Business processes when using or selling Cloud
By: Maurice van der Woude, Strategic Business Advisor Personal Consult
Through the past years, when application licenses where delivered to customers, things were quite easy. The application license was bought and boxes where delivered. The application had to be installed on one or more of the company servers and the internal IT department made sure the applications were delivered to the computers of the end users within the company over the internal network. Purchase costs and an annual fee for application maintenance applied and the application could be used, depending on the number of licenses acquired.
With Cloud applications however, different processes apply to purchasing, facilitating and maintaining software applications. To ensure that business can continue as usual, without endangering business processes, these same business processes need to be looked upon with a different view. Not only from a customers perspective but also from a suppliers point of view.
The Customer
The business users of Cloud solutions have specific and different requirements to be able to do their job in the most efficient and effective way. Cloud is able to meet these demands. When an organisation decides to move to the Cloud with their business, their business processes need to be adjusted to make use of the Cloud in the most cost effective way, and constantly looking for the way the end user will be able to do their work where ever they want. This will most likely start with the implementation of a Cloud service company wide or at department level. Generic office services like wordprocessing and spreadsheet may be used in the Cloud at first to gain some experience in working with the Cloud. When the pricing per month, per user is right, and contracts and SLA's are in place, the service can be obtained. When looking for suitable suppliers, it would be best to select those who are innovative and have a clear view on collaborating with other companies. When any customer wants to extend the usage of Cloud solutions, there will be a greater need to connect applications with one another, to prevent data from being typed in and stored in multiple ways and in different environments. When looking for Cloud solutions, the customer needs to look for interconnectivity to be ready for future Cloud enhancements with different suppliers. Innovative suppliers will be more suitable to meet these future demands.
Vendor Lock In
The greatest challenge when selecting applications other than standard Office solutions, will be when moving to the Cloud with core business applications. Especially when these applications have to be connected in some way with the office applications. Think about mail merge capabilities where standard letters have to be combined with adress information. When data is not transferrable from one application to another, the same data will have to be stored twice in separate applications, which eventually will lead to confusion and errors. To streamline these processes, it is desireable to select suppliers who can accomodate for data exchanges between applications. The business proces on how to exchange data between Cloud applications, should be clear to ensure multiple cloud solutions are used in the most effective way. When selecting a Cloud supplier, these considerations should be taken into account. In that way, data will always be transferrable, even when the organisation considers to change from supplier in the future. Always consider that when more effort needs to be made to connect applications with eachother, the harder it will be to transfer data from one to another solution in the future.
Bring your own device
With all possibilities of hardware the business user can choose from nowadays, it is impossible for organisations to ignore the users demands on the hardware they want to use to be able to do their work. The requirements for a salesperson, who will be on the road during most of the week, are different from the person who handles administration at the office. Both require different ways to communicate through the Cloud to access the data they need. It is in most organisations already common to have a laptop with you when you are on the road, and to use a desktop pc or thin client when working at the office. However, laptops are sometimes a burden to carry and why not just take a tablet with you? A tablet is much easier to carry and little starup time is required to be up and running. Also the length of battery life during a working day counts as well in the choice of portable hardware. Organisations are already in the process of assigning budgets for employees to choose their own device to work with. In other cases, organisations provide all hardware per functiongroup, based on departments demands.
The applications need to be suitable for all these kinds of different hardware and the greatest challenge is to make applications work cross-platforms. Not all applications will be suitable for this, especially when it comes to specific applications. Any organisation should be ready to adapt to the situation where employees can choose their own device. Ofcourse this will give another set of challenges. How to support different platforms? Do we assign individual budgets or do we provide hardware based on users demands per department. And when the device is also used at home, how do we prevent malicious software to get on it, or virusses, or not trusted applications? These are questions that any organisation must streamline from the start. The business needs to assure they have a process in place on how to handle all those different devices and what organisational rules should apply to that.
Helpdesk
With a growing number of Cloud applications and all kinds of hardware to choose from, and all those different users too, it is only logical that more requests will go out to helpdesks for their support. The helpdesk needs to be more and more up to date on what the organisation is using. The organisation will have to make a dividing line between the variety of hardware used and cloud applications. Most of the times current user organisations are not up to that task. Organisations need to be looking for partners to take that particular support area over from them, so they can concentrate on their core business, instead of making a helpdesk a structural part of that core business. In the choosing process of the right partner for the job, the organisation will have to distinguish hardware, standard applications and core applications from one another. They all require a different level of expertise. Most of the times, this service will eventually be outsourced to a professional and highly trained helpdesk. For the Business' core applications, it may require a seperate study for some people of that specialized helpdesk, to make sure also the core applications are supported. The business organisation most of the time wants the helpdesk to answer with the company name, acting as the business' extension. The choice will always be what to keep within your own walls, and what to outsource. Also, to be able to monitor on KPI's and contracts or SLA's, the tool the helpdesk service provider is using, should certainly be "key" in the selection process. To make sure the right information is provided to measure the service, the proces on how to get the information to the business, will be of greater importance when choosing to outsource the helpdesk.
Multiple suppliers and brokers
Cloud solutions seem to be having a common characteristic; They are small enough to provide the end user with only one solution. Most of the time the business user will need a set of multiple applications to do the work with. Multiple solutions may mean that there are multiple suppliers involved. The one thing the user organisation should not seek for is to have multiple contracts from a huge load of suppliers. The processes to maintain that situation will be undesireable, will take too much effort and will probably not be worth the costs involved. The trick is here to get suppliers to work together to have only one contract and let the organisation that owns the contract, deal with the multiplicity of suppliers. In this case the cloud supplier may become the broker for the user organisation. Cloud brokers are not a commonality yet. Gartner, in their 2012 predictions reports, expect that Cloud brokers will emerge in two years. Whenever user organisations get into clouds in a more complex way, like multiple cloud solutions on multiple platforms, a cloud broker who has knowledge of both worlds will be able to combine the multlipicities into one contract. In a way, this will make more sense than what is happening now: Suppliers want to keep all their solutions to themselves without seeking the benefit of partnerships. Cloud brokers probably will fill this space. In the end the user organisation has a contract with one cloud broker and the suppliers also have to deal only with this cloud broker. In that way any organisation, supply- and demand side, can focus on their own business and internal processes.
Big data and Security
Cloud security will become even more important than it is today. And it is not only the security that should be continuously monitored, also the business sensitive data plays a large part within this area as well as the amount of data. IDC predicted in their research about the Digital Universe, a growth of 8 times the amount of data that was in the Clouds when the one Zettabyte barrier was crossed in 2010. Compare this with your situation at home when you have data stored on your computer. Multiply your current data eight times and find a way how to control that amount of data, or how to keep it secure. The challenge of the coming decade will be how we can keep data secure that needs to be secure and what data can settle for a lesser type of security. There is legislation in the making to at least make sure that data breaches have to be obligatory announced at special cybercrime departments from the justice departments. It is, unfortunately, up to every country to decide how to handle data security. The industry is already working on Cloud certification schemes where security will be a large part of. Until a de facto world standard emerges, organisations should handle their own processes to meet security requirements. When working on these processes, devide your data into three catagories: Absolute security needed, security needed to some extend, and none sensitive data. Try to look at the data with great neutrallity and discover that it may be not that much data that really needs to be secure. However, when handling data in any way, be always aware that the processor of data can always be held accountable for any breach that occurs. Make sure you have your processes aligned to this fact, and you will have at least done what your end user expects from you. A safe, secure and trusted environment, where they can work in with any device of their choice and when problems occur, they can depend on a highly qualified helpdesk.
The supplier
Cloud suppliers need to be aware of a changing market surrounding them. This awareness makes that suppliers not only need to identify these market changes, they also have to align these changes to their existing business processes. A couple of them can be identified quite easily:
Try to think global
Cloud applications can be delivered on a global scale, and not only on a local level. This means that suppliers will have to rethink their delivery model and think cross borders on how they can deliver their solutions and how to address any local market from a global perspective. Since the delivery model is going through the Cloud instead of selling boxes, a clear website should be build where the offer is clearly laid out. Behind that website, not only the key business processes should be implemented, the supplier needs also to think about how to deliver support around the world, 24/7. The common mistake suppliers make, is that they most of the time think of setting up a webshop. The business delivery of Cloud solutions is much more than that. The total of business processes need to be rethought to make Cloud deliveries successfull. Eventually, when thinking of business to business, global delivery means not 1 on 1 delivery, but one to many. Marketing is a key factor in this case. The supplier must be aware that they should ensure that their products and services can be found. They also have to rethink their offers. Ofcourse the supplier wants contracts with business where 250+ users are active, but should the supplier also think of 1 on 1 deliveries? When setting up any offer, the supplier also has to think about how to be able to deliver their product multi-language. There are cases known where a great business product was offered through the Cloud, but the supplier never thought of making his solution available in the English language as well. Because of the way the solution was programmed, he was forced to redesign the software at high costs. Thinking globally should be part of the initial delivery strategy to be successfull.
Legislations and cultures
The hardest part of a cross border Cloud delivery is the huge load of local legislations that apply to any cross border transaction, whether it concerns money or a product. Current legislations are being made on a European level by the European commission, but there are also other laws applicable on other continents or non-memberstates of the European Union. The European Commission tries to solve this with the concept of One Single Digital market. The objective of one single digital market, is to make cross border transactions much easier and everywhere the same law applies to those transactions. This should make contracts a lot easier. But, we are far from solving these contract matters, for Cloud is a global matter, and certainly not only European. Policy makers across the globe are working on this, but it is complex and we will have to wait until legislations emerge that can apply to almost everyone. This is a matter of culture as well. In Europe, we are very strict on our privacy and local laws encourage this throughout the European Union member states. In other countries, privacy may be less strict organized. It is the challenge for the policy makers to identify the commonalities and work on that. When those policies are set, it will be up to the suppliers to implement this in their offerings, which will have an impact on the business processes as well.
The users decide what they want to use
Whether suppliers like it or not, with the change of delivery, also the change of choice emerges. Where the supplier had a full arsenal of solutions prepared to sell in the past, the user now first searches the internet to find out what fits best for his or her company. That does not have to mean that the supplier can deliver at all times what his customer demands. One supplier cannot offer every solution that is available in the market. With the user at the steering wheel, the supplier market will be forced to work together. In order for suppliers to work together, services need to be aligned to one another. When aligning services, also the key processes from the supplier organisations need to be aligned. The danger of having this alignment not in place, holds the risk of not being able to deliver. In most of the times deliveries may be quite easy. Set up a connection, get the application through, make sure that data is stored safely, make the customer happy. The challenge for the supplier will be how to have control over the delivery process. Most of the times the lack of being able to control all deliveries to all customers is the real challenge. Suppliers will think of technical delivery, while the real control factor is an administrative one. The supplier has to make sure the administrative processes are in order. They will have to acknowledge that they should run the delivery process itself, and let the user choose from any solution the supplier has to offer.
Communities can make or brake
In the early days of salesforce, Marc Benioff discovered the power of communities, the hard way. When the product was still young and cloud solutions were sparse, saleforce made a dreamstart, but when first problems with the SalesForce application emerged, Salesforce decided to ignore all the comments entirely. When they actually started listening and created a community around their services, Salesforce got to the point where it is now; A highly successfull company with a very active community. Not only to provide for feedback to better the application, but also to create smart add-ons for the CRM solution. The most important lesson learned out of this was that when suppliers listen to their users, they will be able to adapt the products and services to users wishes and they will understand the users needs better. For the mobile phone industry, this has become already standard. On numerous websites, the latest mobile phones are commented on by the early buyers. Other people will see these comments and decide on user experiences to buy the mobile phone or go look for another brand or model. So the launch of a product or service does not only need a marketing push, but also a community pull. A common mistake that is often made, is to listen to the positive feedback only. Positive feedback is a good thing, but the supplier should listen even better to negative sounds. These are the sounds that eventually will make a better product or service. Make sure to think about the communication processes within the business, not only outgoing, but certainly incoming communication as well.
(inter)national partners are needed
It has been stated earlier that Cloud is not a local thing, it is global. when delivering Cloud services, the supplier should seek out international partners to work with, preferrably in different timezones or continents. There may be specific reasons why a supplier chooses not to work globally. Maybe because the service is only intended for a specific market, like healthcare or a government cloud solution.
In any way, when delivering Cloud services, the international element has to be taken into account as well. Think about alignment in contracts where one contract may apply in several areas, or the supplier should think about delivering their services to areas where contracts do not have be adjusted to make the service or product suitable for a specific country. When looking specifically for the "one size fits all", it will be much easier for the supplier to deliver their services internationally. In that way processes do not have to be rethought or adjusted to local situations.