WHAT DOES ROY HODGSON KNOW ABOUT BUSINESS SYSTEMS?
June 2012

I know nothing about football, when the theme tune of Match of the Day comes on T.V. the dulcet tones send me to sleep on the sofa. This year is full to the brim of football football football and what I have gleaned from office gossip is that the new manager Roy Hodgson has put together a less than desirable squad, with the shocking news that seasoned pro Rio Ferdinand has been left out. I have also learnt that some of people I work with could become England’s manager tomorrow and do a better job!

It is interesting seeing a manager pull together a team of footballing stars, each with their own unique skills and attributes, in an attempt to make up an uber team able to compete internationally. How does he go about choosing?

• He needs to understand the objectives of what he is trying to achieve – he needs a vision
• He needs to understand what skills are required and how they fit into the overall picture
• He needs to assess the experience and skills that individuals have – understanding their attributes, their strengths, their weaknesses, how they play with one another
• He then needs to take all of that information, review it, consolidate it and architect his squad
• Finally he has the unenviable task of managing the squad and delivering on his vision

So, what has this all got to do with creating an Information Systems strategy? Well, the process of defining a squad for Euro 2012 is remarkably similar to defining what you need from your business systems. The starting point is to understand what you are trying to achieve as a business and your key drivers. With this context you then can begin to understand the information needs of the organisation and the ‘skills’ required from the systems and how they fit into the overall picture. Assessing the systems you have in place, their strengths and weaknesses and how well they ‘play with’ other systems is a key step in identifying the gaps, inefficiencies and potential areas for inaccuracies. The final steps are reviewing and consolidating this information, identifying systems to keep, those that should be ‘left out,’ those that should ‘change position’ and how they should ‘play together.’

So my colleagues may not be far off the mark when they say they could become England’s manager tomorrow – they understand the process of putting that squad together – I suspect they are forgetting that ‘people’ and ‘systems’ are not quite the same thing.
Roy Hodgson could