Technology Upgrades: Making the “Sophie’s Choice”
By Joe Morray
We all benefit from technologies that make our world work smarter, faster, and better. Intergraph is increasingly focusing on delivering systems that can be implemented, and benefit derived from an enterprise-wide implementation. This brings up a significant challenge for both Intergraph and their user base: new technologies are introduced faster than we can learn to use them.
The dilemma caused by needing to learn new systems and interfaces is particularly pronounced in large corporations. Here, the period between initial piloting of applications and final rollout to the last office often takes up to three years. During that time, several new releases of the software are likely to have been introduced.
In this new age, companies face an unenviable “Sophie’s Choice”: institutionalizing technology that will be out-of-date before it’s implemented or continuously introduce new systems and, in the process, create technological anarchy.
So how does Intergraph, and the user community, bridge the gap between the pace of institutionalization and the evolution of technology? Obviously, there’s little chance the pace of technology will slow, or that humans will suddenly begin learning exponentially quicker. It is also unlikely that organizations will adapt to new tools and change company culture overnight.
The solution, therefore, requires action from both software vendors, such as Intergraph, and users. For their part, vendors must create and sustain a uniform interface that spans multiple applications and greatly reduces the time and cost of training for new applications. One important strategy for achieving this is to create products that interact with the user around the taxonomy of their work processes, instead of computer application functions.
This is an important new element in the delivery of technology to organizations. At Trinity, we have always suggested that work processes be aligned with the software systems being implemented. We are now proposing to take a step further: Make configurable work processes the basis for the user interface for the systems. This has three substantial benefits:
- Personnel have to learn their functional work processes, not the evolving system interfaces.
- Work processes related to the approval and security requirements can be enforced with the interface.
- Business rules can be added and refined across systems using XML-based scripts, a technology that is now part of the main-steam of software tools.
Intergraph has responded to the need to bring together technology and work processes. The coming Engineering Framework, for example, allows the configuration and mapping of work processes as part of the system interface functions. This will allow companies to capture, route, and approve information according to defined set of templates. In addition, the systems allow the company-specific work processes to be modeled directly into the interfaces, providing a more specific level of configuration. It is worth noting that Intergraph is also defining their web interfaces in the context of work processes, providing improved intuitiveness.
From the user side, we need to continue to document and evolve the internal work processes that utilize our information systems. The challenge is to broadly establish these and then “information enable them”. Unless we make work processes a priority, and ensure that we are investing in their documentation, we will be constantly playing catch up to technology evolution.
While the issue of technology implementation and organizational learning will always be a challenge, we see companies, such as Intergraph, delivering more information and work process-centric solutions in order to achieve broad, enterprise-wide value. This is an important development for all users to value.
Joseph Morray is President of Trinity Technologies Corp., a process industries consulting firm that helps owner/operators and EPC firms succeed in the use of information systems. The company specializes in driving companies to align work processes, technology, and organizational change requirements for the plant environment.
