Figure 1.0: Disgruntled Bank customers
The image in Figure 1.0 sums up how a systems implementation project that was meant to enhance the experience for a bank’s customer and staff turned into a near horror show. The upgrade of the Bank’s Online Banking platform almost triggered a run on the bank as customer’s woke up to a new platform that had an unfamiliar and complicated user interface with most system functionalities not working as expected.
The writer’s experience was from both of an internal Technology Innovation advisor and an avid customer of both the old and new system
The exact ordeal for both internal and external customer.
After much expectation from the upgrade customers woke up to a new Internet Banking system that, firstly, was inaccessible and almost unusable once a customer gained access to the system.
The migration of users from the old system to new one was not smooth and required a lot of manual interventions by bank staff . Once successfully migrated the customers struggled to find the functionalities they used in the old system, with some hidden in the complicated user interface and some having new names. What made it worse was there was no user manual available.
The internal customer, from front to middle-office had to content with the barrage of customer complaints which they, mostly, didn’t have solutions for. Neither did the system implementation team, including the external implementation partner have immediate answers.
This was just a system implementation gone horribly wrong to the extent that remedial work was more like a fresh system implementation. This ordeal went for more than three months and it certainly had a negative effect to the bank’s reputation and personally affected the staff members well being.
This poorly implemented system was almost career threatening to the writer as several stakeholders, internal and external, assumed he had superintended over this upgrade and were keen to understand if there were going to be any consequences for such a shoddy job.
Questions that went begging
Both external and internal customers incessantly posed a question that was difficult to answer: “Why did the bank upgrade a system that was working, we did not have any issues with the old system?. The other comment from the customers, again both external and internal was: “ Well, even if the the Bank deemed it so important to upgrade they should have, at the minimum, maintained the good attributes of the old system.
Customers profusely asked if the Bank had tested this system before rolling it out to customers.
What really went wrong?- the writer’s perspective
Most of the things that can go wrong in a systems implementation project went wrong. From the justification of the system/replacement, the choice of system, disregard of data in the selection process, failure to apply professional management processes and lastly absence of customer’s voice in the whole process.
The motivation for the upgrade was not driven by verified insights but more by seemingly unsubstantiated market trends and regulatory pressures. The self-serving interests of the provider of the system also weighed in as they offered the upgrade as the easiest solution to address some of the issues that were coming out of the system issues. They also offered a carrot of reduced cost of system maintenance after the upgrade, something that was never substantiated. The bank didn’t take time to understand their real problem before electing to go for this system upgrade.
There seemed to be little consideration of the project team’s recommendation to replace the current system as informed by the data collected through various methods. Ultimately we settled for “ The Devil we knew”, the devil who gave us a glimpse of what hell looks like. The selection of the implementation partner was also was not driven by value and merit but mainly by cost.
The project resourcing was also questionable as the business did not second their best resources to ensure all their customer and internal processes requirements would be fully met. This resulted in poor progress monitoring from a business perspective as well noncomprehensive testing where the responsibility was abrogated to the implementation partner and the technology team.
The business managers seemed to have delegated the accountability for critical decisions, particularly on what to take to the customer, to the technology experts and their junior representative something which is a recipe for disaster as has been long established (Pearlson, et al., 2016). They only reacted and started blaming the project team for a poorly implemented project, and the question back at them was:” Where were you when the project was being implemented?”, which they found difficult to answer.
The final nail to the coffin was the release of the system to the customers in order to meet the project time objective and not necessarily the more important objective of meeting the customer and staff expectations.
Figure 2.0 - The Hippo phenomenon
A common phenomenon namely Highest Paid Person Opinion (HiPPo), illustrated in Figure 2.0 below seemed to rear its ugly head as the most decisions didn’t consider relevant data but the opinion of senior management. management.( Fenton, et al., 2020; TR
Plane, 2021). And this also explains why no heads rolled as a result of this failure of arguably epic proportions.
The immediate solution to the ordeal
After careful analysis a decision was made to bring in a new implementation partner to address the system issues. The business team seconded their best resources to understand the new system and how it would impact. Amazingly the findings of the new resources seemed like a whole new set of business requirements which confirmed that the requirements gathering had been poorly executed. Wider consultations were made on the way forward and at this point the input thereof was given due consideration
Lessons learnt from this experience
In order to increase chances of a successful Information System implementation an organisation has to give due consideration to each of the three pillars of any system namely People, Processes and Technology. Ignoring any one of them will introduce risks to achievement of intended business benefits. (Pearlson, et al., 2016)
The need to make decisions based on data and expert opinion became apparent.
The grand lesson from this experience is that failure to develop and follow effective processes to select and implement an information systems can lead to an organisation failing to achieve the intended business goals. (Pearlson, et al., 2016).
Whither to? from this embarrassing ordeal: Adoption of lessons learnt
After learning the hard and embarrassing lessons highlighted above the organisation has had to adopt more progressive approaches to systems selection and developments where systems need to be proven before committing. They have adopted a set of business design principles, with the major one being an outside-in approach where the targeted consumer is consulted on their expectations of a system with their input carrying significant weight in the final product. This approach has also been seen to reduce the effect of HIPPO phenomenon (Yoshimura, 2014). Other ways to reduce the HiPPO effect or “ How to train the HiPPO” such as “humble enquiry” and the “art of asking rather than telling” have also been adopted. ( Schein,
2013 cited in Fenton, et al, 2020).
References
Fenton, A., Fletcher , G. & Griffiths, M., 2020. Strategic Digital Transformation A Results-Driven Approach. New York(New York): Routledge.
Pearlson, K. e., Saunders, C. S. & Galleta, D. S., 2016. Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach. Hoboken(New Jersey): John Wiley & Sons.
TR Plane, 2021. HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion). [Online] Available at: https://www.trplane.com/en/hippo-highest-paid-persons-opinion/ [Accessed 2023 April].
Yoshimura, J., 2014. 4 Ways to Avoid the Pitfalls of HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). [Online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141202162919-9221-4-ways-to-avoid-the-pitfalls-of-hippo-highest-paid-person-s-opinion [Accessed April 2023].
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