cooperative group, or was often led by a number 2 or number 3 overseen by an Executive Committee whose priority was not technology because it represented too much of a financial constraint rather than a tool for capturing new customers or markets. Of course, as everywhere, there are exceptions in France and I have fortunately experienced these as well; there are also industrial companies that sell technology and therefore cannot inherently be disregarded. On the other hand, the industry has all the more inspired the tertiary sector on this subject.

This short foreword introduces one of the important themes of this book that is reflected by the involvement of the general management, in the management and development of IT in its enterprise and therefore in its governance. The essential element for the successful integration of IT in the enterprise is to basically consider that IT will not succeed and will not be a factor of profit unless all business units have appropriated it. The general management oversees the relationship between the business units and the technological declination of their projects. The Executive Committee is the main voice that contributes to technology matters: The latter inevitably appears downstream of all the projects of each department of the company. IT must be business oriented and customer driven, profitable and oriented toward the customer. It also means that if the general management wishes to develop its business with sustainability in mind and to avoid unpleasant setbacks relating to the intense development of all modes of communication including social networks and the Internet, it must be inserted in the specifications of its projects in risk management and security. This is another major theme discussed by the authors of this book.

It can be clearly seen, when we refer to the digital enterprise as fully functional, that we consider all the business aspects of the so-called enterprise. This means that the relationship between business and technology is not only a relationship of governance that will implement the management and steering committees necessary for the successful completion of the business projects, including their IT aspects. The description of the business macro-processes, their formalization from end to end and their validation and acceptance by all the actors involved is just as essential, as is the involvement of the Executive Committee, which must be the booster, as is the finalizing process that computerization represents. This book demonstrates exactly how to describe these macro-processes and integrate them upstream of the progress of the company’s projects. However, when we refer to the plurality of the company’s businesses, projects and the technological developments, we also refer to the need for coherence.

The coherence of the whole technology array of the company will be similar to the coherence of the enterprise itself, and the digital transformation will be favorably and profitably achieved, preserving together the future, productivity, scalability and responsiveness, only if this coherence is translated into an architecture. A building that is meant to last and withstand time is a securely and precisely structured building. The same happens with a company, hence the concepts and the practical proposals developed in this book, relative to enterprise architecture, IT application architecture and their associated variations. The more the architecture is considered in terms of its design as well as of its maintenance as an essential factor of the strength of the enterprise, the more the enterprise will benefit from the coherence that is essential to operate and develop in a fluid and responsive manner. The permanent and easily readable translation of this architecture will be the mapping of the IT platform that business units will have to absorb, just as they will have to integrate the management of their portfolio of projects with the general management, impacting their finance management and that of the company. IT professionals will be in charge of managing the purely technological capabilities of the platform, capacities ranging from the forward-looking management of the human resources of the chief information officers (CIOs), which are also transformed with the evolution of the technologies and must be as reactive as the developers of the business are, to the capacity of the computers