On the one hand, thanks to the boom in smart consumer
devices and the ubiquity of the Internet in corporate and personal life, employees at all levels of the organization are more
comfortable with technology than ever before.
On the other hand, the U.S. workforce is now 20-odd years
into a decline in expertise in science, technology, engineering
and math (the so-called STEM disciplines), according to the
National Research Council and other education observers. If you
include statistical analysis in that skill set, the decline potentially sets the stage for a perfect storm in self-service I T, where
overconfident but underskilled end users run amok in business
systems, draw bad conclusions from randomly mashed-up data or
corrupt IT’s once-pristine data stores.
“Some employees — particularly the younger members of the
workforce — have an attitude of ‘give me access and I’ll figure
it out,’ but there are nuances to data that they may not realize,”
observes Cindi Howson, founder of business intelligence consul-
tancy BIScorecard. “Some start out quite cavalier in their efforts,
then get to a certain point and have to call for help.”
That said, Howson believes such failures are a necessary part of
the process as I T, business units and end users renegotiate the deli-
cate balance of who can do what when it comes to corporate data.
After years of tight control by IT, the pendulum is swinging
the other way — “sometimes maybe a little too far the other
way,” Howson says. Nevertheless, the move toward self-service is
only going to accelerate, she and other analysts say, as IT depart-
ments face increasing demand, from the newest hire to the most
senior executive, for faster, better access to corporate services
and data. “IT cannot keep up. They need to be delivering intel-
ligence faster and in a way that’s more aligned with the business
than what they’ve been able to deliver in the past,” she says.
Kentucky Community and Technical College System:
Serving a Diverse Group of End Users
With 16 colleges in 70 locations serving an estimated 130,000
faculty members, staff members, and students, KCTCS supports
a broad swath of users.
KCTCS uses Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital
Management system to roll out self-service components to its
various user constituencies, says CTO Paul Czarapata. PeopleSoft’s Campus Solutions application allows students to enroll in
classes, pay their bills and make scheduling changes. Czarapata
says that module is relatively easy to administer, for two reasons.
First, he says, “the students really don’t have that many mind-
boggling choices — they can see if they’re admitted to a class
and pay for it. Everything else is on Blackboard” — a separate
student-services system, widely used in higher education, that
also incorporates self-service as a cornerstone. Second, “students
pick up on [self-service] quicker than employees do,” he adds.
“For the most part, they’re a little more technically savvy and
used to doing things for themselves.”
This past October, KCTCS rolled out an ambitious online
benefits-enrollment system that relied heavily upon self-service
options, a big change for KCTCS em-
ployees. “We’ve got a super-complex HR
system,” Czarapata acknowledges. “On
the HR side, we’ve got a lot of choices.”
Change management and commu-
nications were critical to achieving
a smooth rollout, he says, “especially
since we had to reach 68 locations.”
In trying to ensure that the benefits
system matched the technical expertise
of its users as it was being developed,
KCTCS did have one advantage: “We
do know who our employees are, as
opposed to a business trying to attract
customers online,” Czarapata says.
Another plus: Having worked
together closely on other projects, I T
developers generally agreed with HR’s
assessment of users’ abilities — and
when they didn’t, they felt free to make
suggestions or ask questions. “Other
times, IT might not push back as much,
but on this project, most of the people
have worked with each other for a long
time,” Czarapata says. “[IT’s] role was to
look at designs, follow the flow-through
and establish filters to determine who
gets the appropriate data,” most of
which was done in concert with the
lead systems person from the HR side.
