Many companies can’t seem to shake the belief that IT is so abstract that non-IT employees could never understand it – a misconception that stands in the way of IT modernisation. Instead of fearing complexity and other IT fragmentation factors as insurmountable business challenges, fragmentation should be seen as the one controllable constant in a highly specialised corporate reality.
Knowledge is power, so here is a breakdown of 7 insights for improved understanding:
1: FUNCTIONAL FRAGMENTATION
Tech plays a multi-dimensional role, so the breadth of IT tasks is considerable – from providing and maintaining basic infrastructure to choosing the right solutions and supporting business processes. And not only within departments, but even across companies. Functional fragmentation also includes the challenge of IT being asked to take care of a “quick issue”. These unofficial tasks are added to the day-to-day to-do list, further fragmenting workflows.
2: TEMPORAL FRAGMENTATION
“Now” and “later” tasks go hand in hand in IT (even if most tickets are to be dealt “asap”). “Later” tasks have a medium-term time horizon and can be processed alongside daily operations, introducing a new project management tool for example. Immediate tasks, on the other hand include to-dos such as adapting an interface between the warehouse and production systems during up-time. Due to the urgency of “now” tasks, IT staff tend to abandon “later” tasks that have already been started. The disadvantage of this fragmented logic is that employees are forced to interrupt, refocus and then start again, which takes more time that is then missing for other tasks.
3: SYSTEMIC FRAGMENTATION
Every company has seen at least one legacy system in its time. New, old, industry-specific and general systems are all accounted for. Some in use, some mothballed, some no longer being actively used, but that still hold key data. This systemic fragmentation is known as brownfield development, with new systems working alongside software already in situ. Where each system has its own data and speaks its own language. Good luck to anyone trying to find complete and updated documentation in this fractured environment!
4: INTERFACE FRAGMENTATION
In order for systems to communicate with each other, brownfield integrations are implemented at random – by different employees or external service providers, some of whom may now no longer work for the company. These interfaces are rarely coherent. It’s possible that one and the same inventory system uses file-based FTP uploads to communicate with the ecommerce software, AS400 to talk to the ERP software, and triggers web services to deal with the WMS. This heterogeneity complicates communication, causes transmission errors and gives rise to avoidable costs.
5: ORGANISATIONAL FRAGMENTATION
Due to the nature of their work, IT teams deal with a wide range of departments when digitalising processes. Within these departments, IT stays in touch with individual employees who are the sole holders of process-specific knowledge. Whether this knowledge can be communicated to IT depends on the employee’s willingness to share this information and their didactic skills. If IT is unable to fully grasp the process in question, any processes introduced, no matter how sophisticated, will be for naught.
6: PROCEDURAL FRAGMENTATION
Organisational fragmentation leads to procedural fragmentation. In addition to the different programming and system languages, the departments also have to navigate different “process languages”. Of course, the logistician has other concerns and analysis tools than the production manager or the sales lead. But even within one department there can be procedural fragmentation. The procurement process for screws differs from that for solar panels. Here, too, there is a general lack of suitable process documentation.
7: HUMAN-SYSTEM FRAGMENTATION
The digitalisation of processes is rarely comprehensive. There is always a gap somewhere, where a human has to intervene – usually when important decisions have to be made. Even today, human intervention still involves employees taking hand-written data and manually entering it into a computer. One should not forget to consider the interface as a communicative layer between human and machine.
