In this module, we've been discussing getting ready to move. The final thing we need to talk about is the impact that this is going to have on roles in the organization. Topics we're going to discuss are the impact on ICT roles in particular. We're going to use a case study from an organization in heavy engineering. We're going to look also at a new role example form a vendor liaison officer. And importantly, we're going to look at the role of the change manager. Moving to the Cloud impacts on an organizations reporting relationships, on its portfolio of roles, and on its organizational structure. In this session we'll discuss the impact on the job roles themselves. We're going to use a heavy industry organization as our case study to illustrate this. The organization has approximately 2,500 staff, so it's not big, but it's not small either. It has a core capability in engineering, very much a maintenance mindset, if a problem develops, then it will be rectified. It has an ICT platform which has evolved ad hoc, its platform, as essential infrastructure, had been largely neglected. And it suffers from multiple platforms, multiple applications, multiple versions of things. And there is a proliferation of Excel and Access workarounds. The driver of change for this organization was a cost containment crisis. They appointed a CIO for the first time, and they identified Cloud opportunities, with an indicative 50% cost reduction with maintaining an IT platform this meant a reduction in ICT headcount. There was a huge impact on its architecture, numerous applications supporting the business were rationalized, 35 as is applications, which there then rationalized down to five core applications, which could run the whole organization from an operational sense. As a consequence, there was a large impact on the roles. There was a reduction in application support cost, which was achieved through license savings and reduced headcount. The application support costs were current at $7.5 million, with an expectation, once rationalization had taken place, there would be something like $2.8 million on an annual basis. The impact on the headcount was that there were 29 people in ICT supporting this application suite. This was able to be rationalized down to 18 roles, and you can see from this diagram, that there were new roles created and others needed to reduce. A business analyst went from naught to four. Previously, they didn't have a business analyst, but they realized that they needed four. They didn't have an architectural capability either, but they realized they needed two to maintain the new platform. The vendor liaison officer was there to support the software license agreements, but there was a recognition that in a Cloud environment this needed to be given much more thought. There was a development capability of two which was needed to be increased to four to accommodate the integration and the fixes that needed to be done on the fly. And application support, a very large application support crew of some 26 resources, which could be reduced to six. Now let's just have a look at the role description. We mentioned a vendor liaison officer, and we've talked about a vendor liaison officer before when we were talking about new roles. This is an instance where this was necessary. The primary responsibilities of that role were to be the primary contact between the client and vendor. This is now the interface between the organization and the third party provider. To monitor performance against service level agreements. To manage work orders as new requirements arose and were specified. To report and feedback on progresses being made against a contract. And to manage problem and issue resolution. And importantly this role reports to the Chief Information Officer. The requisite skills and experience for this Vendor Liaison Officer were commerce or equivalent degree, experience with vendor management Well developed interpersonal and written communication skills, these were critical. Demonstrated planning skills, analytical and problem solving skills. And the ability to interpret and apply contracts. So a very marked change to current operations in that organization. So leading back to the role of the Change Manager. The Change Manager must be involved with the issues which might some of which are difficult in terms of workforce redundancy. We'll reducing our application support head count from 26 to 6. There are elements of staff redeployment, reskilling, and specification of the new roles. This leads on to recruitment planning. And, again, we need to emphasize the importance of human resource management collaboration in this. In the case study, the specification of new roles was required for the new business analyst role. For the new architect roles. For the vendor liaison and I'm just giving you an example of what some of those responsibilities are. For the new developer roles. Because these people are now more focused on developing in a cloud environment for integration purposes and for application support. Again in a Cloud environment, application support roles become very different. A lot of these new and changed roles came at a high level of responsibility and a higher pay scale. These roles as they were created were benchmarked against the skills framework for the information age. To be able to provide consistency and standards, just as we talked about in our governance discussions. So in summary, when moving to the cloud, some roles will be created, Some roles are no longer needed. There will be an impact on the ICT function. And the change manager must manage the specification of the new and changed roles. And then there is the importance of collaboration with human resource management around issues concerning recruitment, redeployment, and retrenchment to be able to support the new structure.
