He's quite right in his analysis, though his writing is confusing, particually due to buzzword bingo. Many companies are doing services + BPM + workflow + "intelligent agents" (which sounds puffy, but is likely something like decision trees or bayesian inference baked into a CRM vendor's advisor component), and SOA is helping to drive the cost & time to market down, but this is sell-side stuff.
The interesting thing is looking at SOA as a way of standarizing IT activities so it can be organized much more rapidly, into a more demand-driven model. Which to me means "lean thinking" -- demand-pulled value streams, flow, and kaizen. The problem with lean thinking in IT has traditionally been that one couldn't do company-wide business process & systems reorganization without massive capital and time sinks. The hope is that SOA will shrink that cost significantly in most cases. Which hopefully will begin to erode the other massive capital and time sink that hinders broad lean adoption: changing human attitudes, cultures, and values (moving from product-centric to customer-centric).
But if history is any indicator, technological change often drives societal & cultural change (despite business consultants arguing the opposite).
Stu
----- Original Message ----
From: Gervas Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 2:10:31 PM
Subject: [service-orientated-architecture] SOA & Selling
<<There is an ephinany happening in these early adopter companies who
are focused on using SOA frameworks to kick-start their
customer-facing strategies. It's the fact that once databases, data
warehouses, data marts and even product configuration data is
unleashed to support applications that make more focused customer
strategies possible an entirely new dynamic emerges around the
intelligence itself: it becomes more aggressive, more focused on
goals, and ultimately a larger contributor to the company's goals
being met or exceeded. SOA early adopters are finding a maturity model
emerging around the competitive value of information based on its
applicability to customer-facing strategies, and it's again not about
the software, it's about the business strategies getting fueled with
more accurate, precise data.
Pricing and compliance are the areas where CIOs really want to have
their data deliver aggressive intelligence. To counter a competitor
through the use of agent-based technology, routed through BPEL-based
workflows, all transparent to the agent or sales rep, that captures a
new account or keep an existing one from defecting is what one
mortgage company today is betting on to drive up customer lifetime
value. Reducing churn through the use of this new form of aggressive
intelligence delivered through intelligent agents is where one cable
company wants to be as well. The fact that pricing exceptions, also
called special pricing requests, have long been a goldmine of untapped
businesses for companies that choose to automate this process. In the
financial services industry one CIO told me that they are piloting a
Web Service to handle all pricing exceptions to allow for sales reps,
sales managers and directors to spend more time where it matters most,
which is in front of the largest customers. Intelligent agents and Web
Services are just two of the ways CIOs are looking to capitalize on
their SOA framework pilots to create intelligence that isn't just
historical or analytical, it's aggressive in its use to win new
business and retain existing customers.>>
You can read this in full at:
http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/soa/features/7012.html
This might not interest the hard-core techies among you, but unless
SOA can demosntrate some clear business benefits, it is going to find
it difficult to succeed on mere technical arguments.
Gervas
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
The interesting thing is looking at SOA as a way of standarizing IT activities so it can be organized much more rapidly, into a more demand-driven model. Which to me means "lean thinking" -- demand-pulled value streams, flow, and kaizen. The problem with lean thinking in IT has traditionally been that one couldn't do company-wide business process & systems reorganization without massive capital and time sinks. The hope is that SOA will shrink that cost significantly in most cases. Which hopefully will begin to erode the other massive capital and time sink that hinders broad lean adoption: changing human attitudes, cultures, and values (moving from product-centric to customer-centric).
But if history is any indicator, technological change often drives societal & cultural change (despite business consultants arguing the opposite).
Stu
----- Original Message ----
From: Gervas Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 2:10:31 PM
Subject: [service-orientated-architecture] SOA & Selling
<<There is an ephinany happening in these early adopter companies who
are focused on using SOA frameworks to kick-start their
customer-facing strategies. It's the fact that once databases, data
warehouses, data marts and even product configuration data is
unleashed to support applications that make more focused customer
strategies possible an entirely new dynamic emerges around the
intelligence itself: it becomes more aggressive, more focused on
goals, and ultimately a larger contributor to the company's goals
being met or exceeded. SOA early adopters are finding a maturity model
emerging around the competitive value of information based on its
applicability to customer-facing strategies, and it's again not about
the software, it's about the business strategies getting fueled with
more accurate, precise data.
Pricing and compliance are the areas where CIOs really want to have
their data deliver aggressive intelligence. To counter a competitor
through the use of agent-based technology, routed through BPEL-based
workflows, all transparent to the agent or sales rep, that captures a
new account or keep an existing one from defecting is what one
mortgage company today is betting on to drive up customer lifetime
value. Reducing churn through the use of this new form of aggressive
intelligence delivered through intelligent agents is where one cable
company wants to be as well. The fact that pricing exceptions, also
called special pricing requests, have long been a goldmine of untapped
businesses for companies that choose to automate this process. In the
financial services industry one CIO told me that they are piloting a
Web Service to handle all pricing exceptions to allow for sales reps,
sales managers and directors to spend more time where it matters most,
which is in front of the largest customers. Intelligent agents and Web
Services are just two of the ways CIOs are looking to capitalize on
their SOA framework pilots to create intelligence that isn't just
historical or analytical, it's aggressive in its use to win new
business and retain existing customers.>>
You can read this in full at:
http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/soa/features/7012.html
This might not interest the hard-core techies among you, but unless
SOA can demosntrate some clear business benefits, it is going to find
it difficult to succeed on mere technical arguments.
Gervas
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| Soa | Service-oriented architecture |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "service-orientated-architecture" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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