Feasibility of the new practice

All global teams had the intention of demonstrating that the pilot was feasible.

This is defined as the pilot putting the initiative into effect in the sense that it was

“implementable” or put into reliable operation rather than the sense of delivering economic benefits (Table 15). Managers used phrases such as “Check it actually works in real life”, “Prove the processes are going to work”, “Get the whole thing working in a reliable manner”. For instance, the KCX global team member said:-

So in terms of the real goal, I think it an acceptance from the business that it is really functioning well. – Global team member

Table 15: Intention to demonstrate pilot feasibility SI Co Pilot intentions related to feasibility

ITX B Testing the processes and making sure that we have the processes in place – Global project leader

OFX B Validate that it worked – Global project leader

CRX A Test if solution is technically working well – Global project leader

NKX A Get a few quick wins so that we could show internally that it is working and implemented in a short time – Global project leader

SPX A Demonstrate to your own organization that it is working – Global project leader

PTX B Make sure that it fits the business and it actually viable – Global steering member

ASX A Prove that the processes that we map would work OK – Global project leader

KCX A Get the whole think working in a reliable manner – Global steering member

FTX B Validate that we could change the way of working and change the processes – Global project leader

EDX B Check if solution is stable enough – Global steering member

In all the cases global initiative leaders, global team members and global steering members stressed that demonstrating feasibility in the pilot would engage the subsidiary managers and increase their level of commitment to the strategic initiative. For instance, the FTX global project leader said:-

And the success of the pilot also makes it clearer for other companies that this works – it validates it so "OK, we will go into this". – Global project leader

The analysis suggested that there were three main components of feasibility where differences could be recognized between the two sets of cases (Table 16). Firstly, for the highly adopted initiatives global steering members reported that the pilot had largely met the goal aspirations laid out before the pilot started.

An aspiration level in individual decision making is the result of a boundedly rational decision maker trying to simplify evaluation by transforming a continuous

measure of performance into discrete measure of success or failure (March &

Simon, 1958; March 1988). Words such as “met criteria, “positive feedback”,

“well done” were all common. For instance, the ITX global steering member said:-

First of all they got the project go-ahead; and then they got the project models in place; and project implementation allowed for all of the key criteria to actually be met. – Steering member

And a NKX steering member reported on the multiple pilots:-

US pilot was extremely successful and the launch went well from the content view “the site was in a pretty good condition.” France and Finland have been quite successful. – Steering member

More will be reported on the nature of these aspiration levels in Section 5.1.3 and Section 5.2.3.

Table 16:

Pilot feasibility

SI Co Pilot aspirations met in steering committee*

Global team capability to manage the scope of the project within pilot duration

Strategic initiative endorsement by pilot managers

ITX B 4.0 project implementation allowed for all of the key criteria to actually be met

High we wanted to restrict the scope of the project – Global project leader

Strong yes we got visits from all the market companies within the

Med-High we thought that this was a simple solution, but we underestimated the effort – Global project leader

Strong and we supported them through conference calls or

High now it is more stabilized, although we have some difficulties; but we have learned and we know the system. – Global team member

Strong we held the E-Business summit and I had the

SI Co Pilot aspirations met in steering committee*

(cont.)

Global team capability to manage the scope of the project within pilot duration (cont.)

Strategic initiative endorsement by pilot managers (cont.)

KCX A 3.0 it is not successful yet, but showing some promise

Low I think that is the kind of very big learning – because the scope was just so much bigger than we could ever anticipate I think – Global steering member

Only informal feedback

-

FTX B 2.3 if I actually look at it against the criteria we set in terms of

success, you know, we are closer to a 2

Low we made the mistake of being too ambitious on the overall project, both in terms of scope and in terms of speed - Global steering member

Only informal feedback

-

EDX B 1.5 it was not a success.

On a pure design point of view, designing the solution was a mess

Low the project leader saw and learned stuff every day... which meant that we had never-ending overruns and never-ending additional scope.– Global steering member

Only informal feedback

-

* Average assessment of the extent to which the pilot was successful by 2-3 steering members using 1-5 scale where 1=to no extent, and 5=

to a great extent

The second component of feasibility which could be recognized for the more highly adopted cases was that the scope of the pilot was kept under control during implementation and hence completing the pilot was feasible within the pilot duration. For instance, the CRX global project leader commented:-

You see what I mean? It was really a sort of a focused implementation, discipline, meeting the feedback of the pilot country to design a solution which is useful for the sales people. But a strong discipline to avoid that in each step of the implementation we get a failure because a country might say "OK, I don't want that solution"; and you know, a country could still, at that time, block the project. – Global project leader

Even though some countries wanted more features in the new tool, additional functionalities were only added to the CRM tool during a second and third implementation phase.

Thirdly, pilot managers in the more highly adopted initiatives talked about how they personally endorsed the strategic initiative through a series of formal actions such as holding conference calls about the initiative with the subsidiary managers, hosting pilot visits, visiting the subsidiaries to share their learnings, and talking openly about their experiences at internal organizational conferences. The OFX pilot manager told us:-

We shared with them the time schedules, the structures, the scope of the project, the… I mean lessons learned during the process – to make this learning go more stable in… not to repeat the same problems we had here, in other sites. – Pilot manager

And a NKX pilot manager said:-

When I was at the E-Business Summit, they had a lot of questions; so when we were eating lunch and outside of the actual presentations, they had a lot of questions for us in regards to how the pilot went, you know, what we thought could have been different, or if it went well – those types of questions. So they were interested. – Pilot manager

In contrast in the less highly adopted initiatives, steering members were less positive about the pilots meeting pre-defined expectations. For instance, a global steering member from EDX said:-

It was not a success. On a pure design point of view, designing the solution was a mess. – Steering member

And in FTX a steering member said:-

But if I actually look at it against the criteria that we set in terms of success, you know, we are closer to a 2 (out of 5). – Steering member

One exception to this was in the KCX case where the steering members felt that they could not yet judge the feasibility of the pilot because it was not yet complete. But one steering member did comment:-

I’m giving it low marks because even if it delivers what is required it is way over budget and so far behind. – Steering member

This indicates that it running behind schedule was also having a negative impact on feasibility assessments of the pilot.

The scope of the pilot ran out of control during implementation. For instance, the FTX global team member commented:-

Yes, I think… yes we made the mistake of being too ambitious on the overall project, both in terms of scope and in terms of speed… And then don't get too ambitious on the first step and the overall scope. .- Steering member

Or as a KCX steering member said:-

So the whole project for me, didn’t give me the confidence that it was a structured project with a clear end goal. It was like a moving target. – Steering member

There were no cases mentioned of pilots actively endorsing the pilot. In fact the opposite: for instance, one FTX pilot manager described the pilot as:-

It was a year in hell. – Pilot manager

And went on to say that he was prepared to provide this feedback to others:- Everybody wanted to know how it was going…The informal networks were hopping– how is it going? – it was a cause for concern, for some people. It wasn’t going good.- Pilot manager