Andrew WhiteDuring the Wipro analyst day 2010 I heard updates on the corporate strategy and go-to-market. The key take-away is that Wipro strategically is aligning with the idea that the key to competitive advantage (for the end user organization) lays not within a single organization, but from collaboration between networks of organizations. As Kirk Strawser, Managing Partner & Global Head, Wipro Consulting Services, said, “This is not a new idea; it has just taken a long time for a good idea to germinate”. Indeed, many of us have written on such future states. Gartner used to write about Collaborative Commerce. Others have talked about “value chains” and “value nets” and so on. I was lucky enough to present on the “connected enterprise” with Simon Hayward, a colleague of mine, in 2002, where we introduced the notion of the “autonomic trading grid” which, if I understand the Wipro message correctly, seems to align nicely with many of their ideas.
Interestingly Kirk also mentioned that Wipro was working with some prominent university to research how organizations develop winning and dominant models in, as Wipro calls it, 21st century virtualized organizations. What struck me as I listened is that this took me back to the days when I was working with Joe Andraski and many others on Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR). You can see a lot of my old white papers here. Many moons ago I would sit in the middle of a long table, facilitating the development of a collaborative business processes between a retailer and its supplier. It felt more like participating at the Treaty of Versailles or maybe the Congress of Vienna! Each organization has their own set of rules, objectives, resources, data, applications, desires, managers and customers. And on a few occasions, otherwise summarized as B2B, they sometimes coincided.
The one key idea I took to heard was that one characteristic always popped up in environments where collaboration was sustained, and produced results for both parties over and over again. The idea I summarize with the term, “shared P&L”. The idea is that when objectives align, and stake-holders share goals, resources, risks, rewards, processes, data, and effort, true collaboration happens – and sticks. When organizations remain and operate as separate and discrete organization, all that can really happen is cooperation – even if leaders call it collaboration. Seems like Wipro is on that same journey.
One opportunity that was missed (I felt) was when Wipro highlighted their business strategy as it relates to cloud computing. One session introduced five key themes Wipro was focused on (Information Management was one) and how they related to a number of important technological developments (Cloud computing was one). There were lots of examples of futuristic states and visions regarding how platforms-as-a-service, and software-as-service and so on intersected with four of the five themes, but when it came to “information-as-a-service”, and how it intersected with the five, I was under whelmed.
More importantly, there was NO intersection between information-as-a-service and the other four; and for “Information Management” the forward looking, futuristic state was listed as, “Reports and Analytics on tap”. That was it. That was the sum total for vision for the biggest single idea in the room. I felt that Wipro, which was claiming end users were looking to them for leadership and vision, for the 21st century organization, had completely missed the boat.
On the one hand, information is the greatest inhibitor to the success of Cloud Computing, if it is to ever move beyond a conversation of “free CPU access. The lack of effective Information architecture and management will bring any vision for cloud based apps to their knees. Second, information in the cloud is also the greatest opportunity! Maybe I will get the chance to explore with them this opportunity – and maybe next time I can report a different finding.
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