Aviva is a global life and standard insurance services company. Over the past few years Aviva has been with an acquisition spree which has turned it into the worlds fifth largest insurance provider but because of this had left out a variety of IT systems and commercial cultures. On 29 Apr, 2008 Aviva announced its purpose to unite business under global brand (Aviva, 2008). It was a part of a switch in strategy to grow and transform the business enterprise to contend on a global level as well concerning drive the business to a straight more impressive range of performance.
"In Oct 2007 group leader, Andrew Moss, set out his vision to increase the company's full probable as a worldwide group, summarised as "One Aviva, twice the worthiness". It signalled an interval of transformation for Aviva, combining relatively autonomous business units to generate 'One Aviva' with an obvious growth agenda within an increasingly global and competitive market. " (Aviva, 2008)
The Circumstance Study
In order to analyze the role than it governance in the current organizations I am going to use the case study of the 'Aviva World' task executed by Aviva plc in collaboration with Microsoft Corp in 2008-09. Aviva is the fifth-largest insurance group worldwide. It provides savings, assets, and insurance, and has been operating since 1696. The business's 54, 000 employees provide more than 50 million people in 28 countries.
This research study is offered by www. onwindows. com as "one brand, twice the value" dated 12 April 2010. This site is backed and guided by Microsoft Company to give attention to enterprise business-level use of the Microsoft Glass windows operating system, Home windows Server System and associated software from spouse companies that deliver solutions and applications on the Home windows platform.
2. Project Inception
The IT Challenge
In order to combine the business at a worldwide level, Aviva needed a system to have the ability to communicate with all employees also to allow its employees to have the ability to share guidelines. Aviva wanted to encourage its employees to be innovative and to allow them to communicate with each other in order to improve persistence and efficiency.
In the first one fourth of 2008 Toby Redshaw was hired as the global Key Information Official 2008. The management felt the need for a global intranet that was simple to operate and take care of, and would help change the culture of the company. Secondly, They wished a knowledge and cooperation environment to help people retain the institutional storage area of the business, capture the knowledge that often leaves when people go forward, and work in teams faster, better, and cheaper. The brand new intranet was required to have excellent search capacities (Microsoft Services, 2008).
Another goal Redshaw acquired was to lessen the delivery pattern time from principle to solution. He experienced the necessity for something that gave the management the ability to reach everyone in the business quickly and easily. The new system was also would have to be locally 3rd party while employing the same technology globally.
The Solution
Global IT Services Director at Aviva, Matt Fahy was asked by Redshaw to lead the project and deliver it in a quick timeframe and to do it within an innovative way. The solution chosen was a Microsoft Office SharePoint Online based system and it provided an enterprise content management system including doc management, web information and a robust search capability. Additionally it is secure due its rights management capability that allows restricted usage of resources. SharePoint Online also allows users to produce blogs and wikis, and can help improve business cleverness by writing these resources of information among acquaintances.
3. IT Governance Model
What Is IT Governance?
According to the Information Systems Audit and Control Relationship (ISACA), IT Governance can be defined as:
"'The composition, oversight and management procedures which ensure the delivery of the expected benefits of IT in a manipulated way to help enhance the long term ecological success of the organization. "
IT Governance is often misinterpreted as governance risk and compliance (the GRC acronym). It is a part of the company's Commercial Governance strategy, its main aim is to make sure that the investment funds in IT generate business value, and minimize the risks that are associated with IT.
"IT governance includes the following sub domains.
Business continuity and catastrophe recovery
Regulatory compliance
Information governance and information security
IT Service Management
Knowledge Management, including Intellectual Capital
Project governance
Risk management. " (IT Governance Ltd, 2003)
Relevance to Case Study
The Aviva world project in the event study is concerned with Information governance and information security, Knowledge Management and IT Service Management sub domains from it Governance. Redshaw says: "The solution helped bring Aviva a marketing communications portal, today's collaboration environment, a knowledge system using new tools, and a groundwork for us to use as a unveiling pad for further applications. " (Microsoft Services, 2008)
The Model
The Aviva world job uses a hybrid governance model i. e. the enterprise vast system is handled centrally, but the local IT management is accountable for managing some parts of the system. The machine has something Oriented Architecture which allows gain access to applications and information globally and hence reduces duplication and reworking of similar issues. In addition, it allows iterative development. Different users can have different jobs and responsibilities based upon the application. This provides the machine great versatility.
An example of the governance framework can be seen in the next image:
The Impact
The Global intranet has had a dramatic effect on the way the employees utilize it to improve efficiency and efficiency. It has turned into a communication channel and has evolved the organisational culture. These claims given by higher level professionals at Aviva give the true picture:
"Since June 2009, Aviva's intranet has persisted to become an important marketing communications route for the global company. Four people at group level work specifically on the intranet overseeing management of message boards, editorial, group reports and co-ordination of content flow which is handled regionally. The introduction of employee forums has helped to generate an wide open culture while building neighborhoods. Colleagues receive the independence to write content on anything they like. This popular area of the intranet is seen by over 60% of users, partially helped by the fact that articles contain questions or threads, automatically created for employees to touch upon.
The community forums are also keeping time when it comes to responding to customer questions - acquaintances are able to conduct a simple community forum search to get people the answers they want quickly. " Lynne Grey, Internal Communications Director at Aviva (Penton, 2010)
"Recently, Aviva organised a 24-hour online session-using the Aviva World intranet-with all its businesses around the world. The event proclaimed a milestone inside our move to a worldwide brand, and we wanted to celebrate the future of the organisation. This type of global event could not have been possible without Microsoft portal technology. A year ago, we couldn't picture web host a 24-hour global event. " - Matt Fahy, Global IT Services Director at Aviva (Microsoft Services, 2008)
4. Critical Evaluation
This case study clearly shows the impact IT can have on a business. The Aviva world job has fundamentally transformed how the entire organization uses IT in its daily businesses. The intranet is by default place as the homepage of each browser. A graphic of the homepage is sown below:
As can be seen in the image, the home page has an update give food to that will keep users educated about important news. The page also offers easy access to the most talked about subject areas in the discussion boards. Aviva has generated a sociable network to activate its employees to use the machine (Penton, 2010). That is consistent with technique to foster an environment of innovation and sharing. It must be known that this approach is different from what most organizations use today. The management should be lauded for taking such a strong step. And it offers generated business value for the organization. "The message boards are also conserving time when it comes to responding to customer questions - colleagues have the ability to conduct a straightforward website search to get people the answers they need quickly. " (Penton, 2010) Obviously implies that. Its impact on encouraging advancement is debatable difficult. While on one end if its employees aren't busy solving issues that others have solved they will have additional time to innovate, but it could also lead to a predicament where its employees get used to searching solutions somewhat than innovating them. The impact of the intranet on this aspect can only be assessed over time. I would therefore say that the machine is merely a partial success in conditions of encouraging knowledge writing and encouraging invention.
The intranet has obviously had an impact on the culture of the organization.
' The success of the message boards has been somewhat of a delight for Gray, Internal Marketing communications Director at Aviva. He said "I didn't realise how much they would be utilized, " she added "No promotion, no training, everyone just started using them. " ' (Penton, 2010)
The project can be considered a success in this aspect.
But the same can't be said for ease of access of the site, since there could be some top features of the website that the users aren't yet utilizing effectively given that they have never received training for the system. Therefore the system can be only considered to be partially successful in being completely accessible to the user and in ensuring that the system can be used achieve maximum performance for the machine.
Also it must be known that while the case study does say performance can be monitored using indicator dashboard, it does not discuss anything about compliance with frameworks such as Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) or Sarbanes Oxley function (SOX). Let's assume that standards are implemented considering Aviva is listed at the New York STOCK MARKET (NYSE) with the London FTSE, it must comply with the NYSE corporate and business governance guidelines and Merged Code on Corporate Governance, the actual fact that this job was implemented in mere 142 days and nights is commendable. And will be considered a complete success in terms of execution. But if it generally does not comply with polices then it is merely partly complete.
The case study claims that Aviva has opted for software plus services model for the intranet from Microsoft and also have a 3 yr permit is again questionable. While on one hand it ensures that the system will stay kept up to date and the employees will be able to take advantage of the growth of technology, the system will demand significant reinvestment every few years, which in actual terms should be reduced from the benefits observed in order to assess the true value of the system. An alternative to the would have been open source systems such as Alfresco, Mindquarry and Liferay Community Office. But taking into consideration the project was to be executed in only 150 days, which could have played a component in collection of the software too since Microsoft could have been the only seller willing to take on the challenge.
Another goal for the task was to reduce the solution application delivery time from theory to solution. In this aspect the system has been quite successful. The case study mentions the situation of the real human resource feedback program. They implemented the perfect solution is in one tenth of the price anticipated therefore the project can be rated a success in this aspect too.
It was desired that the new system experienced first class search capabilities. The case of employees having the ability to search answers to deal with customer issues b0y looking that provides credence compared to that fact. Again this is considered successful.
I my view the implementation of the job was almost a total success. Aviva's Top management along with the Microsoft implementation team must be lauded for putting into action the solution efficiently 8 days prior to the deadline shows the existence of good IT governance in the business.
