Wednesday, March 10, 2004 1:14 PM
jcmaslan
Longhorn Business Value – Where’s the Killer App?
Yesterday I read (and recommend): “IT Doesn’t Matter – Business Processes Do.“
It’s a good analysis of the controversial HBR article “IT Doesn’t Matter”, and also cites others like John Hagel’s “IT Does Matter”.
It was timely reading, since I was returning from a Platform Strategy Advisor Summit where we discussed ways to illustrate Longhorn’s business value. I started my presentation with a phrase Cliff Reeves (a co-worker) used to characterize our platform value: “driving the marginal costs of integration to zero.” For an hour, we went through industry concept demos and debated about the kind of materials that help customers identify and exploit opportunities.
From those discussions, two comments in particular captured the torque I feel in describing Longhorn’s business value:
- “Where’s the killer app?” and
- “Where’s the business value? These demos were just feature pitches showing benefits for specific industry players.”
My immediate reaction to #1 was “it isn't about a killer app; it’s about killer business processes improvements”, and to #2 was “you just saw $50 million savings in one process for one healthcare company, what do you mean ‘where’s the value!?’”
But the questions call attention to the gap between two extremes of business value descriptions. At one end, you have high-level talk of things like “Digital Customer Relationships” and “Value Chain Efficiencies”, and at the other end you have very scenario-specific case studies.
Where's the middle ground?
As developers planning with your business counterparts, what materials would help you most?
