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Scenario
1: The executive team of our company is visiting the Asia Pacific. The
advanced scouting team for the visit talks to the regional IT team. We ask them
what kind of support they would need and they indicate basic support to ensure
they can access company data when traveling. We say no problem. Why? Because
they use the same model laptops which we use due to our global standards in
laptops. This may seem like a simple case but illustrates the point that for
global companies it really pays to have standardized environments.
Scenario 2:
There is a global portfolio of products developed internally for use by our
researchers, we do a quick and easy rollout. How? Because all Monsanto machines
anywhere in the world will have the same version and even the same patches
installed.
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Anand
Kumar
head-IT, Monsanto |
| Key
Benefits
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Lower maintenance and operating
costs for IT
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IT can now leverage skills and
talent based on regional availability
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Better able to manage risk and
information security since you have global processes and a team
looking at the big picture
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There was a time when
local deployment was enabled, the challenges we faced were:
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Software
developed in a region would not work in another
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Individuals
would go about procuring whatever they wanted, this included handhelds,
printers etc, then individuals would demand support for the same, which IT
could not handle
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IT
could not ensure that security patches and concerns could be remedied easily
as every machine required a different solution most of the time
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Leveraging
globalization and virtualization could not really happen, IT was relegated
largely to the task of managing general infrastructure
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We had
several ERPs and ensuring that consistent data was reported was a huge
challenge
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TCO of
IT was high and the challenge of managing SG&A was critical.
| Pain Points
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This strategy would make sense for large companies which are
faced with challenges in terms of ensuring standardization of
processes vis-à-vis managing SG&A
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The initial costs of global deployment would be high as
systems and processes would have to be developed which would run/work
in all areas where the systems/processes would need to be deployed
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There is a very good chance that because of global deployment
strategies the IT talent pool could not be leveraged due to
'categorization' of talent , examples would be “ Indians are
good programmers so let us only give programming work”, “Singapore
IT is more methodical and attrition is low so let us give process
centric repetitive work there”
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Then we decided to look
at globalization and virtualization, and thus came the formation of the global
center of expertise (COE). These COEs were formed for back office, front office,
directory services, handhelds, telecom, data management, archiving,
applications, tools, and frameworks, and were charted with defining standards
which would capitalize on the concepts of reuse and reducing TCO. We have been
very successful as a corporation in defining standards. We have also defined
standards for data management as well in terms of design and architecture for
DBMS and DW, we have also defined standards for coding practices in the use of
languages, tools and frameworks to ensure that true reusability can be
leveraged.
I would recommend that
a careful study be made before deciding on global vis-à-vis local deployment
strategies since both have benefits as well as challenges.
As told to Goutam Das
goutamd@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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