Cleaning up my garage on the weekend, I came across a memento from a billing system transformation in an energy utility nearly twenty years ago.
Just one of many technology and business transformations I’ve been involved in across utilities, telecommunications, health insurance, health and BPOs.
One thing leading large customer operations has taught me is that go-live isn’t the finish line.
It’s the point where operations takes over.
Go-live day is a celebration. There are speeches, congratulations, acknowledgements and a few mementos to mark the occasion.
And rightly so; transformations are hard.
Everyone knows the solution isn’t perfect.
A few compromises have been accepted. Some functionality has been deferred. There are plans for future releases.
That’s the reality of large transformations.
Then the business and customers start living with the transformation.
Some of the new functionality is amazing. But the compromises start biting.
A compliance risk appears. Operational costs begin to creep up as manual workarounds become part of the day-to-day operation. A customer issue exposes something no one anticipated.
By then, the project team has usually moved on. The consultants have left.
Operations owns the outcome and the customer relationship. The business adapts and gradually stabilises because it has to. It’s business survival.
That journey is not easy.
Technology teams are accountable for delivering the solution.
Operational leaders are accountable for making it work.
For customers and employees.
For the budget, regulators, CEO, board.
They’re different accountabilities. Both are critical.
The role of operational leadership is to bridge the gap between what technology can deliver and what the business can sustainably absorb.
In my experience, that’s where successful transformations are won or lost.
Technology doesn’t become a business capability on go-live.
It becomes one when operations can run it confidently, sustainably and at scale.
