How to Design a Target Operating Model – Part 2

In my last article, I talked about some of the key aspects you must consider when defining a target operating model. In this follow up piece I have delved a little deeper and will look at how TOM initiatives can vary across different types of businesses; from large corporates to start-ups and government organisations.

Big Bash, Australia Open, Grand Prix, and the importance of Big Data.

Every year in Melbourne, January sparks the start of a series of sporting events that keep us entertained right the way through to March. From the end of December and throughout January we have had the luxury of an action packed schedule of Big Bash (20/20) cricket, the Australian Open tennis and after a bit of a lull in February, there is the Australian Grand Prix to look forward to in March.

Whilst the sporting action continues to provide the spectator with excitement, enjoyment and entertainment, the role of analytics and data science in these events continues to grow with each edition of these great events.

How to Sell the Value of Design Thinking

Design Thinking is more than thinking differently; it is working with, and for, people from the very beginning in order to create better outcomes. The key is engaging your executive sponsor and demonstrating enough value to give you the space (and resources) to deliver something that is innovative,  technologically feasible, commercially viable and above all, desirable for the customer.

How can you gain the trust of executives and those in your team to understand and buy into the value of Design Thinking? It’s one thing for it to be a hot topic around the coffee machine; it’s another thing to take action.

Stories Are The Secret To Influence

Imagine your team has designed a business architecture for your company, and now you have ten minutes to present your findings and recommendations to the CEO.

What do you say? How can you get them believing beyond a shadow of a doubt that your recommendations are the best way forward?

I had the opportunity to hear some of these pitches from the CEO’s chair while three teams presented their solutions to a case study scenario.

Video: Digital Strategy Summit Presentation

While a digital strategy is now a mandatory requirement for corporations the world over, there are varying perspectives of what a digital strategy should comprise, often reflecting the authorship of the strategy within the offices of Marketing, Products or Technology. However, in many instances these strategies appear indistinguishable from the business technology innovation strategies of yesterday.

At the heart of Digital Strategy should be the premise that the confluence of contemporary forces and capabilities present the opportunity for market disruption and service reinvention – yet invention and disruption generally escapes the major corporates seems to remain the domain of the start-ups.

The Secret to Business Relevance

In reading the literature available on Business Architecture it strikes me that most of these mention Business Architecture in the context of the entire organisation or ensuring IT alignment to organisational strategy. While these are true statements, Business Architecture provides a lot more.

Data is NOT Information

Data is not information, neither is data architecture the same as information architecture, despite the two terms often being used interchangeably.

Webinar: Using Business Architecture to Enable Customer Experience and Value Strategies

On Friday the 21st of February 2014, I delivered an Open Group webinar titled ‘Using Business Architecture to Enable Customer Experience and Value Strategies’.

Transformational Change in Higher Education

All organisations are constantly under pressure from various change drivers, but many industries are currently going through massive and disruptive changes.  When organisations face such pressures, the response is often to initiate bold but complicated organization-wide transformations.  ‘Architecture thinking’ can help plan and manage change, especially in such large-scale efforts.  Enterprise Architecture can take a capability-based approach to change that aims to understand which capabilities are strategically significant in order to inform decision making.