Just when manufacturing companies need all the technical nerds they can get, they appear to be in short supply.
That's a bad thing because the new wave of software coming at manufacturers, called service-oriented architecture (SOA), will require the nerdiest nerds of all to help companies make wise decisions about this business-altering technology.
How did we get in this predicament and how bad is it, really? Well, the dilemma shapes up like this: SOAs are going to enable the automation of business processes horizontally in companies. The technology is inextricably tied to not only linking processes cross-functionally, but also, in many cases, to the requirement of rethinking and remaking those processes.
Whether it's how an order is taken, processed, and fulfilled or how a service request is accepted and makes its way back into a customer record, this coming combination of broad-scale process change and a new, fundamental technology architecture add up to perhaps the most sweeping business re-engineering in a generation.
The problem is that the corporate department that will be in the thick of all of this -- the pulled-from-all-directions IT group -- has to not only educate itself about the new technology paradigm and its ramifications, but do so with a business process understanding that will strain the most diversely skilled among them. And this, while IT's ranks thin across all industries and CIOs continue to struggle for a seat at the executive business table.
This point was driven home at a conference I recently attended in Las Vegas that was hosted by SAP, one of the industry's most vocal proponents of SOAs and business process change. One of SAP's strategic assumptions in the new Web-services era, said executive board member Shai Agassi, is that IT chiefs are losing influence in their companies. What needs to emerge, Agassi says, is a chief process innovation officer who will be a strategic partner of line-of-business executives in crafting business process platforms or networks.
That's fine, but the problem is that even as the processes need to be re-thought, the technical guys need to weigh in -- and fast -- on the technology model that will be adopted. SAP's construction of a business process platform supported by an SOA, like that of other software vendors, depends on certain basic, often arcane assumptions, like how semantics are defined.
SAP, for example, is busy building Web services that will influence how processes are re-engineered and how information flows within them. So far, SAP has built about 300 of them, but Agassi estimates that delivery of the business process platform concept will require the construction of 30,000 services.
That's a lot of pipes. And this is where manufacturing business leaders need the advice of the nerds. The nerds need to explain the technical assumptions to the business side and what they mean down the road in terms of how the business will operate. So if you are a CEO or an LOB executive in a manufacturing company, now is the time to enlist the aid of the nerdiest of your nerds. Get them educated on SOA and be careful about cutbacks. Only by working closely together now will you avoid the many potholes and pitfalls on the road to the new technology paradigm.
What are your thoughts on process change and SOAs? Write to me at Dbrousell@thomaspublishing.com.