The Critical Role of the Executive Sponsor in Enterprise Cloud Adoption
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The white paper discusses the essential role of the executive sponsor in enterprise cloud adoption, covering key areas like cloud platform selection, project portfolio strategy, implementation, and team synergies. It emphasizes that strong executive sponsorship is crucial for overcoming challenges and ensuring successful adoption of cloud technologies, as it aids in strategic decisions and resource allocation. The document asserts that the executive sponsor's leadership is vital for aligning business goals with IT capabilities, fostering collaboration for improved organizational performance.
The Critical Role of the Executive Sponsor in Enterprise Cloud Adoption
- 1. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. The Critical Role of the Executive Sponsor in Enterprise Cloud Adoption White Paper Donald R. Hammons
- 2. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 2 Table of Contents Overview................................................................................................... 3 About The Author ................................................................................. 4 About KPI Partners................................................................................ 4 Understanding the Role of the Executive Sponsor................... 5 Cloud Platform Selection.................................................................... 6 Project Portfolio Strategy................................................................... 8 Implementation, Change, and Risk Tolerance............................ 9 IT and Business Team Synergies ....................................................10
- 3. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 3 Overview As enterprise-level companies consider cloud strategies aligned to meeting corporate growth and performance objectives, executive sponsors have myriad considerations to undertake. Such considerations may include: • Cloud platform selection • Project portfolio strategy • Implementation, change, and risk tolerance • IT and business team synergies This paper explores the above considerations as executive-level project sponsorship is understood to be vital in the successful disruption of IT-norms within the enterprise in favor of value-added and highly nimble cloud solutions whose aims are to enhance business velocity and enterprise-level pivots toward high-growth opportunities.
- 4. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 4 About The Author Donald R. Hammons, VP of Cloud Strategy, KPI Partners Donald R. Hammons is a cloud technology enthusiast who has enjoyed a 20+ year career in the information technology sector with a focus on alliances, startups, cloud technology, sales, and delivery. His work ethic is a direct result of his eight-year service in the United States Navy where he won worldwide “Sailor of the Year” accolades. Don earned his undergraduate business degrees from the University of Arkansas and the University of Central Arkansas (BSE). His graduate work was completed at the University of Texas where he claimed an MS in Program Management and the International Business MBA. His experience includes time spent with multiple government entities, higher education institutions, and several Fortune 500 brands. Don has served as guest lecturer at the University of Texas, and his work on social platforms has been presented at Harvard University. In addition to KPI Partners, he currently sits on the board of directors for a cloud-based startup in San Francisco. Specialties and Interests: entrepreneurial pursuits, motorcycling, hiking, sports, live music, and "the cloud." About KPI Partners KPI Partners provides strategic guidance and technology systems for clients wishing to solve their most complex and interesting business challenges involving cloud applications, big data, business intelligence, and data discovery. KPI works with both corporate technology departments and corporate business units to develop value-added solutions, not just new technology deployments. Find them at kpipartners.com. www.kpipartners.com
- 5. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 5 Understanding the Role of the Executive Sponsor Enterprise cloud adoption is complex. Strong executive sponsorship is imperative when organizations make the decision to move forward with organization-wide deployments of cloud platforms or applications whose intent is to add value and drive organizational collaboration and velocity. The role of the executive sponsor within the enterprise is, therefore, a critical component to successful enterprise adoption of leading cloud technologies, and the complexity of the role must not be discounted. The role of the executive sponsor is key not only during the implementation of such technologies but prior to their implementation, as platform selection and project portfolio strategies prior to project-level implementation are vital. The role of the sponsor is broad-based, providing a “single executive” level of leadership with the chief objective being impediment removal. Achieving this chief objective may involve the executive sponsor supporting and aligning the IT team with the complexities of cloud implementations and, at the same time, acting as “primary business objective” sponsor for internal and external stakeholders whose sole aim is to realize the value of the very technologies being implemented. The sponsor’s role is crucial in ensuring that systems for accountability are in place, both within the organization as well as in the external system of integrators and service providers who may play important roles in project portfolio execution. Thus, the executive sponsor of a cloud implementation portfolio is one of the most crucial roles in today’s enterprise ecosystem.
- 6. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 6 Cloud Platform Selection Prior to implementation of the cloud platform, the executive sponsor plays a critical position when it comes to the selection of that cloud platform. Leveraging a strong understanding of the history of the internal organization’s information technology ecosystem, a strong executive sponsor must seek to understand not only the opportunities with cloud adoption but also the potential impediments that pertain to moving an organization forward in a way that embraces cloud platform benefits while at the same time avoids negative disruption of existing state business processes integral to a company’s revenue trajectory. This artful nuance is a skill derived by strong executive sponsors that encompasses an ability to politically formulate a go- forward cloud adoption strategy, all the while understanding the complex realities of implementation in parallel to those aims. Cloud platform selection is integral to the enterprise. Involvement of the executive sponsor in this pre-implementation phase is vital to ensuring that downstream implementation of such technologies results in positive outcomes for the firm. Companies utilize varied approaches to cloud platform selection. Research of upper- right quadrant, best-of-breed platforms and applications is a viable starting point for the enterprise when considering wall-to-wall cloud technologies. Once an understanding is reached in terms of viable options for the enterprise—whether it is considering ERP platforms, CRM solutions such as Salesforce.com, collaboration and content management platforms such as BOX.COM, or other cloud and mobile applications—other considerations then must be taken into account: organizational scale, budgetary considerations for Software as a Service (SaaS) licenses, implementation, training, and adoption mechanisms, and prior investments the organization may have made in such technologies tied to an overall cloud and mobile technology roadmap. Many organizations will short-list a set of solution options for a viable cloud technology direction and, using a scorecard, will validate the most appropriate fit in terms of final selection. Sponsors may consider all of these factors inclusive of the benefits to be derived—from cloud platform sales executives, engineering teams, and systems integrators whose insights into market trajectory, scalability, cost-to-value, implementation complexity, and benchmarks against other industry vertical leaders
- 7. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 7 are critical. Consideration of these areas must be undertaken when making final cloud and mobile application decisions for the enterprise. Involvement of IT and business leaders from various business units early in this selection phase will enhance the ability of the enterprise and associated executive sponsors by achieving the buy-in and internal support that will be required during implementation, where adoption of such new technologies becomes paramount to organizational success. Thus, an executive sponsor’s ability to engage early in this phase is deemed viable and critical, both for the enterprise CIOs and executive leadership teams.
- 8. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 8 Project Portfolio Strategy As a company moves towards cloud platform selection tied to organizational IT infrastructure roadmaps, the topic of project portfolio strategy becomes paramount. In this consideration, the sponsor will undertake a significant responsibility in terms of evaluating other, and often competing, project activity within the enterprise that may require executive attention, budget allocation, resource expenditure, integrator support, and project synchronization to support the appropriate delivery cadence of new technology releases for the business. Thus, the issue of timing becomes critical when evaluating the approach of overseeing a myriad of strategic project engagements whose sequencing, in terms of release management, integration, and business value-add, is absolutely critical. Resource allocation in support of the sponsor is, therefore, quite important to ensuring that a broad-based view of all active project engagements across the enterprise and their associated intersection points are considered in order to reduce contention and resource over-allocation, and to enhance the ability of the selected cloud platform applications to achieve the intended business value. This moves the sponsor from roadmap development to direct implementation consideration, a natural and vital next step to maturation of the executive sponsor's role within the enterprise.
- 9. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 9 Implementation, Change, and Risk Tolerance The executive sponsor naturally matures from a role as “influencer,” during portfolio selection phases, into “implementer-in-chief,” during project delivery cycles across the portfolio. This is where the proverbial “rubber meets the road,” in terms of executive sponsor success, comes into play, as it’s directly tied to the ability of the sponsor to build the necessary internal and external coalitions needed to ensure successful project delivery to the enterprise. During this vital implementation phase, the strongest sponsor will have a clearly defined outline of critical success factors to be considered when implementing cloud- based solutions for the organization. These success factors may include schedule performance, budget integrity, and application adoption measurements by business users, change management performance, and successful adherence to success criteria for both IT and business units, key stakeholders in the outcomes of the technology implementation. In this role, the sponsor maintains a broad level of responsibility in ensuring strong execution while also realizing that in-flight projects are difficult and that tradeoffs in terms of implementation course correction will be required and will demand the executive sponsor’s stewardship during such moments of critical decision-making. A spirit of transparency and trade-off analysis protocols will ensure the sponsor is not only able to quickly mitigate impediments but is sufficiently empowered in a leadership capacity to drive team morale and business success attainment. Furthermore, organizations have varying degrees of risk tolerance often defined by specific industry verticals or legal and/or compliance requirements. Such levels of risk tolerance for in-flight projects must be fully understood during project implementation planning workshops to ensure decisive decision-making by sponsors.
- 10. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 10 IT and Business Team Synergies Much has been written about the convergence of IT and business. With rapid, deployable cloud platform applications inherent in today’s enterprise ecosystem, it is absolutely vital that the executive sponsor be viewed as the bridge between business unit needs and Information Technology best practices. Regardless of where cloud implementation budgets may reside, executive sponsors who are most adept at aligning to CIO-level IT objectives in combination with the aims of sales, marketing, operations, and business unit leadership will find the most success in their roles. While it is understood that business units will wish to quickly derive value from the newly deployed cloud or mobile solutions, it must also be understood that such applications and platforms must be fully exploited and implemented with a maturity model pursuant to IT team objectives in the areas of application ownership, post- implementation support, training, enhancement release strategies, and other post- implementation considerations often deemed critical to IT leadership. With this set of objectives in mind, the executive sponsor’s role is absolutely key to an enterprise’s successful selection, implementation, and adoption of leading-edge cloud and mobile technologies. The executive sponsor’s role may, in fact, be the most vital role in an enterprise whose aims are to select, implement, adopt, and leverage the power of cloud technologies and mobile applications.
- 11. [email protected] | www.kpipartners.com © 2015, KPI Partners Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the written permission from the authors. 11