Platform vs. Program Expertise?

In sourcing operational leadership for enterprise platform integrations, focus on program expertise over platform familiarity

This one is for the Customers — those who are on the buying/accountability side of large, complex, programs. We’re talking about programs that involve the installation of mission-critical operational platforms into enterprise operations. These are platforms like general ledgers, ERPs, personalization engines, data warehouses/lakes/visualization tools, portfolio planning tools, asset management systems, and HR/Ops platforms.

Among the many, many important decisions to be made in instantiating those programs is how to handle their executive-level management. In bootstrapping programs of this magnitude, sometimes amid all the other details of platform selection, system integration partner interviews, investment forecasting, and integrated planning, the critical element of program management architecture gets lost. It seems such a small thing — simply an administrative shadow of all the really important work to be done — its easy to lose adequate control of along the way.

Here’s how that usually goes:

1. Customer needs a large platform integrated into their highly complex operational environment
2. A platform is chosen
3. The platform vendor has its own professional services team, or a list of partners to provide system integration
4. A System Integrator (SI) is chosen
5. In its SOW, the SI includes a line item for “Program Management”
6. The customer is thrilled, thinking, “I don’t have any people to do this, anyway,” and, “They’ve got to be good at this since they do it all the time…”

Sometimes, this scenario works okay. Most of the time, less so. There are two key problems with this approach:

FIRST, Program management should be a function of the customer. They are the ones receiving the assets of the build, and thus ultimately responsible for the quality of deliverables. This is not a function that should be outsourced — particularly not to the vendor doing the work.

SECOND, Expertise with the chosen platform and expertise running complex programs are not the same thing. While it is theoretically possible that the SI has a resource who adequately wields both, experience suggests that those resources are as rare as rainbow-colored ponies.

Each of these problems/opportunities is addressed in the sections below.

Program Management as a Customer Function

The largest and most dynamic enterprises may have their own team of on-staff program managers with the expertise and gravitas necessary to run large, complex, mission-critical initiatives. For everyone else, these initiatives only roll around every few years and it just doesn’t make sense to warehouse this talent.

Due to this reality, when the head of that professional services team at the vendor, or managing partner at the SI, offers to cover the program management function on their own team, most customers jump at the opportunity. Ultimately though, this strategy falls short.

Due to the scope and criticality of responsibilities shouldered by this program manager, as well as the need to leverage trusted relationships when challenges arise, it is best for this role to be played by a resource inside the customer org. Because a large portion of this job consists of coordinating and policing the everyday activities of the program, it can seem a fishy proposition for that SI-supplied program manager to be effectively policing a group of colleagues with whom they share a margin imperative outside of the program.

Due to the scope and criticality of responsibilities shouldered by this program manager, as well as the need to leverage trusted relationships when challenges arise, it is best for this role to be played by a resource inside the customer org

As with so much in this business, customer comfort when things are going well can feel very different than when the program gets hung-up in challenging terrain. At the time of SOW execution the System Integrator’s A-team is in the room and everyone is all smiles. A few months later, when the idiosyncrasies of the scope become apparent and the customer is comparing an obscene burn rate against a conference room full of twenty-something consultants, relations can become less cordial.

In that moment the customer needs its own program professional, fully-embedded with the team, with trusted expertise and clear loyalties, to plot a course through the thicket.

Having strong program management expertise on the vendor side is always a benefit. In the best case scenario, that is matched by a customer-side counterpart through whom a senior-to-senior planning dynamic can be established.

Program vs. Platform Expertise

Allow me to clearly state up front that this is a choice we really shouldn’t have to make. Logically speaking, we should be able to find resources who are equally strong in their expertise with the chosen platform as they are with the discipline of program management for large and complex integrations. My own experience from the field, however, suggests these folks are few and far between.

For the most prevalent platforms, like Oracle Financials, I have worked with some leaders from the very largest System Integrators that wielded necessary strength in both disciplines. But those ninjas are the exception rather than the rule. And once you wade outside of the very most popular platforms, and/or the largest and most expensive System Integrators, the population plummets.

Perhaps it is a simple function of personality… Maybe the psychological nature of those who yearn for deep platform expertise is incongruous with the flexibility, sensitivity, and process focus that engender strong programs. I’m personally too close to this debate to be able to describe the WHY with much clarity. All I know is that in the real marketplace these people are not as widely available as we would like or expect.

“The Tech Works Just Fine”

Further, the challenges that knock us down in these programs are rarely rooted in the tech, itself. Generally speaking, the platforms being chosen for mission-critical business functions at large enterprises are well vetted across many years of real-life performance across a broad portfolio of customers. Unless you sign up to beta test a brand new AI-based ERP, you should feel confident that the tech will work as expected.

The most challenging terrain the program must traverse is that soft tissue zone BETWEEN the platform and the operational organization into which it must be integrated. For success in this region, you need a program manager with the expertise to successfully:

• Establish ground rules, put on the striped shirt, and help officiate the game of everyday program activity
• Manage the dynamic breadth and depth of program scope
• Establish and support strong information exchange between the business SMEs and the technologists charged with translating their needs into platform configurations/customizations
• Maintain program transparency to stakeholders and enterprise leaders, alike
• Manage the customer-side political landscape in order to escalate issues and find resolutions
• Establish ‘single source of truth’ assets to unify the team and contextualize its work
• Establish and enforce clear jurisdictional boundaries across program resources/groups
• Maximize collaboration with partner groups, both inside and outside of the specific customer’s org [incl. PMO, Audit, Corporate Finance, Corporate IT]
• Create balance and accountability across multiple vendor partners, often whom are competitors in the larger marketplace
• Deploy carrot and stick as necessary to keep the whole assembly moving in the right direction at a reasonable pace

That being the case, if forced to choose between platform expertise and program prowess, you’d rather have the latter.

That’s not to say you don’t need technical expertise in your build. Of course you do! But in the vast majority of cases that is already supplied through the platform vendor, and/or their professional services team, and/or the technical resources on the SI team. We already have solid coverage around technical expertise. What we need is a senior-level program resource with the competency, sensitivity, and clout to orchestrate integration of that tech into the very human operational architecture of the customer organization.

Hop In, Let’s Go

Conventional wisdom suggests that the resource you need to lead your complex platform integration would be the resource with the most expertise in the platform. My own experience suggests otherwise.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the resource you need to lead your complex platform integration would be the resource with the most expertise in the platform

Of course we need platform expertise, and that comes through the platform vendor and whatever strategy they market to ensure what they sell gets successfully installed. But that only represents the first few steps on an arduous integration journey.

To maximize your chances at a successful arrival, you need a program manager with expertise in the dynamics of large programs across complex enterprises. And you’d really like that resource to not work for your chosen System Integrator. If the SI has that function on offer, great. But you need your own heavy to stand toe-to-toe and ensure your interests, as the customer, remain front-and-center.

If you don’t carry resources with that level of program management expertise on your team, then engage an independent to play this role from your side. While they will have to hustle to climb the learning curve of your enterprise and establish trust with your leaders, at least you’ll know they have the planning competency to effectively lead your program, and their loyalties sit squarely with you.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.