> Articles archivés   Dans la collection Décider Le grand angle : une vue révélatrice Qui décide ? Celui qui porte la responsabilité du business. “Decision-making begins where the bottom line responsibility starts.”

Qui décide ? Celui qui porte la responsabilité du business. (mise à jour août 2004, première version en mars 2004) Résumé : Il n'est pas évident de gérer les priorités et les besoins variés quand une entreprise décide de créer un portail clients à l'échelle mondiale. Qui décide des fonctionalités ? Quel degré de standardisation est souhaitable ? Combien de souplesse ? Comment arriver à prendre ces décisions tout en gardant la participation de tous les pays ?   Lire article complet en anglais ci-dessous.   Who decides? Depends on who's accountable for the bottom line (August 2004, original version March 2004) Where should corporate guidelines stop and local autonomy start? Intranet managers and steering committees can debate the question as long as they like, but the real answer came to me in a 15-minute conversation over coffee in the headquarters of a major multinational company located in the heart of Paris. Autonomy starts where the bottom line starts! Members of the global e-business team were talking with the global purchasing manager. The subject was the customer portal. The question was how to get countries to accept the corporate guidelines. The problem was that many countries said they had different ways of doing business and that the the customer portal needed to be different for each country. The global team was trying to get agreement across countries about which processes to implement on the portal. Wise - or shall we say burned - from several years experience of standardizing sourcing processes across the company, the purchasing manager was categorical, "Decision-making begins where the bottom line begins". "I know best" If a country director is responsible for the profit and loss in his market, he will decide what is offered and not offered on the portal used by his customers. "When it comes to my market and my customers, I'll decide what works best." Most managers understand that standardization, similar processes, etc. are good ideas, but when it comes to making a decision, their own needs come first. Portal architectures must be flexible enough to encompass these diversities. Otherwise local sales teams will simply not use them. That means that customers will not use them either. It may or may not make sense to standardize your customer relation and communication processes across all countries. That will depend on what business you are in. For many companies, full standarization will never be appropriate. If it is for you, it could be a long time before you achieve it. It will depend on how big your company is, how standardized you are already and how diverse your markets are. Bringing priorities together In the meantime, what do you do with your portal? You can either hold off implementation, or find a way through the maze of different needs. A good starting point would be to bring the bottom-line business people together in a workshop. Organize actitivies ranging from creative brainstorming to structured step-by-step decision making. Clarify where you have agreement and where you don't. The business people may find they have more in common than they realized. However, starting with the lowest common denominator will not necessarily give you a competitive solution. Hopefully the portal team will see ways to provide a common base and still accomodate differences through a flexible architecture and content management strategy. One way to achieve this is to have clear and logical ownership policy for different parts of the portal. Let the business owners take responsibility for their specific areas. But make sure you have a high level owner, in charge of the home page and the functions that cross all business areas. (August 2004, original version March 2004)

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